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Being in a relationship and staying focused on one's art ?
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flaco
Posts: 17
Joined: Jan. 13 2015
From: Cosmos
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 Being in a relationship and staying ...
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Well,
It's kinda late here and I feel the need about writing some heart-broked non-sense.
After all those vain hopes I've put in so few relationships with women, thinking that it is something truly sacred, I can only say that, so far, I appear to fail everytime.
The only healthy relation I ever had was with music, that I learned to "understand", which result to a deep and unconditional love.
Same with my conception of what we might call "God", God, that I believe is comunicating with each of us, through our art, as long as you have a pure demarche.
Miyamoto Musashi said :
quote:
One shouldn't be attached to objects/tools.
But the more I make my way through music/lutherie, the more it appears to me that a guitar is not only a tool or an ordinary object, it can be so but it can also be a powerful and wonderful companion for life.
I am living without any money income since January and a guitar (which wasn't mine) fed me most of the time, those last months.
And yet, when I am in a relationship with a woman I make a lot of compromises for my (human) lady and don't practice so much my guitar.
So here's my questions to everybody,
is this possible to aim a particularly good level in Flamenco or in any other art while being deeply in love with somebody ?
Today I couldn't do my daily exercises because I was thinking about somebody all day long...
Should I concider Flamenco and Lutherie before my relationship with a woman ?
Now that my girlfriend broke with me, I feel kinda silly now regarding my musical improvements, since they are really small.
Music (and especially Flamenco) has a religious/mystical dimention to me but my inner instinct often pulls me back in whatever art I tend to practice.
I know I am really young for such questions but I had more problems in life this past year than in the rest of my life for a lot of reasons and this is a question I would like to get done with.
Because I know somewhere that music will help me more in my life than relationships.
Or maybe, the best I can hope is to be with somebody sharing my passion for Flamenco or lutherie ?
How do you manage your (love) relationship with somebody while staying focused on your art ?
Is this possible to not lost the focus on what you did, do and will do, while being in love ?
I know it's pretty strange to post such things on a forum (and it makes me a little bit uncomfortable) but I am seeking here for your wisdom, not specially to get out with a clear answer but to have a little light in the actual darkness of my mind...
Thank you and enjoy your day :)
_____________________________
Gracias a Dios, tenemos el Flamenco !
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Date May 29 2015 0:41:07
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Being in a relationship and stay... (in reply to flaco)
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quote:
But the more I make my way through music/lutherie, the more it appears to me that a guitar is not only a tool or an ordinary object, it can be so but it can also be a powerful and wonderful companion for life. I am living without any money income since January and a guitar (which wasn't mine) fed me most of the time, those last months. And yet, when I am in a relationship with a woman I make a lot of compromises for my (human) lady and don't practice so much my guitar.
A guitar definitely can be a powerful and wonderful companion for life, whether one plays it professionally or as an avocation, played for one's own enjoyment. It can bring great joy, and it can provide solace when the chips are down. But the same can be said for a woman, one who can be a wonderful companion for life bringing joy and solace as well.
It is unclear to me what you want to do with the guitar. You obviously strive to learn and play it well, but do you want to be a professional guitarist or do you want to reach a high level of ability for your own enjoyment?
Here's my take on your post: If you are seriously striving to be a professional guitarist and that is what you want to do with your life, I would not let anything stand in the way. On the other hand, if you want to play the guitar well as an avocation but plan to make your living via other means, I wouldn't be afraid to make a few compromises.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date May 29 2015 17:04:58
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Mark2
Posts: 1871
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
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RE: Being in a relationship and stay... (in reply to flaco)
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I did the two house thing for a while. I had a second home three hours away and the wife would often go there with the kids during the week in the summer and I'd go on the weekends. Gave me a lot of time to practice. It worked pretty well. My wife has always been supportive, and by that I don't mean she came to the gigs. She has always encouraged me to pursue music, and also other interests. I think when I was gigging a lot it made a difference that I used the money very consciously on my wife and kids. Took the sting out of being gone all day Saturday when I brought home the dough.
When you have a couple kids, doing a corporate might be the better decision for your family than hanging out at a juerga. I remember one night playing a snoozer solo gig and across the street some local flamencos were playing. I walked over on my break and saw that their gig was so much cooler even though mine paid way more. If you are single and no kids, don't let a partner determine your future. If you are married and have kids, they ARE your future. No regrets on my part. But since my wife doesn't know flamenco, she doesn't even wait for me to finish the falseta before sounding off. I'm looking forward to playing a corporate this week, but now the kids are grown and it's all about hanging out with my longtime band mates, playing some music, making a few bucks, and having a few laughs. I'll likely spend the money on the wife and kids.
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Date Jun. 1 2015 17:08:58
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Being in a relationship and stay... (in reply to flaco)
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Being in love is an altered state of consciousness. Seriously, I mean it. There was an article recently in a scientific journal, but I don't remember where, about the hormonal changes and psychological effects.
Now from personal experience--I'm 77 and I've been in love a few times. When people are in love they emphasize personality characteristics they believe (or intuit) will be attractive, and repress those that the beloved may find less desirable. So the person you fall in love with is not the same person that he or she will be when the high emotion wears off, nor are you the same person that will emerge or re-emerge later. Your judgment is clouded.
This is not to knock being in love. The intense emotion and bonding can be the foundation of a lasting relationship, but it can't be the only element of a long term one.
One of the potential drawbacks of an intense and long lasting love affair can be the suppression of fundamental differences. If you have no experience in recognizing and adjusting to differences with the loved one, they can be disruptive when they spring into full view.
A lasting relationship inevitably involves a certain amount of compromise. If you recognize a major incompatibility, one that you feel is insurmountable, particularly if you can recognize this even when you are seriously in love, it bodes ill for a long lasting relationship.
Not all relationships absolutely have to be long term. I divorced at age fifty and made an unexpected discovery. There were beautiful and lively girls in their early twenties who wanted a combination boyfriend and Daddy, who didn't want to get married. It was fun while it lasted.
If your concern is just that you are distracted from flamenco by being completely obsessed with the one you are in love with, relax. You will get over it.
At age nineteen it may not seem that way, but you can take my word for it.
But you can also take my word for the fact that there is nothing more rewarding than caring for another person whom you respect, admire and to whom you feel a long term commitment.
When I was the boss of a few hundred people, I occasionally would suggest to someone that the order of priority ought to be 1) Your own health. Without it you are no use to yourself or anyone else. 2) Your loved ones. 3)Your livelihood, especially if others depend upon you for theirs. 4)The rest. Of course 1), 2), 3) and 4) interact, but the order of priority comes into play if you have to make a hard choice.
RNJ
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Date Jun. 2 2015 17:49:53
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Being in a relationship and stay... (in reply to flaco)
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I don't think too much about whether my work is understood by others or partners any longer. As you go along this can become less and less important, and partners can change. But a few things need to be in place and tended to before you can get settled into yourself.
Like many have said if you have family, don't be a douche bag and wash out your family life. Make money, but save some good time for yourself to do your thing.
In the long haul of a creative life some artists, writers, otherwise creative people are lucky to find a life partner that gets what they are doing, many of us do not. Or a change in personnel happens and the new person in your life might not understand your work in the way someone who was with you at a formative phase will understand.
_____________
Some things I have learned about creative work and relationships:
Be brave when no one supports you intellectually or does not get your work. Keep it close your yourself, but don't get mad at partners who don't get your trip. This can take a lot of patience, but the learned patience can help your work. Think of it as part of your discipline.
Make a community of people who do understand what you are doing creatively and keep it glued together before, during and after relationships go through changes. Your artistic mentors and friends who see you for who you are, they are invaluable. You may love your family and all that, but these folks that tend to you are your creative angels. You exchange that angel duty with them.
If you ever find yourself hung out to dry, without community, without ideas, in creative despair, call one of those creatives you trust and confide in them.
Don't pick these people lightly. Don't be afraid to cut out negative people from your interior circle, or let them have negative contact with your insides. If you feel someone is vibing you put some distance between yourself and them.
_________________
Love will ambush you, and you may or may not get the person who gets your art life completely. But if you do, Hooray. You have to build a second family that is your art family, it's absolutely essential that you do this even if you find the person who who sees and hears the same way you do and it completes you both. If that person leaves or gets taken away, your art family will pick up the pieces of you that are left and help you reconstruct yourself. Your biological family will help too and your non art friends will also be there for you, but there is something about the art-music family, an unspoken understanding that you share, and maybe it will save your life for them to transmit the spark back to you when you are down and out.
Biological family, fall in love family, art music family. Keep it all in mind.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Jun. 3 2015 14:10:04
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Being in a relationship and stay... (in reply to estebanana)
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I agree with Estebanana about the three families. If you're really into your work--I was--not just slogging away at something boring to put bread on the table, you can put "work family" in place of his advice about artistic family.
Nurses. When I was in grad school some of my pals and I dated student nurses for a while. This was late 50s, early '60s. The student nurses were more down to earth than many of the local coeds about a lot of things , including sex.
Some of us had sailboats on Lake Travis, a fair sized lake quite close to Austin. One thing we noticed was that in the summer time you could rely upon the wind to die at sunset and not to pick up again for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. If you managed to be out in the middle of the lake at sunset, there was nothing to do for a couple of hours except drink beer and make out.
Three couples happened to be aboard my boat at sunset. When the wind picked up again after a couple of hours, it came on strong. Not being perfectly attentive, we almost capsized, the mast spreaders actually touched the water. After we got back upright, one of the girls said, "That was fun--let's do it again!"
One of my pals answered, "Spoken like a true student nurse!"
RNJ
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Date Jun. 4 2015 3:30:25
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Being in a relationship and stay... (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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Regarding relationships and staying focused, very early on I decided that I would pursue my goals in life, in terms of both career and personal fulfillment (the two were not mutually exclusive), and that I would not allow love interests or relationships to deter me. I saw a few of my friends who had settled down and started families, and although they appeared to be reasonably happy, I could tell they fell short (even by their own standards) of the dreams they once held for the future.
I dated one girl for a while until we were invited to dinner by a couple I had gone to high school with, and at dinner the guy said he wanted to go back to university and get a Master's in Engineering. After we left the dinner, the girl I was dating made a comment (referring to our host) along the lines of, "Why can't he settle down and be happy with what he's got?" Not wanting to start an argument I remained tight-lipped until we reached her home. Parked in her driveway, I could hold back no longer and said, "If you cannot understand someone who wants to fulfill his dream and escape a possible life of mediocrity, then you don't understand me either." After some debate, argument, and angry tears on her part, it was ended.
One of the earliest literary influences on me was T.S. Elliot's famous poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," about a middle-aged man attending a party who reflects on the mediocre life he has led, never taking chances, always afraid of approaching a woman, never fulfilling any ambition that might be larger than himself. The following lines are representative of the poem as a whole.
"And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
and the coup de grace:
"For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?"
What killer lines. I vowed I never wanted to reach middle age and, looking back, sum up my life with, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."
Teddy Roosevelt's words from his, "The Man in the Arena" are apt as well.
"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, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I am neither a T.S. Elliot nor a Teddy Roosevelt, but their words have been an inspiration to me my whole life.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jun. 4 2015 20:51:44
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norumba2
Posts: 37
Joined: May 20 2015
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RE: Being in a relationship and stay... (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
Regarding relationships and staying focused, very early on I decided that I would pursue my goals in life, in terms of both career and personal fulfillment (the two were not mutually exclusive), and that I would not allow love interests or relationships to deter me. I saw a few of my friends who had settled down and started families, and although they appeared to be reasonably happy, I could tell they fell short (even by their own standards) of the dreams they once held for the future.
I dated one girl for a while until we were invited to dinner by a couple I had gone to high school with, and at dinner the guy said he wanted to go back to university and get a Master's in Engineering. After we left the dinner, the girl I was dating made a comment (referring to our host) along the lines of, "Why can't he settle down and be happy with what he's got?" Not wanting to start an argument I remained tight-lipped until we reached her home. Parked in her driveway, I could hold back no longer and said, "If you cannot understand someone who wants to fulfill his dream and escape a possible life of mediocrity, then you don't understand me either." After some debate, argument, and angry tears on her part, it was ended.
One of the earliest literary influences on me was T.S. Elliot's famous poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," about a middle-aged man attending a party who reflects on the mediocre life he has led, never taking chances, always afraid of approaching a woman, never fulfilling any ambition that might be larger than himself. The following lines are representative of the poem as a whole.
"And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
and the coup de grace:
"For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?"
What killer lines. I vowed I never wanted to reach middle age and, looking back, sum up my life with, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."
Teddy Roosevelt's words from his, "The Man in the Arena" are apt as well.
"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, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I am neither a T.S. Elliot nor a Teddy Roosevelt, but their words have been an inspiration to me my whole life.
Bill
this is exactly why i got divorced after 22 years. i love my kids that we had, but the marriage itself was such a derailment to my path and career. im fighting like mad to regain it.
_____________________________
guitar - oud- fretless guitar
http://www.norumba.com
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Date Jun. 5 2015 7:08:49
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Being in a relationship and stay... (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
Regarding relationships and staying focused, very early on I decided that I would pursue my goals in life, in terms of both career and personal fulfillment (the two were not mutually exclusive), and that I would not allow love interests or relationships to deter me.
For me it was not a conscious decision. It was more like fate. When my wife and I were breaking up --fairly amicably--I said to her, "If you fall in love again, choose someone who is better at taking orders than I am."
Usually decorous in speech, she replied with an uncharacteristic phrase, "I married you because you were smart, good looking, sexy, adventurous and I was madly in love with you. At age 50 you're still a wild son of a bitch."
She's re-married, apparently happily, to one of my best friends, the only one of the old gang who is better off financially than I am. It's the right place for her, in my opinion. I am glad they seem to be happy and compatible. She always rebelled against her land owning Old South background, and made fun of the milieu, but she retains some of its hauteur. Someone asked me whether her new husband was good at taking orders. I replied, "Well, at least he is far more graceful in evading them than I ever was."
RNJ
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Date Jun. 5 2015 18:14:31
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Being in a relationship and stay... (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
Eat the peach, Bill.
Unlike Elliot's Prufrock, Wolfman Jack, who used to broadcast from a station with a powerful transmitter located in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico (across the border from Del Riio, Texas), was neither timid nor mediocre. I remember one girl calling in and telling Wolfman Jack how much she enjoyed his program. The Wolfman asked her name and then said, "I want your peaches, baby!"
I don't think that's what Elliot had in mind when he has Prufrock rhetorically ask, "Do I dare eat a peach?"
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jun. 5 2015 22:44:53
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