From flower to flower

Music is a woman of easy virtue who gives herself to whoever she likes (I don't want the fair sex for the allusion).
I'll explain. Many musically uneducated people (and I am already generous) have had extraordinary success while countless people "studied", prepared, very knowledgeable in the subject, in years of study, sacrifice and dedication, have pulled little more than a spider out of the hole. The same is true in many other fields, where ignorant emeritus rather than deserving people have often made careers. So it would be more correct to say that not music, but success is a very mischievous gigolo who gives himself to the first or first who passes and at his total discretion regarding ways, times and conditions.
Meritocracy is something else. It has certainly happened to you to compare the results you have obtained with those of other people, and to come out of the comparison sanded down pretty well. It has happened to me a million times, but the comparisons that burned me the most were not those made by me, but by others (even in total good faith), by my parents for example, by the people I love. On those occasions the sandpaper turned into an iron wheel capable of abrading me as deeply as a carpenter's nail. Others have done this or that, and you have not.

Maybe you gave your all, and it wasn't enough. These dynamics inoculate a lethal virus that is called "the need to always have to prove something", at any cost, to yourself, to others, and to affirm your value, your skill, the goodness of your choices. This virus causes a colossal, abnormal expenditure of energy: the guard is always high, one is quick to punish oneself for a mistake and slow to acknowledge one's merit. It is very difficult to get rid of this burden. So the first thing to do is learn not to put it on someone else, a child, a pupil, someone we love or not. Music with its example always helps, it tells us to live lightly and let live with equal freedom, to learn to fully enjoy an art that is indeed discipline, even rigor, but which it transmits to us first and more than anything else. joy, happiness, sharing, fun, emotion. Woe to take and take it too seriously. If it is true that "happy heart heaven helps" (and I believe it is true) we will observe how people who live with happiness in their hearts are often those who appear to our eyes (and perhaps they really are) successful people. .

In the school that I founded and run I have always tried to sow self-esteem above all else. We must escape the logic of comparison if we want to feed awareness, human and artistic centering. I have always tried to create a climate, an environment rather than give directives.
When the children find themselves choosing their school, we take care to give them an address: scientific, humanistic, artistic.
I tried to give my children an environment, not a precise address but a place where they could, in a natural way, show their inclinations.

Every year in this period I ask myself about the perspectives that the school offers, and I ask myself if the one I deal with guarantees precisely that atmosphere.
And with regard to success, it must be said that music is a bee that goes from flower to flower, alighting on the most beautiful and fragrant.
I can only try to become more attractive by surrounding myself with people who care about me. Gardening is an art form, and cultivating a person is perhaps the highest art a man can aspire to. The bee, like music, is of easy virtue, but his example encourages us to cultivate the beauty that is in us.

Mauro Tabasso
NP October 2021