Thursday! 2-30: Remember the Good Quiet

Volume 2, Issue 30

I did something Monday evening I’ve not done in a long time: I listened to a favorite piece of classical music in a quiet room with my eyes closed.

I picked up a vinyl recording of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring a couple of years ago at a local thrift store. It’s a good recording — Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic from the last 70s or early 80s — rich and bright with just the right amount of silence where the silences ought to be. My wife was out running errands with my Mom and I had just sent an e-mail that had been a point of fretting for nearly a month. I felt good and wanted to stay with that feeling a little while longer, so for 35 minutes or so I lay back on the couch, eyes closed and hands behind my head, and let Copland’s matchless music fill me with springtime. It felt great, I don’t mind telling you. That piece, in particular, is good for me and I needed everything it could give.

When the music faded and I opened my eyes, two thoughts jumped into my head. The first was one I often have when I listen to that piece of music. The other sparked this week’s newsletter. It was a simple question, really: Why don’t I do this more often?

I used to listen to music more often in that way — alone in a room or with good headphones with as few distractions as possible. It’s tough to remember the last time I did, though. A few months ago? Last year sometime? Maybe that one time in the car when the SiriusXM Beatles channel played the Abbey Road B-side medley? Could it have been that long ago? When was the last time I listened to The Planets or Dvorak’s New World Symphony? A year? More? How did that get away from me?

Many of the essays I’ve written for Thursday!, especially lately, are of the “are we really doing as okay as we think we are” variety. The question is important to ask ourselves and each other because, as artists, we have a strong tendency to downplay or even ignore our own situation. We get busy as observers or as caretakers. We surround ourselves with people we care about and then we care. A lot. We get tied up in the “business” of our art and collecting all the raw material from the happenings around us that we forget our own hearts. We assume everything is fine but everything is definitely not fine. Our reserves of mental and emotional energy drops in ways we don’t easily recognize so that we wake up one day and our tank is nearly empty.

The whole subject of keeping your head above water and making a wave when you can (to quote one of the finest television themes of all time) is one artists struggle with more often than not, or so I’ve found. My friends struggle with it and so do I. I bet you do to, to one degree or another. And these days, the news comes on us faster and with fewer reasonable filters. It all leads to one big problem: We’re so busy surviving that we forget how to be the artists we are.

Think about it. When was the last time you felt like you had time for a simple “recharging” pleasure? Was it yesterday or sometimes much father back? A week? A month? Two? Six? If you’re anything like me (and we artsy-fartsy people aren’t terribly different once you get to what really drives us), you spend a lot of your time doing what you need to do then you spend most of the rest of your time ducking and dodging and surviving all the bad stuff that the world hurls at you. You do your best to shrug off the feeling that you aren’t doing enough to help your friends and family when they’re hurting. You see one too many news stories and that’s the one that gets through your carefully constructed heart-armor. You have trouble falling asleep because you’re already planning out the next day or beating yourself up over not doing quite enough in the hours you just had. You fret and hurt. Your reserve capacity to do anything at all creative is low and you don’t even notice because, well, you can’t spend time on yourself. How selfish is that? The whole world needs your help. Isn’t it obvious? And then there are all those social media platforms that we artists must be on, always sharing, always listening, always participating: Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Instagram, TikTok. A chunk of our attention is always outward, lest something get past us, lest we lose an opportunity or something we might possibly maybe be able to fix slips past our fingers.

Yeah. I know. I see it. I’m out there, too, trying to be everyone’s help, hurting for the people out there who hurt so much it seems they’re overflowing with it. I’m not getting as far down my creative career path as I want and the frustration feels like a mountain of lead chained to my ankle. The FOMO of social media is strong. Quiet feels like missing opportunities and time is flying by. I feel you, my friend.

But, aren’t you an artist? Don’t you have something wonderful to create? And is that act of creation a help for those who need something delightful in their lives?

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Yes, you are. Yes, you do. Yes, it is.

But! You must take care of yourself as vigilantly as you try to take care of others. Give yourself a quiet 30 minutes with your favorite music (or nature sounds or a delightful meditation from someplace like Michelle’s Sanctuary, or even nothing at all!). You really won’t miss anything important that won’t find you with just as much urgency when you’re done. The other stuff? Well, you won’t miss that at all, really. I know because, the past couple of weeks, I’ve been cutting back on a lot of stuff in my life I really thought I needed. Turns out, I didn’t need any of it all that much. Want to know more about that? You’ll have to come back next week. I’ll go into some detail about how I’m putting more “on purpose” into my days and have carved away some stuff that seemed mighty important but is not at all.

Until then, go listen to a good tune for a while. You’ve earned the recharge. When you come back, take a deep breath and make a little cool thing. You’re a creative wonder, remember?

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What I Wrote Last Week

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One Last Thing

I wrote a cool book with rhymes and monsters that you can even color if you’re into that sort of relaxing activity! Get a copy for yourself or give a couple out as gifts! I bet whoever gets one of these will remember you fondly for it!