Music, Romance, and Friendships: What do they have in common?
When a person decides to take music seriously, the process starts with finding a teacher who possesses the musical qualities that they’d like to emulate. And this vetting process is done through a combination of watching said teacher perform live, as well as listening to them on any available recordings. So while the recordings represent their past body of work, the live shows indicate how well their musical philosophies have stood the test of time.
In the realm of romance, however, this becomes a little more problematic. Meaning that when you’re young, and are trying to figure out how this works, what teacher do you turn to in order to observe how the art of intimate relationships work? And in a sustainable way? A natural assumption would be your parents or grandparents, as they’d generally be the closest example you’d have for what this type of human expression/practice can look like. But that still doesn’t speak to the quality of those relationships. And unlike music, you can’t pay a cover charge to stand in someone else’s house to observe how a masters-level relationship can look either. So like many, you’re forced to assemble a patch work of strategies from past personal circumstances and other people’s testimonies. But the fact of the matter is that unless your eyeballs have been able to personally witness anything done at a high level, and over a prolonged span of time, then most of your ideas or strategies will be speculative. I for one can recall a number of times in my youth where my musical choices where mostly speculative. And it was simply due to the fact that I didn’t have an adequate framework for contextualizing how my musical heroes were able to sound so good, as well as to maintain their level of proficiency. But after investing the time to engage with enough of their recordings, interviews, and sometimes them, I was then able to graduate past my old ill-informed framework for how I used to evaluate myself. That said, the question now becomes “is there an equivalent strategy within the arena of intimacy?”
One of the best perspectives I got in college was from one of my old teachers [Victor Lewis], where he said that often times when things go awry on the bandstand, everyone becomes hyper focused on analyzing what’s broken. The irony, however, is that we rarely apply the same focus to when things are going great. Therefore, if we never define what the variables are that make music really work, then how are we supposed to fix things when they break? It’s like trying to assemble a jig saw puzzle without a picture of what you’re supposed to be replicating. Therefore, when things are going great, that’s the time to start stock piling a running list of all the little variables you think are at play so that when things change, it’ll take you less time to identify what happened so that you can restore the balance.
Regarding friendships, this is another area that we haphazardly stumble through because like thinking, it’s assumed that it should be easier than it really is. And as a result, we may find that many of our relationships have actually been predicated upon the convenience of proximity. Which of course, requires as much thoughtfulness as living to 21 to earn the status of “adult.” So again, if we aren’t privy to seeing how master-level friendships can be created, then we’re literally left to our own uninformed ideas for how to do so. And for those who lack the patience to become more proficient at relationship building, they tend to be the ones who might opt to retreat from most social settings when they can, as they quietly justify why most relationships are overrated.
Suggested Takeaways…
a) The best relationships are the ones that are built on purpose, as opposed to through the convenience of proximity.
b) If you weren’t fortunate enough to grow up in a home where the art of intimate relationship building was practiced on a high level, then you’ll have to make it a point to be intentional about seeking out the examples you need. This will be hard to do, but worth the effort.
c) The importance of relationship building should be a staple subject matter that’s reinforced in every grade from kindergarten all the way up through high school and beyond.