Meeting vulnerability

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…“ - Theodore Roosevelt

I love conversations that make me think, inspire me to investigate, ask questions, and being still. Most recently, this happened to me during my interview with Heidi Kay Begay for her "Flute 360 - Podcast" (listen on Spotify and apple Podcast). Without any conscious steering from either of us and without intention, it turned into a very open conversation about a topic that, as I only realized afterwards, has been on my mind for a long time as a musician and a human being: Vulnerability.

At first glance, this is not a word that one would like to think about or even talk about. Some people might think that I want to turn my innermost thoughts to the outside, a method that some people use to seek attention and provoke reactions. That is not the background, why I sit here today and write a few lines to it.

But by doing just that, in the full knowledge that what I write here will be made available to a public that might react to my writing with rejection, disinterest or even devaluation, by not only accepting but perhaps even inviting these possibilities, I make myself vulnerable.

To share one's thoughts is to make oneself vulnerable. To present something that has emerged from us, whether it is a painting, a song, or a sound we produce, released to others for judgment is an act of deliberate risk-taking. We put ourselves, as Roosevelt puts it, into the arena and thereby demonstrate courage.

After my conversation with Heidi, it occurred to me very quickly that the concept of vulnerability is central to one of my favorite authors, and so I actually came across a book by her that I can recommend here without hesitation: Brené Brown, "Daring greatly". In it, she defines the term as "uncertainty, risk-taking, and emotional exposure," all things that we as performing musicians can count among our closest allies or among our greatest enemies, depending on what we make of them.

One thing is very clear: the arena in which we classical musicians find ourselves and many of the leading figures in it have always identified the notion of vulnerability as weakness. Fallibility, overt emotionality, and the display of insecurities are allowed only to the heroines and antiheroes of our great opera stages, certainly not to the shining stars who give them their faces. For some reason we hypothesize that whoever has once been included "at the top" in the ranking of the great stars by the great recognition he or she thereby receives wears a kind of golden shield that protects them from the awareness of their own vulnerability and makes them immune to fears. I can only tell the story of an acquaintance who used to perform a lot on the big stages in Vienna as a singer. In a production of which she was a part, she stood side by side with the great Plácido Domingo. On the day of the premiere, just before the curtain went up, she watched the star nervously pacing back and forth, pale as a sheet, waiting backstage for his first performance. It was an image she had not expected at all from her great idol. She took heart after the performance and asked the singer why, with all the success he has had in his life and all the love he has received from the audience, he was still so afraid of performing. "You are the famous Plácido Domingo!" she said with a broad, encouraging smile. The answer was prompt: "Yes, and I have to prove every night that I still am!"

For me, this sentence is not only a sign that there will never be such a thing as a "perfect end state" on stage, not even after a life as a successful artist. It also proves that every new walk into the arena - no matter how familiar it may be to us - makes us vulnerable again and again, if what we do there really means something to us. So, based on this exposing statement, would you call one of the greatest singers of our time "weak"? Would you tell him that the profession is probably not for him if he has such a "weak" mind and still feels fear when he steps in front of his audience? Probably not, his successes speak for the fact that he was able to build a great career despite or even because of this vulnerability.

Nevertheless, it is often the same for young, budding musicians when they dare to step into the arena for the first time. I remember all too well my own rehearsal period in the orchestra. My big motto was "don't show any weakness". Although none of your colleagues says this directly to your face, it is an unspoken law in a business where you sit in an arena in front of a few thousand people every day, and often several times a day - in front of several million on January 1. So, my strategy was to be as perfect as possible, every day, at every hour, under all circumstances. It didn't matter if I was sick, jet-lagged, had 45 services a month to get through, it just didn't matter. What that mainly resulted in was me becoming downright hard on myself and losing the connection to my surroundings and the connection to my primal drive to make music. Thus, for me, a year that is difficult for any newcomer to this orchestra due to the sheer volume of operatic and symphonic repertoire to be learned became a year that almost completely robbed me of my love for music. Today I know I was sacrificing my vulnerability to achieve an illusory "perfection" that would make me unassailable. Looking back, I also know that this very behavior weakened me greatly. Weakness for me today means not being willing to accept one's vulnerability.

Now this may sound like a very pathetic definition to some, but it is basically a very logical conclusion. The idea of perfection is just one of the armors with which we try to protect ourselves against our own vulnerability. However, this shield leads not only to protect ourselves from the external and internal critics, but also from real connections with our environment and the people in it.

Without connection there is no music. Music as an immediate contemporary art lives from people opening up to connect, to be touched and taken along, be it into a mood, an inner image or a narrative. As musicians, we open up a space on stage for our audience, in which they are then allowed to live for the duration of the piece. We can fill this space with whatever we want. We can fill it with beautiful sounds, admirably, flawlessly, and correctly strung together. There is nothing wrong with that either; the feeling of the audience will be a similar one as in an impressive museum, where the objects are placed and beautiful to look at from the outside. Or we may open a space where we want to connect, speak directly to our audience, "tell" them something, or envelop them in a moment experience that truly touches and engages them. The choice is ours and may not be the same every day.

So, is vulnerability a weakness? My answer is no. If we waited until we felt invulnerable, perfectly prepared, or 100% safe before moving into a new arena, be it personal, professional, or artistic, then we would probably spend our lives in the hallway there, and experiences, relationships, and opportunities would pass without being experienced.

That's why I wish for our arena of classical music to once again have more courage to take risks, more connection and storytellers, more open visors, more points of contact and curiosity. This is also what we want to encourage our participants of the Penthesilea academy to do, to meet storytellers in the orchestras of this world in the future, who never and under no circumstances let the love for their form of expression, the music, be taken away, but create connections with each other.

“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds.” - Dalai Lama

In the spirit of open exchange, I welcome comments, thoughts, dis-armament, or agreement... the space is open :)

Check out my interview with Heidi Kay Begay.