With some people, life and sensitivity are expressed through pictures. Others use words as their medium. As for me I find an outlet in music. Some artists have several of these talents and that may be one reason why they impress many people so strongly.
I believe that talent can be inherited, but that its manifestation is not a foregone conclusion, no matter the choices of the parents. In my case music was the magnet. Notes rather than words.
My best moments as a musician happen when, in the middle of a concert/recital, I realize that everything feels right, that all components are coming together, creating a heady surge of happiness.
It´s rather like aiming at a tiny target: You hardly ever hit, yet suddenly it´s right in the bull´s-eye.
It may leave you completely astonished – was that me? It feels as if it´s flowing through you, and when that happens you have somehow been made the medium of music. In those lucky moments you are not just someone playing an instrument, but rather an instrument being played.
This may be because you have made yourself available, going on and on working with the music and honing your techniques.
This, however, also presents a danger, in that the performing artist might focus only upon his own skill, art thus fossilizing into ambition.
You should at all times remain humbly expectant, ready to let yourself be used by music, mindful that you are not there to parade your ego – something which most professional musicians will know from experience.
Life, on the other hand, consists of imperfections, too. I feel this in music when occasionally things don´t quite succeed, when the note you´re playing just doesn´t feel right – and here we´re not talking of striking the wrong note, but of the note which you believed would lift the music but ends up doing the very opposite. Some may think that if that note is your choice it will be right at that particular moment, no matter the effect. I have been told this many times. But I just don´t accept an emotional explanation. Enthusiasm may so easily overstep the mark.
Steffen Schackinger