My parents have been married over fifty years.
They probably shouldn't have.
Not, at least, theoretically.
If eHarmony had existed in the fifties, and my folks had signed up, I can't imagine they'd have been matched. They have wildly different backgrounds, temperaments, methods of communicating, aesthetics, what have you. Mom grew up in England before and during the Second World War, and carries with her that old English approach to manners and etiquette, appearance and grammar, gardening and decor. Dad, meanwhile, grew up on a BC farm during the Great Depression, the son of Ukrainian immigrants from the old Austrian Empire. He's an electrician by trade, but he's the typical all-disciplines handyman. Welding, carpentry, plumbing, mechanics of all sorts, and farming – he does it all with steel-trap logic and tirelessness. He certainly doesn't care which fork he should use with the salad, and if you happen to look unwell, he won't hesitate to tell you so. No malice, but no varnish, either. He doesn't stand on ceremony, while my mother venerates it.
One thing my parents did agree on was to keep a united front in dealing with their kids – so one of my parents would never seriously countermand or denigrate the other in front of the children. They'd battle it out behind closed doors if necessary, but emerge with one clear communique. Probably no mean feat.
An artist's relationship with his or her own ego tends to be a conflicted one, but I suspect I got an early start on things. My mother is deeply contemptuous of conceit, arrogance, boastfulness, and the like – yet my Dad is a ready practitioner. Granted, when my Dad boasts (which is often), he can always back it up. They're definitely not empty boasts, but they're boasts, all the same.
In retrospect, I guess my mom doesn't mind boastfulness that much – she's been subjected to fifty years of it, and counting...
Certainly in observing some other musicians, it's readily apparent that ego is getting in their way, just as it has obstructed me from time to time. The more one tries to live up to “writing a great song”, the more one tends to strangle off real creativity. I've come up with some of my freshest lyrical material when I've deliberately set out to write garbage, and musical ideas often pop up when I have no intention of generating them (usually when I know I should be doing something other than sitting around with a guitar in my hands or noodling on the piano). Stephen King likens his creative process to a bunch of little guys working in a sweatshop. King doesn't have a lot of control over what the little guys produce, but he lets them keep busy. Trying to be 'great' at the outset discourages their work. It pays to receive their ideas gratefully (with no ego involvement) and sort everything out on paper later. I've almost come to expect that if I feel, at the moment of writing an idea, that the idea sucks – I'll probably love it later. It's a sign of pushing past the comfort zone.
Likewise, the ego can feel threatened when listening to music we don't immediately understand or relate to – but how else do we grow as musicians? Again, Neil Peart's art evaluation method can come in handy here: “What is the artist trying to say, and is he/she succeeding in saying it?” Hey, I can still barely stomach brussels sprouts, but I can turn off my gag reflex with some music if I step back and take a more objective view of it. It's actually rather liberating to do (I wish I'd been able to do that with vegetables as a kid, when they'd been boiled in that special English way...but I digress). In observing a lot of indie artists, I sometimes hear those that show no influences beyond the narrow pop world, with all its super-safe chord changes, melodies and metres. The analogy I've always liked is that a porcupine must lower its quills in order to eat – just as we as artists must lower our defences in order to assimilate ideas outside the norm, the raw material of inspiration that ultimately makes our own music distinctive from others. This doesn't mean becoming a music-listening masochist (I wonder if anyone could actually do that?), but try to eliminate ideas of what you “should” like, and be willing to give most music a few listenings.
So – does an ego serve a musician any purpose? I must admit I've wrestled with this question. First, one starts splitting hairs between what is ego and what is mere self-possession. I don't want to go see a band play live if they're all full of themselves, but I also don't want to see them if they show no confidence in what they're doing. Certainly no one accused Bach, Beethoven or Mozart of being without ego, and Bach produced music at a rate faster than most people could merely copy it. He certainly wasn't inhibiting the boys in his inner sweatshop, to be sure. I can't help thinking that a touch of ego – just a light sprinkling, as it were – helps to put the swagger in a performance. Perhaps ego is the cayenne pepper of artistry – you wouldn't want to be completely without it, but you definitely need to go easy on it. I'm not going to suggest I have this question neatly settled, but I must admit – the older I get, the less ego I tend to sprinkle onto my creations. No regrets so far.
They probably shouldn't have.
Not, at least, theoretically.
If eHarmony had existed in the fifties, and my folks had signed up, I can't imagine they'd have been matched. They have wildly different backgrounds, temperaments, methods of communicating, aesthetics, what have you. Mom grew up in England before and during the Second World War, and carries with her that old English approach to manners and etiquette, appearance and grammar, gardening and decor. Dad, meanwhile, grew up on a BC farm during the Great Depression, the son of Ukrainian immigrants from the old Austrian Empire. He's an electrician by trade, but he's the typical all-disciplines handyman. Welding, carpentry, plumbing, mechanics of all sorts, and farming – he does it all with steel-trap logic and tirelessness. He certainly doesn't care which fork he should use with the salad, and if you happen to look unwell, he won't hesitate to tell you so. No malice, but no varnish, either. He doesn't stand on ceremony, while my mother venerates it.
One thing my parents did agree on was to keep a united front in dealing with their kids – so one of my parents would never seriously countermand or denigrate the other in front of the children. They'd battle it out behind closed doors if necessary, but emerge with one clear communique. Probably no mean feat.
An artist's relationship with his or her own ego tends to be a conflicted one, but I suspect I got an early start on things. My mother is deeply contemptuous of conceit, arrogance, boastfulness, and the like – yet my Dad is a ready practitioner. Granted, when my Dad boasts (which is often), he can always back it up. They're definitely not empty boasts, but they're boasts, all the same.
In retrospect, I guess my mom doesn't mind boastfulness that much – she's been subjected to fifty years of it, and counting...
Certainly in observing some other musicians, it's readily apparent that ego is getting in their way, just as it has obstructed me from time to time. The more one tries to live up to “writing a great song”, the more one tends to strangle off real creativity. I've come up with some of my freshest lyrical material when I've deliberately set out to write garbage, and musical ideas often pop up when I have no intention of generating them (usually when I know I should be doing something other than sitting around with a guitar in my hands or noodling on the piano). Stephen King likens his creative process to a bunch of little guys working in a sweatshop. King doesn't have a lot of control over what the little guys produce, but he lets them keep busy. Trying to be 'great' at the outset discourages their work. It pays to receive their ideas gratefully (with no ego involvement) and sort everything out on paper later. I've almost come to expect that if I feel, at the moment of writing an idea, that the idea sucks – I'll probably love it later. It's a sign of pushing past the comfort zone.
Likewise, the ego can feel threatened when listening to music we don't immediately understand or relate to – but how else do we grow as musicians? Again, Neil Peart's art evaluation method can come in handy here: “What is the artist trying to say, and is he/she succeeding in saying it?” Hey, I can still barely stomach brussels sprouts, but I can turn off my gag reflex with some music if I step back and take a more objective view of it. It's actually rather liberating to do (I wish I'd been able to do that with vegetables as a kid, when they'd been boiled in that special English way...but I digress). In observing a lot of indie artists, I sometimes hear those that show no influences beyond the narrow pop world, with all its super-safe chord changes, melodies and metres. The analogy I've always liked is that a porcupine must lower its quills in order to eat – just as we as artists must lower our defences in order to assimilate ideas outside the norm, the raw material of inspiration that ultimately makes our own music distinctive from others. This doesn't mean becoming a music-listening masochist (I wonder if anyone could actually do that?), but try to eliminate ideas of what you “should” like, and be willing to give most music a few listenings.
So – does an ego serve a musician any purpose? I must admit I've wrestled with this question. First, one starts splitting hairs between what is ego and what is mere self-possession. I don't want to go see a band play live if they're all full of themselves, but I also don't want to see them if they show no confidence in what they're doing. Certainly no one accused Bach, Beethoven or Mozart of being without ego, and Bach produced music at a rate faster than most people could merely copy it. He certainly wasn't inhibiting the boys in his inner sweatshop, to be sure. I can't help thinking that a touch of ego – just a light sprinkling, as it were – helps to put the swagger in a performance. Perhaps ego is the cayenne pepper of artistry – you wouldn't want to be completely without it, but you definitely need to go easy on it. I'm not going to suggest I have this question neatly settled, but I must admit – the older I get, the less ego I tend to sprinkle onto my creations. No regrets so far.