This week, it’s all about mystery: actually, I’ve got 4 of them for you:
#1 Remember the movie “Shakespeare in Love”?
There’s a terrific scene in which the business of the performing arts is explained. Geoffrey Rush plays Henslowe, the impresario behind Shakespeare’s latest production. The producer character (the money) is Hugh Fennyman. Henslowe owes him money and has promised to pay him back when the new play is up.
In this short scene (1:19), Henslowe is being threatened by Fennyman’s men because it looks as though the play may not open as planned:
Philip Henslowe:
Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman:
So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe:
Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman:
How?
Philip Henslowe:
I don’t know. It’s a mystery.
The phrase, ‘it’s a mystery’ can be applied to quite a lot in the arts. Here’s another:
#2 Biber’s Mystery Sonatas
A few years ago I was lucky enough to hear Baroque violinist Christina Day’s stunning performance of the complete Mystery Sonatas by Biber (1644-1796). There are 15 of these for violin and continuo and they’re rounded out with a solo passacaglia. Fiendishly difficult, these pieces require all kinds of exotic scordatura (re-tunings of the instrument to allow for altered chords and unusual sonorities). In fact, the re-tuning is so extreme that in order to perform the whole set, Ms. Day used 6 different instruments and had a backstage “instrument handler” readying each specially tuned instrument as needed.
The “mystery” of these works refers to the Catholic church’s rosary procession. During these processions, the faithful walk around a cycle of fifteen paintings and sculptures that are placed at specific points in a church. Each of these 15 “stations” depict important moments in the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary, from the Annunciation to the Crucifixion and the Ascension.
Each sonata is named for the scene it depicts. And in Ms. Day’s hands, they cast a kind of magic spell on the audience. You don’t have to be a believer to leave such a performance feeling shaken. It’s that experience when the audience collectively leaves our everyday lives behind and enters into the state of “other worldliness.”
It’s a mystery, what happens in such rarified performances—when many different levels of shared meaning are created.
And there’s more.
#3 Pressfield on the Mystery at the heart of our creative work
The next mystery I found showed up in Steven Pressfield’s blog series on writing. (He’s the author of The War of Art. If you haven’t read it yet, do so soon.)
In his post Pressfield discusses the unknowable mystery of our own creative work:
“What you and I are doing as artists is apprenticing ourselves to a part of our psyche whose contents we can never know and whose purpose we can never divine, a sector of our consciousness that knows us intimately, that carries our daimon and our voice, but that only reveals itself to us in snatches, speaking, like dreams, in symbols and riddles.
But wait, you say. How does all this mumbo-jumbo jibe with the idea of the entrepreneurial ethic, of the Professional Mindset?
Entrepreneurs have muses too. Steve Jobs did. Elon Musk. Sergey Brin.
They are being led, just like you and me, from project to project, from inspiration to inspiration.”
Pressfield’s point is though our creativity and talent may move in mysterious ways, we CAN control how we use our time and what projects we apply our talents to. And by doing the work every day we make it more likely that our muse will show up.
#4 Career Mystery
This brings me to the final mystery I encountered in this series. It came in the form of an email exchange with a talented artist who was booking her own performances while maintaining a full time day job.
She wrote to me because she was frustrated. She wanted to quit her day job and live off of her concertizing. She wanted to fast forward the process of growing her career.
Ah, yes it’s the familiar mystery of how will my career work out? This musician essentially wanted to know how long the “paying her dues” period would last and what she needed to do to “make it.”
These are exactly the kinds of issues I work on with clients.
I’ve found too many musicians feel stalled in their careers and in their artistic growth. At the root of the issue is often a lack of a clear specific goal, or else their promotional materials don’t represent them well, and/or their mindset is sabotaging their efforts.
Others are simply not investing in the kind of strategic project work that would best help them advance their careers.
All too often, musicians are unsure what to do differently and they struggle with this in isolation or else they hang out with an insular group of musicians who are all experiencing similar challenges.
If any of this sounds familiar, the solution starts with focusing on and clarifying your goals so you can create a concrete work plan. Including a plan for how to handle it when your motivation is waning and you’re unsure what to improve.
If you’d like to explore how expert music career coaching can help you demystify your own path to sustainable career growth, get the details HERE.
Your future is looking brighter already,
Dream Big, Plan Smart, Live Well!
