What musicians know about working on their craft
that the rest of us need to learn from
my friend emilia
My friend Emilia is a world-class pianist. She plays in some seriously big festivals and concerts all around the world.
She was one of the lucky ones. She started playing the piano when she was little, and over the years, she worked hard, had good teachers, and she got better and better at her craft. She was lucky because she found her special life’s work early on. Most of us have to find it and go after it when we’re older. She found it early and – more importantly – she recognised it. She knew it for what it was. She gave it the devotion it needed. The absolute, blow-your-mind obsession.
This is hard to do. When you’re little, you might have an inkling about what your life’s work should be. It’s the thing you spend hours doing. The thing you don’t get restless doing, don’t have to be told to do, and sometimes do in secret. (I read Wuthering Heights hidden in the pages of my science exam book, and I also read a sexy book that my parents didn’t want me to read in which people have sex on a train under my desk when I was a teenager. Writing fiction and dancing, those were my thing.)
You had a special practice or work, a thing you did to relax or get your brain to focus, but you might not have recognised it as special or worth getting to know better. Or maybe the world mocked you for doing it and so you stopped. Or your parents and teachers told you it isn’t practical, what’s the point of doing that, you’ll never get anywhere, you’re not very good at it, and anyway who said you were all that and so you didn’t do it anymore. Because what was the point?
Emilia is one of the lucky ones. She not only found her thing early, but she recognised it for what it was. She knew it was special. She knew it was her calling. She knew it would wander off if she didn’t tether it. And she worked her socks off to make it grow.
She has a chaotic, crazy life with little kids who take up most of her headspace. She’s a great parent and she spends a lot of time with her kids doing art, gardening, talking, baking, taking them to concerts out in London, all the fun stuff.
But when her kids are at school, you know what she does?
She sits down and practices for every single hour she’s given.
She works at her craft. She loses herself in it. She’d rather do a difficult day of practice and go into battle with her piano keys if they aren’t cooperating than basically anything else.
She’s great at what she does, one of the best.
And yet, every day, for as much time as she’ll get in her busy life, she sits down and does the work.
For her, playing the piano is a craft, a vocation, a job. But she also knows something that not everyone knows. That, for her, playing the piano and doing it the best she possibly can is fundamentally who she is at her core. When she’s longing for union and connection, her craft is always there waiting for her, and when she finds it, they join together and they make magic. Without this practice in her life, she’d be less of who she is.
She doesn’t play the piano like anyone else does. She plays like only she can. She plays it like only she can after having spent hours, days, years practicing it and developing her craft.
Emilia instinctively knows what a lot of very accomplished musicians know. That it isn’t enough to find your thing. It isn’t enough to know the thing that makes you you, that makes your heart sing, that gives you a path through all the dark times to an essential part of who you really are and are meant to be. She knows finding her thing is only the beginning.
She gets that once you’ve found your thing (or your things, for those of us who like to hop between things), your lifelong job is to dive in and get soaked. To find out more. Dig deeper. Learn. Develop your craft. Practice as an act of devotion. Hone, shine, sharpen, elevate. Battle with your demons. And make love with them. Dedicate your life to becoming the you that you’re really meant to be.
Even when the world doesn’t seem like it wants you to. Or it doesn’t care if you do or not.
Especially then.
The trick, I think, is to not listen to other people who will tell you to ration your thing. Do it less, so you can do sensible things. Do it less so you don’t get lost in it or obsessed. Do it less because you’re not going to be successful at it anyway.
We all have to earn a living, sure. We have family commitments and jobs. We have chores and friends and people we care for. We might not have hours every day to play at our craft. Most of us, though, often have 20 mins or an hour. We don’t need to wait for success, whatever that is, or sanction, or permission, or a publisher, or an exhibition, or a restaurant, or a commission in order to do our thing. We don’t even need to have our next big project. When I don’t have a book I’m working on, I scribble. Our thing is our practice, our craft, it’s what makes us (or one of the things that makes us) who we really are at our core. Don’t do it for success. Do it as an act of devotion. Do it to develop your muscles. Do it to find your voice. Do it to find the peaceful, beautiful, crazy, emotional core that is no one else’s and beholden to no one. That is just yours.
Meanwhile, a beautiful window I saw in Crete a few months ago.
Amita x
