This is something I think I’ve wanted to write about for a long time. There’s definitely a link between music and my mental health that I haven’t really figured out yet and I’m not sure that I ever will. Anyway, let’s start at the beginning and try to entangle it all. Pre-warning here: this could be a long, tangent-filled post but I’d say stick with it.
Creativity and my nan’s piano
I was a pretty creative kid. I’ve got plenty of random scraps of paper at home filled with (quite bad) drawings of science fiction, monsters, all sorts. There was no limit to my imagination at that point. I mean why not have a tank with a dragon’s head that breathes out the front, right? I’m told that music entered my life pretty early on too. There’s this oft-quoted story of me only just being tall enough to reach for the keys of my nan’s (grandmother’s) piano but gently, delicately pressing them down with glee, not bashing at it or “making noise” as I’ve since seen many kids do. Apparently, my nan just said something along the lines of “get him into piano lessons, he’s going to play the piano”. I don’t know whether it was a case of being psychic or self-fulfilling prophecy but she was absolutely right…
(In the interest of full disclosure, I just had to take a quick break from writing at this point because my eyes filled with tears. This is telling me there’s something I need to get out)
My older brother took piano lessons for a few years and then I started just before my 7th birthday. Interesting how with a teacher watching, I wouldn’t even touch the keys to begin with, with her saying something like “try pressing a key, it won’t bite” followed by me learning where middle C was and then the rest is history!
Stifling perfectionism
I think it’s fair to say that with both music and school, creativity wasn’t really nurtured. With piano lessons, it was mostly a case of working on scales and technical stuff then going over the pieces for the next exam. In my own time, I’d sometimes come up with little melodies and things but I don’t think it was valued as much as playing pieces well, playing all the right notes rather than creating. It might sound harsh but creativity was pretty much beaten out of me at school. It’s all about attainment, assessment, reaching targets, doing a good job. How much of that was my own perfectionist tendencies and how much was external, I’m not sure. I know that the perfectionist was there in full force at those music exams. Rather than thinking something like “26/30 is a good score for a piece”, I think it had the added bit of “but it’s not 30/30 though, is it?”
Anyway, I went through grade after grade, being able to play progressively more difficult stuff. My hands were a bit of a stumbling block at times because they’re really small for a piano player. I could reach less than octave when I was younger and I can only bearly reach more than an octave now. On a side note, I found out from a teacher later on that I’m hyper-flexible in my hand and wrist joints, meaning that while I could play things over an octave and play a lot of stuff without warming up, I would actually be doing some damage to my hands without knowing it. I have a weakness in my left wrist/hand to this day.
University and self-esteem
It was pretty much a no-brainer that I’d go on to do music at GCSE and A-Level (British high school exams) and again, I’m not sure I gave it much thought at the time about what I’d be doing if I went to university. In fact, I don’t think it was an ‘if’ in my mind, it was just the thing that everyone was doing and it was all dependent on your grades and things like that. I suppose that going for open days to different unis was when I had my first bits of intuition and trusting that gut feeling that is so, so important. I went to a few different places but my decision was based on some extra-sensory feeling of “this is it” within a few minutes of being at the uni I would eventually complete my degree at.
Up until university, I don’t think I’d ever truly, deeply questioned music as a main part of my life. It seemed natural to me, I was good at it, I had a passion for it. I remember using my first keyboard to create little demos of things, putting different sounds together, doing a new version of the Doctor Who theme tune and all sorts. When I got to university, everything was ramped up. The academia and thinking about music was at such a deeper level, the standards of performance were so much higher. I was spending the vast majority of my time involved in some kind of music-making. In fact, during my 2nd year I was going to lectures a few times a week, going to a piano lesson once a week and spending every night of the week at a different ensemble whether that was big band, swing group, wind band, choir, folk group, whatever. It really was all-consuming.
I think I briefly mentioned before that when I started to get depressed and anxious during my 3rd year, my cognitive-behavioural therapist at the time came up with this narrative which seemed to try and explain away a lot of what was going on. Through the majority of school, I hadn’t really struggled academically and although I’d had a few moments where I was about to give up with piano, I persisted and eventually the penny dropped. I hope as you read, you understand that I say this as a matter of fact rather than meaning to boast.
The ‘all-consuming’ and falling out of love with music
So I’d done well and I was used to doing well at that point but at university, I was faced with not being top of the class anymore. There were people who were more skilled, deeper thinkers, people who were more gifted academically than me and that comparison was something that was constantly going on while I was in this pretty much all-consuming musical life — it was where my studies were, where my social life was, everything. I’ve realised I’m using the word ‘all-consuming’ and I think that’s intentional at some level. It was consuming all of me. Add that out-of-awareness doubt to relationship problems, driving lessons, being faced with the decision of what to do after uni and everything elsecombining into one massive whammy of big problemo.
Anyway, I totally fell out of love with music. I started questioning the rationale behind doing it in the first place big-time. The thing music degrees is that it all tends to be academic in all senses of the word. There’s no help at all with how you go about getting gigs, preparations for stuff, how much you can charge and finances, a lot of the real-world practical things just aren’t covered. I watched as the huge majority of musicians I’d met at university automatically went on to do PGCEs and become teachers. I didn’t want to become a teacher, least of all not to children but I had no idea what to do otherwise.
I left university and went back to living with my parents and that all-consuming musical life vanished overnight. I went from playing and performing a hell of a lot to not playing at all. More than that, it wasn’t even just not playing or practising, it was that I didn’t want to that was so alien. Before then, I’d been able to sit down at pretty much any point and play. That’s one of the main things I realise about this relationship I have — when I feel at my worst, music is absent. The thing is that at that point, it really isn’t good to try and force it either. Trying to force myself to think about or play when I really don’t want to usually ends up with everything seeming to go wrong, even bashing at the keyboard to get that anger and frustration which (if you’ve been following from the beginning) you know isn’t something that I do.
Aimlessness and the performing life
I spent a good few years being really kind of aimless. I made a few profiles on music websites so I was contacted not long after graduating about accompanying a local choir and my connections at uni meant I got occasional jobs playing for musicals, some function band stuff but it was all very hit-or-miss. I eventually started accompanying a second choir thanks to one of my relatives seeing an ad in the paper and thinking I might be interested and that led to a year or more of accompanying and conducting them.
Through all of this, no one told me that it’s really hard to make a living out of performing. I spent a long time thinking that I didn’t need to put much effort in, things should just happen; I didn’t want to put the effort in either. I’ve spent long periods of time since then in musical drought; not listening to it, not playing it unless I have to and even actively shunning it. The creativity, the passion, the spark — all of them were a dim ember, teetering on the edge of being snuffed out.
Joining cruises and rekindling the flame
The same relative that told me about the other choir mentioned cruises as an option, just in passing one day and I started doing some research. In some ways, it seemed to be shrouded in mystery. It took a while to find out where you even start with a job like that. I did an audition for what was then the biggest agency for cruise ship musicians. I’ve watched that audition back only once since and it was absolutely shocking! I really wasn’t used to this whole auditioning thing. What was worse was that they didn’t reply afterwards rather than actually giving me a ‘no’ but anyway, I eventually went to the next agency down on the list. With one audition under the belt and knowing a bit more about what to expect, I passed.
It took a long time from passing the audition to getting out there, probably over a year. I cut all ties and went off to play for a proper living and a decent salary. (I later found out that I actually lucked out for that first contract with a much better salary than you usually get when you start out). Anyway, I was playing new music nearly every day with musicians who were more experienced than me which gave me a push to get better. Like with any job, you start out green and not knowing much but keep going until you’re a bit more established. I spent a few years getting to travel and play this huge array of stuff.
The ember of wanting to play was suddenly rekindled and although I struggled for a bit, especially when I joined a new ship, I was listening to and playing new stuff. At one point, my sight-reading (in other words, the ability to play something well the first time you see it) was in top condition and my playing in general had reached a peak somewhere near where I was in university; in fact, in some ways it was better because I was more versatile, a bit more experienced in different styles. The thing with the cruise ship job I had was that you play virtually no classical music at all but pretty much anything else can turn up. I feel like the bar was different during that time too. I saw that while there was a standard for how good those group performances had to be, others didn’t have that push towards perfectionism that I did.
The plateau and the present day
After a few years, I started to become a mixture of bored, jaded, frustrated and other stuff when it came to music. I was playing so much stuff that I didn’t like and whereas at the start I was constantly pushing to come up with solid performances, over time I stopped putting in so much effort. I was in a really fortunate position towards the end where I was being paid really well for less actual performing time. My sight-reading being good meant that I wasn’t really practising much and I plateaued and then started to take what I saw as a bit of a dive so I knew it was time to get out and I finished my last cruise in mid-2019.
I have a theory about some kind of shift happening when music stopped being a hobby or something I’m studying to being a job and even a chore at times. There were definitely more than a few moments where I didn’t want to step out onto that stage and perform to over 1000 people but it was my job. Although most of the time we had regular days off, I only took one day off sick during those 4 and a bit years on cruises. Especially seeing a few of my friends who you could see had this real zest for playing, I realised that for me that spark had gone again and I was really feeling that loss. I thought that it might take a radical career change to bring that back. Again, I virtually stopped playing completely. In my recent depressive episode, I was spending a hell of a lot of time in silence while the thoughts in my head and my fears and anxieties all ran amok.
After a few twists and turns, we’ve finally reached the present day. I realise I’m saying that like it’s a destination but the road continues. I’m currently listening to music perhaps more than I ever have. I think it’s got something to do with living on my own and while I appreciate the silence, sometimes it needs to be filled with something. A few weeks ago, I even spontaneously started composing again for the first time in years so that creativity has been rekindled somewhat.
It’s not confined to music either; if you’ve been following the blog or read through any of the posts, you’ll know I started writing poetry again in the past year or so too. I fully believe that creativity extends to this blog as well — each blog post is its own project and writing is something that I currently enjoy the most. It’s something that is purely for me but which I choose to share here. I’m now of the opinion that while creativity was previously stifled in my life, whether that was seemingly in my control or not, it’s something that needs time, attention and nurturing in order to flourish.
I’m writing/typing for work at the moment too so if it’s anything like music, I know I need to keep a close eye on it so I don’t get burnt out. That might be part of the reason why some of these blog posts are sometimes daily but sometimes weekly or in little bursts of “this needs to come out”. After a few years of not recording, I have a CD of easy listening in the works as well as going back to my classical roots, and actually practising fairly religiously for the first time in a long while. There might even be some more choir work on the horizon.
I don’t really have any kind of conclusion to this and to be honest, why should I? I do wonder whether depression has been fuelled by lack or repression of creativity for so long or whether it’s just part of the path I’m on (I’m loathe to say ‘journey’) that musicianship and creativity ebbs and flows or gets dammed up then released at different points. As I said at the start, there is definitely something there that is more than coincidence when it comes to music and my mental health. Perhaps it’s something simple like that it’s been a part of my life for so long that I don’t really remember a time without it and those long periods of drought and silence remind me what it’s like not to want it or have it in my life. Or perhaps it’s something a lot deeper and lot stronger than that, like things being creative outlets for release of emotion or something. While working last week, I heard a writer talk about how they say “everyone has a book in them” but it might be more accurate that everyone has things within them that need to come out somehow. It reminds me of a quote I first read during my undergrad degree which I think is a good way to finish:
For me, there are not several arts, but only one: music, painting, and literature differ only in their means of expression. (Maurice Ravel)
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