Tuning Slide 3.44:

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

First, I know there wasn’t a post last week. Life caught up to me in several ways and I had to do other things. Like work and practice my trumpet. Oh, let’s not forget eat and sleep. So I figured it would be easiest to skip a week of the `. What that did give time to work out the ideas for the rest of this third year. I’m going to try things around and start with life.

Yes, the blog is subtitled “Reflections on Life and Music.” But most of the time we start with the music and move toward applying our lessons from music to life. Well, for the rest of the blog’s third year I will be going the other direction. I have found a bunch of quotes about living life from all kinds of sources. I have enough for two quotes a week through July 5, week 52 of the year’s posts. I will do my usual improvisational riffs on the quotes as they might apply not only to life, but to musicianship and music as well.

Let’s see where it takes us.

Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more,
and don't get so worked up about things.
— Kenneth Branagh

After the past month or so in my own life, this was the perfect way to start. Life happens and we have to get through it. The ups and downs of life also happen and we have to know what to do. Stress can be both a help and a hindrance. Stress is needed to keep us on our toes; and stress can send us into illness if it is too much. On top of that all of us have different levels of stress that we can tolerate on average, as well as in many different situations.

A secret to life is to learn how to deal with stress. Well, I guess that isn’t truly a secret. We all know that. It’s just that some of us learn to do it better than others, while some of us fall into all types of unhealthy ways of reacting. So I Googled “best ways of coping with stress” and got this from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• Take care of yourself.
  
  • Eat healthy, well-balanced meals
  • Exercise on a regular basis
  • Get plenty of sleep
  • Give yourself a break if you feel stressed out
• Talk to others. Share your problems and how you are feeling and coping with a parent, friend, counselor, doctor, or pastor.Avoid drugs and alcohol. These may seem to
• help with the stress. But in the long run, they create additional problems and increase the stress you are already feeling.
• Take a break. If news events are causing your stress, take a break from listening or watching the news.

Nothing earth-shattering in any of those. We are simply better able to cope with stress if we do these simple things. I have a friend who did stop watching the news in the past five months. Their blood pressure dropped to a healthy level! It can really work.

Another way to say this may be learn to “go with the flow.” Here’s where music can be of great assistance. Many of us know the idea of being “in the groove”. There may be that time in the practice room when every note flowed from your horn as if it was straight from a heavenly source. Or in the midst of a gig all members of the band just clicked into place.

There can be a lot of stress that we place on ourselves in music. We want to perform well- as close to perfect as is possible. We want to push ourselves to get better. We want to make music that impacts others and leads them into the groove or the flow with us. I am convinced that in order for us to be able to do that, we need to learn to relax, deal with the stress, laugh and learn, practice with ease, lose the tension. We all know when it happens; we just have to learn how to get there. Having the attitude to

Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more,
and don't get so worked up about things.


That might make a huge difference. Which brings us to the second quote for this week:

To succeed in life, you need three things:
a wishbone,
a backbone, and
a funny bone.
— Reba McEntire

Simply put:

A wishbone is the desires and hopes we strive for. These are our goals and directions, the values and directions of our lives. Essential or we just drift into an aimless wandering that exhausts us- and probably those around us.

In our music this takes us back to the need to set goals; to be able to say why we are doing what we are doing; how we want life to be changed through what we are doing. Where is it you want to be in six months or a year. Make the plans. Life the direction of your dreams.

A backbone is courage to do the things we need to be doing. This encompasses the discipline it takes to move toward our dreams. It includes the willingness to say “No!” to those things which go against who we are and “Yes!” to the things that will lead us there. It means stand up for yourself and others and take the time to practice to get where you want.

Just having dreams isn’t enough. We have to find the ways to get there. And that takes work. Not just the many hours and years of practice, but the discipline to do it right. It is the courage to choose what is important and then make that a center point of your life. It will mean making some tough choices. It will mean having to sacrifice and give up some things for others. That’s where the stress stuff from the CDC above can come in. Look for help- a teacher or mentor. Go for it. With courage.

A funny bone is keeping all things in perspective. Life can be a lot of fun. There are many things to laugh at and enjoy. Look for them. Aim at them. Find the goodness and joy no matter where you are.

In the end, while these are important, the more seriously you take yourself, the more difficulty you will have moving in the right direction. Being too rigid will get in the way. Not being able to laugh at yourself will keep you from being able to relax at what you are doing. Go with the flow of your music, laugh at your mistakes - and then get back to doing the right things to move forward.

Yep, I know these sound like those platitudes that can be so sickly sweet that we get tooth decay from them. But they have stood the test of time. Remember to have fun. Life is too short not to.

Each week in this series I’ll end with a video of a song that gets to the heart of what I’m saying. No better place to start than with the Beatles.