Details matter.
You have permission to care again.
This is the tree I hugged this morning before I started my walk.
This is the coffee mug I chose for my coffee.
Wow I'm so surprised you hug trees. 🙄
Who cares about a stupid cup? All ceramic cups hold coffee.
Well, remember when you were a kid and you'd look at clouds or watch bugs or wonder about trees?
Remember when you wanted THAT notebook instead of this notebook? Most likely, to your Adult Person, they were basically the same notebook. What's the difference?
But you felt a magic and wanted to experience that. You obviously didn't have the vocabulary at the time, but there was a sense of “I want to experience having this over that because I don’t even know why”.
And then that feeling was not validated.
Over and over and over, denied, until you began thinking it wasn't real/it didn't matter/it doesn't change anything.
It was real. It is real.
It did matter. It does matter.
It didn't change anything then, but it can change everything now.
As an artist, it's important to share with students that those little details matter.
Those flourishes in a piano piece? The impulse to do those are generated by moments of experiencing flourishes away from the piano.
Those inspired passages that add depth to your music? To recognize the feeling, you must recognize the inspired passages in a garden or someone's closet or the structure of a car engine.
You have to let yourself recognize them.
And almost 100% of the time, in order to really do that, you've gotta slow down.
When was the last time you leaned back and, with good headphones on now that you're an adult and can afford them, listened/absorbed/synergied with That Song? Or that album? Or that opera? Or that musical?
Remember searching for every single note, every inhalation, every lyric, every trill, every goosebump-inspiring passage? When was the last time you did that?
Details matter. You have full permission to choose the magic.
