mf

Aaah. Idk if this is exactly what you’re describing or only tangential to it, but the fact that this feeling has some relationship to the experience of being a little violin student makes sense to me because I think this was also very much how I experienced music learning, as opposed to other kinds of learning— that unlike writing or visual art or... lots of other skill-based activities a kid might engage in, music has this quality of essentially disappearing the moment you stop actively producing it. So like, wind players would frequently quote John de Lancie with “you’re only as good as your last concert!” (I’m sure there must be an equivalent string indoctrination w/r/t this sentiment?) which on one hand has truth to it, but on the other hand I think kind of spills over into assumptions about... everything. If I play well one night and shitty the next and the shitty playing, according to received wisdom, entirely cancels out anything positive I have ever done in my life... then it makes sense that if you have positive interactions with someone for years and then one less-positive one, welp! Surely your relationship is only as good as your last interaction!

Which of course isn’t true when it comes to relationships, and... although I get why we say that about music, I don’t think it’s actually true about music, either. I mean. Everyone fucks up or just has a bad day sometimes, and hearing someone that I respect fuck up doesn’t make me think “well, guess I was wrong about them and they actually suck!” It makes me think “that sounds hard, and so-and-so usually sounds so good!” or even “thank god even so-and-so is human and has a bad day sometimes!” And yet. Yeah. I think I know what you mean about the feeling that a person or the world at large could turn on you at any time.