I think one of the most important aspects of being a musician is that you always remain a student. It’s actually the one thing that I like most about music; there’s no end to it. You learn more and more and more and you get better and better and better and you will NEVER quite get “there,” will you? You know where “there” is – right? That place that you’re trying so desperately to get to, or that goal you’ve been trying to achieve your whole life; that level of proficiency on your instrument, the ability to express yourself freely, the speed you wish you had, you’re fluidity of playing, the ease of your technique… I can personally state that I am NOWHERE near the player that I hope to be one day, and I’m almost certain that most of you feel the same way. It actually seems very odd to me that someone would say, “Well, this is all I ever want to learn about music. No more for me, thanks.”

But yet it happens all the time. For many of us, the goal that we once had of being “that good” became a dream; a wish.

“Man, I wish I could play like [fill in the blank] one day!”

“It would be so awesome if I knew how to [insert musical goal here]!”

How is it that we get to this point? Sometimes life gets real, and our passions become hobbies. Sometimes those “hobbies” need to take a backseat to more pressing matters. Sometimes we just lose sight of our goal and it becomes something that we hope for, rather than something that we’re working for. And it is just that; work. No one ever said it would be easy, and in fact, to be quite honest, music is a craft that you will inevitably spend the rest of your life trying perfect. That’s the whole point! You won’t ever really get there because music works like this:

The more you study it, the more you realize you know nothing about it.

And that’s another thing that I love so much about it. It’s kind of like star-gazing; I can think that I’ve got this whole thing called Life all figured out, and all I have to do is stare up at a black sky and see that I’m just an accumulation of cells and atoms holding on to dear life upon a rock, more or less the size of a speck of dust, floating around a burning spark of light just like the billions upon billions of other sparks twinkling in the twilight. How little I know indeed, in comparison! And to me that’s a beautiful paradox: to know much and yet know so little at the same time. I see that same paradox in music, and it only encourages me to dig in deeper.

My challenge to you is to never stop being a Student of Music. She always has something new to teach you, something you didn’t think of and perhaps something that you didn’t even know ever existed, no matter how “old” you are (physically, metaphysically, musically… what’s the difference anyway? A speck of dust!). So my advice is this – sit back and enjoy the ride. Enjoy every last minute of it, and take comfort in the fact that you may never get “there.” It’s all about the journey anyways, not the destination 🙂