Beginner mind

I have written about this before, and I will write about it again; it’s foundational for me.

I get a little piece of Dzogchen thought in my email each day. I’m not Buddhist? But it’s always good food for thought. Here was today’s:

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.

I remember when I was first starting out learning how to produce and engineer, it felt very important to me To Be A Person Who Had Answers. To exhibit mastery over sound and to claim dominion over musical ideas.

I think this was tied up in fundamentally flawed ideas and outmoded ways of thinking — hierarchical and toxically / cartoonishly masculine ideas of how to deal with the unknown. A fearful response to the vulnerability of working through incomplete ideas and half-expressed emotions.

You see this to this day on YouTube. How many times a day does some internet destination try to show you a video of some bro mansplaining something to do with music production? It’s at least once a day for me.

I want to suggest that intentionally cultivating a softer approach might serve you well. I know that, in my personal music practice, I started getting a lot better at my craft when I intentionally started to center the idea that my work should be more about having questions than having answers.

These days, I don’t think of music or audio as something to be controlled, or contained, or subjugated — I tend to think of it as something to be nurtured, played with, entertained. I’m not above the music; our feet are touching the same ground. If I claim any expertise, it’s a growing ability to remaining soft in the hard moments.

Leading with curiosity — jamie