On this Easter Sunday, I'm giving a quick shout out to my long departed Great Aunt Bernice ("Bernie"). My parents used to drag me out to her and Uncle Johnnie's house on Easter. In classic early teen form I dreaded the long drive to their Hawaiian tiki-infused house and the boring day of visiting with family and doing “nothing,” but looking back I really value the memory and the chance to get to know her. They were both always perfectly kind to me, kinda funny, and I loved them then and still do. Over the years they gradually made their way out of this world, and toward the end Aunt Bernie said something to me that for some odd reason has inspired me musically ever since. I had been playing a lot of trumpet at the time and feeling pretty darn good about my skills. Visiting at her nursing home toward the end I proudly played a few tunes for her, then she looked at me and said,
“Yes, Bryan, that's pretty good! But you know you'll probably never be great.”
“Why, Aunt Bernie?”
“Because your life has been too easy.”
Her point, of course, was that technical skill is not the heart of music. Technique gives you the ability to speak the language of music, but in the end your musical voice is as interesting as any other voice. Many people have good technique, but the ability to use it to tell your own true story in a way that plugs people into the emotion that goes with it--that's the art. A shallow exploration of life yields shallow music, no matter how technically brilliant.
Thanks for the insight, Aunt Bernie. That advice may not have come from the building-self-esteem handbook, but in some odd way it did in fact end up being a really positive thing for me that I'm grateful for. Happy Easter to you and Uncle Johnnie.