The Cave

By Mike Vaccaro
(from Mike's Musings #44, our newsletter)

Practice for at least a minute today.

We are all living in the cave of our ignorance. This does not necessarily mean that we are stupid or lazy, but we all hold onto quite tightly what we are taught. What we are taught can be correct or just plain wrong. Either way we ought to be constantly looking out for new ideas and vistas not yet seen or visited. We must find our own truth and be responsible for it. Not the truth of our parents, teachers, friends, enemies, or any other entity. Be an original person.

We certainly don’t need to throw out what we have learned. But we must again think over what was taught to us and determine its validity. At the same time we must look around us. The whole world is for our taking and there are many new lessons and experiences that can help our understanding of our music and art.

Of course, this is also true of our listeners. They must also be open to new sounds and new experiences. As my college teacher Jack Wheaton used to say, “learning can be a painful process.” I have found that to be somewhat true. But the pain is soon enough replaced by an ever-growing wisdom and relaxation in the march of our lives.

Wes, my trainer, introduced me to a selection from The Republic by Plato called The Allegory of the Cave. Type that into your search engine and read Plato’s words on learning and experience. It bet it will open up your own thinking and learning. And to think all of this was written by Plato in 380 B.C. I think it is best to read this type of work slowly. Muse on the dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaukon.

As musicians we are always looking to improve. This is certainly true on our first day when learning an instrument or voice. That never changes, even for the most proficient people in our craft. We are all students, all of the time, if we want to improve.

Good musicians learn how to listen. Not as a background activity in our life, but as an active one: dedicated listening with nothing else going on.

How often do you listen while just sitting with your eyes closed?

Do you still prefer the music you listened to in the time between your youth and your mid-20s? Stepping up to hear new music that you don’t generally listen to will improve your life.

No matter what our instrumental expertise, the field of music is so vast that it can never all be learned. Ask a classical musician to play jazz, dixieland, country music, East Indian music, ethnic music, etc. There are, of course, a few musicians who can play music in more than one genre. It seems to me that spending time in alternative genres helps them become more flexible in understanding new vistas. To understand another genre of music means not only playing the correct notes, but also understanding the music’s emotional meaning. Playing or listening to other music helps transport us out of the cave of our ignorance. Think of any musical style as a language. We all use the same notes but we don’t all know (yet) more than one musical language.

It is not injurious to our musicianship to understand something other than our primary way of playing; rather, exploring other genres improves our musical thinking and creates flexibility within our primary genre.

I am not suggesting that musicians play all kinds of music unless they want to; however, listening to all types of music opens our ears. And once we can feel another type of music in our own bodies it will deepen and widen our understanding of all music.

Do you want to feel more musical freedom? Listen more intently to something that is different than you listened to yesterday. With apps such as YouTube you can listen for free to just about anything you want.

Ciao.

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