Virtuoso Daydreaming
People get excited by virtuosity.
Today we explore the difference between virtuoso daydreaming and virtuoso building. Both channels matter, but some of us only spend time on one…
You see a live performance somewhere, hear a slightly more advanced player play something fancy or fast… and suddenly YOU want to do that too. You watch a Ray Chen video and immediately want to play Paganini with the same energy, technique, and intensity… in a day, or a week.
Some of you are my students and I feel absolutely buoyed (at times) by your enthusiasm and your fearlessness! Yay, you can do it- let’s play Paganini!
However…
The energy that you get from that live performance or that Ray Chen video or that more advanced student is not the same energy that helps you to become virtuosic yourself. Virtuoso daydreaming is different energy from virtuoso building.
Virtuoso Building
The energy required for moving towards virtuosity is deliberate and consistent and kind. It is a slowly moving forward kind of energy.
It’s not the red-hot intensity that makes you great. It’s getting your violin out on that rainy Sunday and practicing a bit… and then again on that sunny Monday and practicing a little bit more. It’s thinking about your practicing on Tuesday and wondering, “What do I need to tweak?” “What’s working, what’s not?”
It’s playing on Wednesday and feeling like you lost all your progress, and then picking it up again on Thursday with a little frustration but also determination. It’s taking a day or two off when you need a break, and then coming right back to it. It is surrounding yourself with people who want the same things as you and learning from them- as they learn from you.
(You may notice a theme of self-compassion that’s woven into the texture of all the above actions. That is deliberate. I didn't have compassion for myself for most of growing up and the majority of my music experience. My teachers didn’t prioritize it much, either. But I believe it’s a core tenant to any long-term goal and likely a value I will discuss in future blogs.)
I actually don’t struggle with practicing these days but I do struggle with regularly being active. That’s my challenge. I look at other people at the gym and wish I could be like them- that strong, that flexible, that impressive. And then, as I’m thinking those thoughts, I realize I’m doing that exact same thing, that virtuoso daydreaming that I catch my students doing all the time.
Let’s both try something- let’s pair our virtuoso day dreaming with a reminder of what virtuoso building looks like. People who have skills you admire are likely years into their practice and have had countless ups and downs, times when they “failed” or wanted to give up. But, instead, they just kept at it. They kept chipping away at what they wanted and kept voting for the identity of the person they wanted to become, not the person they were already. If you keep at it, chances are, you’re going to eventually become an expert someone else admires and wants to be just like. And then you can tell them about that time you started from scratch and built from the ground up…
James Clear’s Atomic Habits investigates some of these themes. I’d highly recommend his book and also his course on Masterclass.
