fear dressed up as good manners

track 6, shadow

Last week someone took a picture of me sitting at my Petrof.

I looked at it again and had this immediate, uncomfortable reaction:

Who does this guy think he is?

There I was, sitting at a piano, looking serious (with the exception of my exposed Bombas). I looked like someone who might use words like artist or composer. Looking like someone who had decided he was allowed to make something creative, and ask other people to listen.

The picture was actually pretty good. I looked content, and proud.

Maybe that was part of the problem.

I asked the photographer about it later, almost like I wanted her to talk me out of it. She said it was a great picture. I agreed with her, technically. But some part of me still wanted to create distance from it.

It felt showy. I’m not that guy, I thought.

But music demands a different conversation, in a different room.

Music does not let me explain myself first. It does not let me build a case. It comes out of the body before the mind has time to make it respectable. That is part of why this project has felt so risky, and exposing.

But I know I want to give it a real shot — seriously enough that I can look back and know I did not bury something meaningful because I was embarrassed to be seen trying.

The music gave me so much, it deserves to be well represented.

And the older I get, the more suspicious I am of that voice that holds me back.

Sometimes humility is real.

But sometimes humility is just fear, dressed up as good manners.

There is a kind of false modesty that keeps some of us from telling the truth about what we love. It lets us stay safe. It protects us from criticism by making sure we never fully step forward.

I know that voice well.

It says:

Don’t make too much of this.

Don’t act like this matters.

Don’t call yourself an artist.

Don’t make people uncomfortable.

Don’t let them see how much you care.

This is not the first time I have had to walk toward something before I felt fully qualified to become it. Every meaningful threshold in my life has had some version of the same voice standing near the door.

*Who do you think you are?*

And every time, the answer has not come from arguing with the voice.

It has come from doing the work long enough that the identity slowly catches up.

When I listen to Shadow — the bright Petrof sound, the Nord B3 — it does not sound like embarrassment to me. It sounds like someone who knew what he wanted, and felt proud of it.

That is what confronting your shadow actually feels like from the inside. Not quiet. Not apologetic.

Just willing to be seen before feeling fully ready.

[image credit, my son, e. harper with permission]