No contempt prior to investigation

I know it can be tempting for those of us with experience or opinions (or both!) to feel like we can — perhaps even should — know how musical ideas will work before trying them.

It’s that whole misguided idea of expertise, right? The very human desires for love and connection, reverse-engineered through an assertion of one’s intellect and prowess. “I am smart — please love me.” Lots of us had difficult childhoods, and now we act like experts. It’s exhausting. And I say this empathetically, as someone who has been the person I just described.

But here’s the thing. We don’t know. We can’t know. We can’t control whether people are going to like us, we pretty certainly shouldn’t be trying to get our sense of self-worth from doing music production, and we can’t know how things are going to sound in a song before we try them.

So we should probably just remain open-hearted and give it our best shot. Life, production, all of it. We should put our best foot forward and try things out, with positivity and humility and grace. If it doesn’t work out, that’s okay. It’s not a reflection on your worth, or the worth of the person who suggested the idea, or anybody’s worth at all; it’s just an idea that didn’t work. That’s okay and that’s healthy.

What isn’t healthy is foreclosing prematurely on possible avenues of growth, exploration, and connection, simply because you want to be right about something.

So now I come to you — jamie