Sunday Blogs - On Self Respect and Healing

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self”. In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

Joan Didion, “On Self Respect” (1961).

I recently participated in a Q&A forum where the band I was performing with was the honorary guest at a college campus's jazz studies program. One of the students in the audience asked, “how do you deal with setbacks, personal loss, and discouragement in the art form?” One of my fellow band members had answered, “well, you know, if you love the art form enough, it doesn't feel discouraging. It's not a setback.” The student nodded shyly, although I could tell even behind the mask he was wearing and the slump of his body language that that was not the answer he resonated with. And in that moment, I felt for him.

This is something I've been told through my whole life by folks in jazz when I have opened up about personal mental suffering. I have spoken before about how jazz culture often perpetuates this idea of “suck it up, nobody cares”, which already is a privileged kind of statement to make. There is another facet of this part of the culture that makes folks feel shame for feeling discouraged by setbacks in their music career because it means they didn't care enough about the art form in the first place. Right before the pandemic, I had confided in a fellow (male) musician about my negative relationship with the New York music scene at the time. I had failed to mention that my mental state was so poor from having an ill suited therapist and attempting to go off of my medication without guidance or recommendation, that I was turning in on myself – mentally, physically, spiritually. A close family member had to stay with me in New York for some time to make sure that I was okay. I was crying every single day. I started passing out in public with no apparent reason because my fight or flight response could no longer sustain my internal stress. Family members were becoming concerned with me again. That wasn't even all of it, but that's as much as I'll feel comfortable sharing publicly.

All I had expressed to this friend at this time was that the jazz scene in NYC was depressing me, that I felt like I practiced so hard, tried to hard, pushed myself to have my own voice, to have the courage to stand tall on stage, fronting my band at 20 years old, trying to pretend everything was just fine while I was breaking inside, and nobody gave a fuck. It seemed like years of watching folks get opportunities I thought that I deserved and wondering when it was going to be my time, if ever. I was not happy. I lost the urge to create. And you know what my friend said? “I think that if you really loved the music enough, you wouldn't feel so discouraged. You wouldn't be so unhappy. Maybe music isn't really for you.”

This is one of the most toxic things you can tell an artist – especially a young one. Many of us on the NYC scene have seen what happens when you gaslight a young talent going through a rough personal patch, or tell them to “get over it” or “practice harder” if they really think they love the music. They start abusing hard drugs. Start showing up to every jam session wasted, directing their self hate towards mistreatment of their own bodies. They go broke. They disappear. They are not told that they are allowed to have the space to mourn and validate sadness and hardship in the music, so it manifests in much more harmful ways.

Yes, eventually, we do have to “suck it up”. We do have to practice harder. We do have to come back twice as strong, regardless of what the public's reaction indicates. Just in the above quote, Joan Didion that learning to develop self respect means freeing ourselves from the expectations of others - who are so easily manipulated through who is more popularly known on the scene, social media tailoring, and a number of other deceptions – since the subjectivity of art will never lead to a positive, consistent consensus or necessarily warrant the favorable audience response. Especially if you are in the process of actively growing/reaching your way towards mastery, especially if you are learning to generate a new musical voice, especially if you are forcing yourself to take risks and embrace the inevitable mistakes and failures.

It is not common that we are told our failures do not make us less lovable. That is certainly not the perspective widely held by the jazz community (hence the emergence of the word “vibe” and being notorious shit talkers) despite the fact that we fail all the god damn time on the job. It is harmful as an educator and a musical role model to not tell students that in order to develop the ability to “suck it up” and build stronger skin, they must first have someone acknowledge – whether it be themselves (Didion's “self respect”) or a mentor, therapist, educator, friend, or what have you - that their pain and discouragement from failure is real, valid, and okay to feel. Some folks, depending on the circumstances in their lives, much of which is not apparent to the general public and is suffered in silence, have a harder time recovering from failure and pain than others. I was (and still am) one of those people. And there is nothing wrong with that, either.

No matter how much time it takes, that self respect is built on your capacity to come back and have courage to share your voice, period. There does not need to be a time limit on healing. There does not need to be someone who is supposed to be a teacher or a mentor telling you to heal faster when you are not capable. Acknowledgement and validity of sadness is what eventually makes us able to move on, and possibly in the future, become faster healers as we learn to rip the bandaid off and let the sting become a familiar yet extremely temporary sensation.