pondering life on a sunny afternoon

July 10, 2010 at 3:17 AM

I am going to bet that a lot of fellow university students (and musicians in general!) can completely empathize with being burnt out. I haven't written in my blog in a very long time (too long!) and my excuse? Life happened. I ventured off into the "real" world, whatever that may be, and have attempted to make my own little niche in a competitive market all the while trying to stay on top of school, pay bills, practice (who would have thought!) and still have some semblance of sanity by having a life be that social or things I do for personal enjoyment. It's no wonder we musicians burn out, we're being pulled in a million different directions when all we, or at least all I want to do is practice. Wouldn't it be nice if I didnt have to do Schenkerian Analysis or Post-tonal matrix graphs? Actually, ok, I kind of enjoyed doing the matrices, but that's because it was one of the few points in theory I actually seemed to be good at. That all aside, it's no wonder we get burned out. If by some miracle our schedules don't make us crash our bodies eventually give out and tell us they need some TLC and rest so how is it that we combat this problem of burn out? I thought I had it figured out but after 3 years in university, trying to stay afloat in a double major, I realize I don't have it figured out! I know the recipe but I guess kind of like baking with yeast at different elevations, the bread doesn't always rise the same so even though the recipe is in essence the same, circumstance might alter the outcome.

This blog is going to be a little bit of reflection over the last few years, a bit of a rumination of how I've grown and changed, not just as a musician but as a person and how it has affected my playing sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, but overall how I think I've (hopefully) triumphed into a greater creative artist.

From the beginning of first year to the end of third year I've gone through pulling late nights and early morning to just learn all my music and stay on top of academics in 1st year to going through a "relearning" the violin in 2nd year after losing all the feeling in my hands and questioning if i should really be doing violin at all to finally discovering in 3rd year that there is life outside of the little, windowless cells known as practice rooms in the oddly coloured, poorly soundproofed, exceptionally grungy UBC school of music.

In the last three years I've worked with some incredible musicians and teachers, I've seen friends come and go and started to figure out who I can really trust to be there for the long haul. I've experienced the good and the bad of working with different teachers and instrumentalists and I perfected my skills at problem solving in a chamber ensemble. In first year, I overcame the challenges of having an uninspiring teacher and fought to get the teacher I wanted and had sacrificed a lot for to study with and mastered the art of not sleeping at night and instead became skilled at sleeping through choir and history class. In 2nd year I had my dream quartet, I loved everyone I played with and I had finally got the teacher I wanted and then my world crashed when my hands went numb and i became a medical mystery and had to work on how to relearn how to play the violin amidst other challenges that presented themselves in correlation with my hands. In 3rd year I learned what it meant to have a life outside of being chronically sick at home or at school. I started dancing again and I set a goal to feed my hiking and photography hobby (which I think, has vastly improved my musicality and my expressive capabilities) of tackling the famed West Coast Trail which I depart for early Monday morning - 75km, I'm so screwed! Anyway, in 3rd year I realized that sitting inside a windowless little box or sitting at home feeling frustrated and sick was not really feeding my expressive pallette, no one wants an emo Bach 3rd Partita, right? This year was really the best year in a lot of ways even though in others it's been hugely challenging as I've had to give serious thought and consideration to my future as a violin player versus teaching and composing - If anyone knows the cure for numb hands, let me know!

Anyways - so what does this have to do with burn out? Well, In first year I was naive and worked and overworked to try and stay on top. In 2nd year my body burned out for me and by the end of the 3rd year I've been feeling a little bit like, can I actually still play well enough to make a go of this? Burn out, I think, is contributed to and greatly aggravated by circumstance and self doubt. The minute you question your worth as a musician (or anything else) you set yourself up to fall flat on your face. Of course you can never entirely prevent something like getting burnt out from happening, but I think having a balanced lifestyle and making sure you keep some perspective on the "real world" outside of the practice room can help a ton!

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on July 10, 2010 at 4:31 AM

Greetings,

if, and it@s a big if, there is no medical reason why your hands are numb then I think you already have the answer. You pushed your body too hard, for too long. Probably not eating too well during the process either. Nature will always find a way to tell you to stop. But you already realized this so it now becomes a question of patience and faith in the remarkable recuperative powers of the human organism. Incidentally, why is my brain numb?;)

Cheers,

Buri

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pondering life on a sunny afternoon

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