Cutting Through the Noise
Listening is a very difficult thing. And every day comes this process, the process of trying to listen even more carefully. As a concert pianist, you’re not only listening to yourself, your inner thoughts, but you’re also listening to your surroundings.
Being in tune with your surroundings and listening out on stage is about trying to feel what’s happening in the hall and responding to that and the instruments in a calibrated way. That, however, is just the external. Internally, it can become a bit chaotic, because you have to free your body from your own mind’s traps and games.
The overthinking comes from the idea that the world expects much more of you than you’re actually delivering, and in my case, what the world is expecting me to play and how I’m expected to act. We’re taught to conform to a certain standard, which results in a major lack of expression. This is one of the most important things, as the means to express is what makes us human. Whenever this happens, the only route through is to cut through the noise and become silent. And to become silent as a concert pianist, is to become one with your environment, with yourself and with music. This trio is what is needed to come together, and when you combine this with letting it all go, dealing with fear, judgement, tradition and history, the music comes in. And so, when you become silent, the music can finally speak.
However nowadays, we’re experiencing an even louder noise than our predecessors. Social media has taken the world by storm and has instilled a demand of constant content output in our followers. Don’t get me wrong, I love social media. I find it incredible that we can reach so many people from all corners of the globe, but sometimes, it makes it incredibly difficult for me to instill silence. The demand for content is very high, and as an artist this can mean that learning a piece of music can take a bit longer, or maybe you’ll become stressed wondering what’s happening in the little joint in your second finger. Or more importantly, what needs to happen in order to free your own mind.
