#MusicalMondayMemories #9 The importance of digital use self-awareness for musicians (and everyone)
/The importance of digital use self-awareness for musicians (and everyone)
Anyone can be good at anything if it’s not a popularity contest.
If it’s a popularity contest, mainly the people who care about being popular are going to succeed. At the contest, that is, not necessarily at life.
(The United States has a president who is a Twitter fiend. Get off Twitter, stop name-calling, and do your job, President Trump. Ok, I’m stepping off my soapbox and back to the topic at hand.)
It is evident that monitoring digital use in your learning environment - i.e. every moment - is of the utmost importance with current levels of distraction. I’m thinking today about digital technology and its impact on focus, the importance of deep focus in learning, and how we’re always learning.
A new violinist friend of mine said recently that it was nice to see me never check my phone, a more “old-school” approach. Mind you, this friend has a couple kids, and I don’t see her checking things either.
Even as being attached at the hip to devices becomes the norm in waking moments, humans are fighting that. In a bus when everyone is on their phones, I like to people watch like I did from the top of a tree in my front yard as an 8-year-old. What do you do when you’re tired of staring at a screen?
None of my teachers ever checked their phones in class. At the beginning of my musical education, some of them didn’t even have cell phones. I’m 26, a prime vantage point to see this shift.
I’ve had a cell phone since age 14. I also had Myspace and Facebook starting at this age. Now I have Facebook and Instagram, and find that I have to monitor my use viciously or I feel uncomfortable and drawn to look every 5 minutes. When Facebook added the like button in 2009, this was the beginning of the end of social media for me. As soon as every post became a popularity contest, your thoughts were up for grabs for becoming a sensation.
I used to worry about the number of likes. I realized recently that I finally don’t care if I’m not in the in group, the group that is successful, the group that appeals to everyone, that rises to the top of the algorithm. What I care about is making musical worlds of all the music I get to perform, and that takes time and energy.
My Google phone actually has its own built-in app for focus called Digital Wellbeing, which is kind of amazing. I had to look it up and activate it because it’s still in beta testing. Meaning, when inventing smartphones they didn’t know how insidious they’d become in our lives, how much money companies would make from capitalizing on people’s attention.
In college, I remember turning on SelfControl - another app to block your usage of specific websites for a designated period of time - on my laptop and writing papers. Then, in 2014 when I graduated I got a smartphone. I did not think intentionally about following my same habits of computer usage, but I had to after almost 6 years of feeling out of control.
Think about that. You can use apps for cutting out distractions. You have to intentionally decide to focus to get to the point where you’re going to look up a way to cut out distractions, and then it will be there. A seek and ye shall find sort of situation. But what if you don’t know anyone who talks about focus? What if you are one of the many people who grow up surrounded by family members who check their phones at every notification?
I’m worried about humanity. I’m even worried about my cat, and he just watches us when we watch a movie.
If you’re wondering, yes, this pertains to musical memories. I have a distinct memory of seeing someone in an orchestra rehearsal having their phone up on the stand and checking it regularly. I may have even seen Facebook scrolling happening.
I felt a rise of anger, and decided in that moment that this wasn’t how music-making should be.
It’s surprisingly difficult to keep digital consumption in check. Digital gluttony always felt wrong deep down, but it wasn’t ingrained in my code of morals until recently.
The desire to check things comes in waves, so it’s hard to feel the addictive nature of the habit. If you start first thing in the morning, like I did for years with my phone right near my bed, getting away from it is that much harder. Narrowing down notifications to only calls and texts and generally keeping my phone on silent seems to be working for me when I think about it regularly, since then I have to choose specifically when I check email and social media. It’s impossible to curb digital consumption if you are always an open book for someone else to fill up.
Some of us learn analytically how to turn of the part of the brain that watches and constantly critiques. It's definitely been like that for me, reading books and articles, listening to podcasts, even taking a class on anxiety at Kaiser in Oakland. I've been socially anxious much of my life, and I have a bluntness to my speech that I've tempered (slightly) over the years. It’s very hard for me not to say something that I’m feeling emotions about. But when it comes to scrolling on Facebook, I can numb myself with the best of them.
Here’s a quick tidbit from 2013 of the Town Quartet playing the end of Ginastera’s String Quartet No. 1 movement IV. Allegramente rustico. Jacob (our violist) always said, “play as fast as you dare.” That’s an apt sentiment for music and life. But play as slow as you dare is as well. Take the time you need to learn about your habits and to shift them to what feels good, in music and in life.
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