Journal · On Studying
The Student's Responsibility
Asking for help is not weakness. On the honesty you owe yourself, the teacher you must refuse to compromise on, and the lineage you join the day you begin.
A teacher can only carry a student who has decided to be carried. The other half of the work belongs to the one who came to learn.
Your first responsibility as a student is self honesty about your current situation. Recognizing that you are at a certain level of musicality, and that you want to improve. Envisioning the evolution you want to go through, and understanding that you need help to do it.
That is not an act of weakness. It is an act of intelligence and power. Seeing your own playing clearly, without decoration and without apology, is harder than it sounds, and nothing real begins before it.
The second responsibility is making sure to find the right teacher for yourself. A teacher who feels right both in the personal connection and in the practical knowledge they offer. A teacher who can answer the vision you have for your own evolution. If you want to evolve from one point to another, you must find someone who can really carry you through that path.
That test could sound difficult. How can I know if this teacher can help me on this journey? It is easier than it sounds: look at their students. Are there students who seem to have walked this path, and reached a playing ability that resonates with you? Does the teacher themselves play at that level? And when you listen, listen for more than rhythm and technique. The level you are looking for is a level of spirit as well.
Compromising on a teacher is the first violation of your responsibility, and one of the biggest mistakes you can make on the musical path. It is a quiet mistake, which is what makes it dangerous. Nothing announces itself. The years simply pass, and the playing does not arrive.
Once you find your teacher, your responsibilities span not only to yourself, but to yourself and to them.
For yourself: you are responsible for your side of the path. To take the teaching upon you. To act on the recognition that you do not know the path, the teacher does, and to let them lead. With trust, and an open, receiving heart. You are responsible for your own practice too, and for making sure it correlates with your vision.
You are responsible for insisting on understanding the things you do not. For asking again and again, and, when needed, for accepting that some things take time to be fully understood. Both halves are real. The insisting keeps you honest, and the patience keeps you from mistaking a slow understanding for a failed one.
You are responsible, too, for keeping a good and open heart toward your fellow students and colleagues. Ego and competition are a human attribute, and they will show themselves in your mind. Your responsibility is to see them for what they are, to accept your humanity, and never to act by their command.
Even when it is very difficult, remember that you have your own place and your own voice in this world. The more focused you are on your own path, the less focused you will be on the others, and the better and more vivid your voice will be.
Trust music to create a home for your own voice. Music will not disappoint.
About your responsibility toward the teacher: the first and most important one is the recognition that a teacher is sharing their life's work with you.
That act of generosity carries both the teacher's highest gift and their highest sacrifice. Sacrificing their own uniqueness, their own ego, to give birth to their students' high musicianship. Your evolution is built on the life's work of your teacher. Inhale this truth and carry it with you everywhere you go, until your last played strokes.
And understand fully: this reality does not reduce your own uniqueness or your own worth. It is the circle of life and death. Fathers and mothers raising children who will raise their own children of music. Connect to that lineage, and take it upon yourself when the first student knocks on your door. Surrender to the circle of life, and share everything you learned along the way with your own coming students.
A student teacher relationship has the potential to be far more potent than a normal customer and provider interaction. The responsibility lies on both shoulders.
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