So I spent most of the afternoon mixing a track for a group. For those of you that don't know I am a sound engineer amongst other things. So, I gave it a couple of hours and really got what I thought was a good mix considering the time and money constraints. I sent it to the artists and they came back saying that they didn't like it and really slated my mix. Their manager who employed me also slated it. Okay fair enough. People like what they like, but this post is a chance for me to explore my dissapointment and frustration. I talked in the last post about context. I think that I have uncovered mine, or at least part of mine. "Most people are not good enough and they all judge me". This is quite often the context through which I see the world.
So they came to me with this mix. I spoke to them and listened to their mix and considered that they were not good enough. They didn't have the knowledge I have, or listening to their mix, the skills I have. Okay, yeah I get it, arrogant as anything right? So I worked on this mix thinking about the good i was doing to it. Again a subjective view propped up by my arrogance. I sent it to their manager all full of apparent contentment and waited for the praise. When he didn't get back to me I didn't really think anything of it. After all the band had to hear it too.
I got an email from the band:
"Hey I have just listened to the track and i have to say it doesn't meet our basic requirements, the bass is too much, I can't even hear the kick and the highats are to loud, but anyway i have to say thanks for taking interest in our project, I think we can sort the mixing down ourselves, i have discussed this with the band about the track and we have all decided that it is best we keep the original file as it is."
This put me in a really bad and depressed mood. My apparent contentment turned so quickly I didn't even see it change. I do use the word apparent for a particular reason. This contentment was not real contentment. It was built upon arrogance. I want people to like me. I want them to like my work. Actually I think that is true of almost everyone on earth to some degree or another. When they quite clearly don't (like my work in this case) why does it upset me so much. If I was truly content, why feel this way. Because my contentment has clauses. Like a contract. These must be met otherwise contentment quickly turns to... well, shit.
So a life on this kind of thinking, this kind of being is always going to be a swinging door of 'contentment' and disappointment. What goes up must come down. So what is the alternative?
Pride - 'a feeling of self-respect and personal worth'.
Proud 'feeling self-respect or pleasure in something by which you measure your self-worth'
So this would indicate that one should take pride but not be proud. After all if we measure our worth then there is an end to it. The is a finite amount of worth and we are forever working to be on the right side of it. With true personal worth there is no measuring; there is only knowing. What others think does not matter. It is what you alone are aware of, not what you think. For with thinking and words comes room for measurement, for arrogance for disappointment. Being, simply being is knowing. What others think cannot reflect upon that other than with a similar truthful knowing.
Well, I suppose that disappointment is something I create anyway. Why not create something else. I shall be calm now and at peace.
Sunday, 15 November 2009
The Simplicity of Communication
We all communicate. Combining words (or sign), body language and voice tonality. When I speak to you, to anyone I infer meaning through my use of my language. But what is language?
There are many things that make up our personal language. Not being an etymologist or a linguist I can only give my interpretation of this. When we are born it would appear that we are incapable of communicating past the most primal, instinctive expressions; i.e. crying for food, cleaning and/or attention. As far as I can ascertain, these are the primary functional needs of a baby. Past this, the baby is essentially being. Whilst they may be thinking on certain levels, it is not with words as you and I use them. They are still making sense of the world. Refining their wants, interacting with the world around them through trail and error and developing that most sophisticated computer, their mind.
Shift forward to now and you and I have learnt thousands of words and can put them in a reasonable order. But what of communication? Knowing words, how to string them together and speak at people is one thing, knowing how to communicate is another.
One of my biggest assumptions for years was that people thought the same as me. When they didn’t understand me or vice versa, it would make me upset to varying degrees and of course I was the victim. I was the good guy trying to be the right person, it was them not understanding me. I put so much meaning on it such as ‘they don’t like me’; ‘they don’t understand me’; ‘they are not even trying to get me’. Which is fine. I am certainly not making myself wrong about that. However I have had the chance to readdress this and notice as to weather this really offers my life expansion. Thus through realizing that I could get so much more from life by changing what I do, I have chosen to readdress my interpretation and realize that it is just that. Just my set of rules, neither right nor wrong. But to realize that they are just rules gives me the chance to completely change the game that I thought I had to play. The game can change whenever I wish it to. The game I am currently playing involves getting the most out of communicating with people. Rules include being truthful, being compassionate (mainly of the fact that everyone often works from their own set of rules without even realizing it) and being open.
I talked briefly earlier of us refining our wants as babies. We become increasingly sophisticated at this as we get older. Refining our strategies of getting what we want can certainly be seen as a good survival tactic. The main way it survives is through hiding itself from its own creator, you. How does it do this? When it is created and we discover that it works and gets us what we want (in terms of reactions, emotions, material goods etcs), we identify with it so much that it becomes part of our identity; how we see and interact with the world. This could be referred to as our context. Kind of like tinted glasses that we don’t even know we are wearing, they colour the world. If it is pointed out to us that we have glasses on many of us will walk around looking for them, through the same glasses. If we attain a place whereby we can realize that we have these glasses on and take them off then the world does look different, our interaction with others is suddenly unknown. We have no rules. Literally no frame of reference. Empty. It is a place of space. A place of nothingness. A place where you can create anything you want without the guise of your context, your tinted glasses. Although the journey there can appear difficult and possibly even painful, once you get there you realize how incredibly simple it was to get there and how calm and fresh it is to be there.
This is the place of true communication; the communication of awareness. Not coloured by our strategies and interpretations. Eckhart Tolle wrote “Ego and awareness cannot co-exist in the same place”. This makes a lot of sense to me. In this place of open communication ego is spotted as soon as it tries to enter the arena and is calmly observed until it slinks away again. Awareness is so incredibly powerful and yet is nothing in terms of thinking, in terms of language. It just is. Communication requires us to use language and so we use the best words we have available to us in order to share that place, but those words are not that place. This whole entry is like me explaining how a sweet tastes. You can get an idea from my words, but until you have tasted it too, you have not really experienced it. So I invite you to communicate with me. Share this space of calm, this space of nothingness. This space of new and changing rules.
Truly, communicate.
There are many things that make up our personal language. Not being an etymologist or a linguist I can only give my interpretation of this. When we are born it would appear that we are incapable of communicating past the most primal, instinctive expressions; i.e. crying for food, cleaning and/or attention. As far as I can ascertain, these are the primary functional needs of a baby. Past this, the baby is essentially being. Whilst they may be thinking on certain levels, it is not with words as you and I use them. They are still making sense of the world. Refining their wants, interacting with the world around them through trail and error and developing that most sophisticated computer, their mind.
Shift forward to now and you and I have learnt thousands of words and can put them in a reasonable order. But what of communication? Knowing words, how to string them together and speak at people is one thing, knowing how to communicate is another.
One of my biggest assumptions for years was that people thought the same as me. When they didn’t understand me or vice versa, it would make me upset to varying degrees and of course I was the victim. I was the good guy trying to be the right person, it was them not understanding me. I put so much meaning on it such as ‘they don’t like me’; ‘they don’t understand me’; ‘they are not even trying to get me’. Which is fine. I am certainly not making myself wrong about that. However I have had the chance to readdress this and notice as to weather this really offers my life expansion. Thus through realizing that I could get so much more from life by changing what I do, I have chosen to readdress my interpretation and realize that it is just that. Just my set of rules, neither right nor wrong. But to realize that they are just rules gives me the chance to completely change the game that I thought I had to play. The game can change whenever I wish it to. The game I am currently playing involves getting the most out of communicating with people. Rules include being truthful, being compassionate (mainly of the fact that everyone often works from their own set of rules without even realizing it) and being open.
I talked briefly earlier of us refining our wants as babies. We become increasingly sophisticated at this as we get older. Refining our strategies of getting what we want can certainly be seen as a good survival tactic. The main way it survives is through hiding itself from its own creator, you. How does it do this? When it is created and we discover that it works and gets us what we want (in terms of reactions, emotions, material goods etcs), we identify with it so much that it becomes part of our identity; how we see and interact with the world. This could be referred to as our context. Kind of like tinted glasses that we don’t even know we are wearing, they colour the world. If it is pointed out to us that we have glasses on many of us will walk around looking for them, through the same glasses. If we attain a place whereby we can realize that we have these glasses on and take them off then the world does look different, our interaction with others is suddenly unknown. We have no rules. Literally no frame of reference. Empty. It is a place of space. A place of nothingness. A place where you can create anything you want without the guise of your context, your tinted glasses. Although the journey there can appear difficult and possibly even painful, once you get there you realize how incredibly simple it was to get there and how calm and fresh it is to be there.
This is the place of true communication; the communication of awareness. Not coloured by our strategies and interpretations. Eckhart Tolle wrote “Ego and awareness cannot co-exist in the same place”. This makes a lot of sense to me. In this place of open communication ego is spotted as soon as it tries to enter the arena and is calmly observed until it slinks away again. Awareness is so incredibly powerful and yet is nothing in terms of thinking, in terms of language. It just is. Communication requires us to use language and so we use the best words we have available to us in order to share that place, but those words are not that place. This whole entry is like me explaining how a sweet tastes. You can get an idea from my words, but until you have tasted it too, you have not really experienced it. So I invite you to communicate with me. Share this space of calm, this space of nothingness. This space of new and changing rules.
Truly, communicate.
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