“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
(I have no idea why the text in this paragraph is so frigging tiny. It just happened. Hopefully you can still read it.)
Yesterday what I did for fun was read a book for pleasure. I usually try to make time to read for fun, especially since I spend a lot of time at home. Even when I get busy, I want to make sure I reserve some time to read for fun. When I was working as a barista, I often found myself feeling exhausted after work shifts and when I would get home I would collapse on my bed and crack open my novel and just read. Immediately the stress would leave my body and I would feel better. Even if I have a successful music career I want to be able to make time to read for fun. Not only do I love recommending books to people, but also reading helps me understand what it means to be a human in the world. No one is free from problems, and so whenever I read about a character dealing with some problem I feel I can empathize with them some way even if I can’t directly relate to the problem or haven’t gone through the suffering the character has. I mostly read fiction but lately I have been incorporating nonfiction.
Yesterday I started reading Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love. In the book she talks about the ups and downs of being a writer and what it takes to navigate those ups and downs. I’m really glad I read this book because it helped me put success in a healthier perspective. Gilbert talks about how you don’t need to quit your day job to pursue your art or craft, and debunks the Tortured Artist stereotype. I love how she touched on the latter because I have struggled with perfectionism in my cello practice sessions and it made it hard for me to take feedback well because I thought every mistake I made while playing was a failure, and so when my teachers would give me feedback I would resort to all-or-nothing thinking, such as “They think my playing is bad” or “I’m not cut out to be a musician.” It got to the point when I would be so fearful of making a mistake that I would play small when the passage called for a more expressive feeling or needed to be loud. I think I remember when I was in my senior year of high school and we were rehearsing this piece by composer Jean Sibelius called Finlandia, and there is a part where the cellos play fff, which is the loudest sound you can produce on the cello (basically it’s forte on steroids.) I took this marking quite literally and pressed so hard on the bow and the minute I ground the bow across the string, I heard a snap and saw that all the bow hair had snapped off of my bow because I pressed so hard. I can’t remember whether I had an extra bow in my cello case or not. All I can remember was freaking out internally, wondering how I would live down this embarrassment in the middle of a rehearsal, especially because the concert was the next day and we didn’t have long to rehearse the music. I don’t remember whether the bow ever got repaired or not, but I ended up getting a new bow in time for the concert but being more careful to not press too hard on the string. I think this event stayed so embedded in my conscience that throughout college I kept thinking if I played fortissimo or even forte I would relive that same bow-hair-snapping nightmare I lived through that fated rehearsal night. My teachers always had to tell me to play louder and I wouldn’t listen to them because I was always fearful of breaking my bow.
But I digress from the subject at hand. But yes, yesterday I read for fun and it was amazing. I also read Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson this week and it was also a really good book. I haven’t listened to the 2 Dope Queens podcast yet and this is my first time reading one of Phoebe’s books but I love her writing! And I love all of the cultural references she makes; I found myself rolling around in laughter until my ribs hurt, but she also discusses serious topics as well that really made me sit and reflect, such as the social stigma around 4C hairstyles and the topic of hair in the Black community, as well as the challenges of quarantining in 2020 and the trauma of George Floyd’s murder. It kind of reminded me of another book I read by a comedian and actress named Retta from Parks and Recreation; I read her memoir So Close to Being the Sh*t Y’all Don’t Even Know, and like with Phoebe’s book it tickled my ribs but also was so real and raw and beautiful. As someone with an aspiring creative career, both of these books encouraged me to keep making art and living my life.
Wishing everyone a happy holiday season!
The Arts Are Life 