The Freedom to Explore Your Greatness
Mastery, discipline, and digging deep for #FreedomMusicFriday
Back in October, I wrote a piece in which we discussed the fact that the word “freedom” often gets misused, and human rights end up being a casualty of that misuse.
Here’s how…
Freedom, in its most important sense, is freedom from external coercion. You are free so long as no one is imposing force upon you to keep you from enjoying that freedom. You are free to eat the sandwich you just made, so long as someone does not slap it out of your hands. You are free to run your life or business the way you wish, so long as no one forcibly imposes restrictions upon you. You are free to enjoy the fruits of your labors, so long as private brigands do not steal from you or government brigands do not tax you.
This is not a complete moral system. It does not tell us what one ought to do with one’s freedom, save for the single, fundamental moral law that one may not use one’s freedom to impose force upon anyone else and their freedom.
That definition, and the reality it represents, is sine qua non. You cannot have peace, prosperity, or human rights without general respect for the freedom of others. We can call this true freedom.
But there are also other types of freedom:
The freedom of discipline
You have a piano sitting in front of you. Assuming no one is coercing you physically, you are free to play it. But unless you have practiced it, you will not be very good at it. By contrast, a person who has exercised the discipline necessary to get really good enjoys a new level of freedom—his fingers are far freer to follow the muses that dwell in his mind, heart, and soul. He is free to do far more with the instrument.
The freedom of options
This is the freedom conferred by having more more resources, time, health, and other factors that increase the range of available choices. You might want to go to Ireland, but unless you have the money and time, you do not have that option.
Freedom from bad things
People often talk about freedom from fear, privation, and other bad things. Indeed, two of FDR’s “Four Freedoms” fall into this category.
Freedom from obligations/compunction
Some people deem themselves to be less bound by external obligations, mores, norms, and other influences emanating from the people around them or community at large. This can be good or bad, depending on the nature of those influences.
Unfortunately, we do not have completely separate words for these other types of freedom. This has allowed certain forces (FDR, the socialists, the left, etc.) to misuse the word “freedom”—addling the minds of listeners by conflating various other types of freedom with true freedom.
When they speak of rich people having more “freedom,” they mean the freedom of options. But the point they are driving at—always implicitly, sometimes explicitly—is that the rich have somehow taken from others in order to acquire that extra measure of “freedom.” They have supposedly violated someone’s true freedom in order to get the freedom of extra options. This is rarely true, but it does not stop them from making the charge.
When they speak of freedom from privation, what they are really saying is this: Person A has less than Person B, so Person B must be forced to give something to Person A in order to satisfy his birthright to freedom from privation. Of course, no one actually has that birthright; it was invented to justify taking, by force, from some to give to others.
These are essential distinctions to understand, so that we might better defend true freedom. The above is a decent enough summary for now. If you want to look further at the contours of this idea, read this post and check out its attached chart.
For today’s #FreedomMusicFriday offering, we will focus on the freedom of discipline.
I said it above, and I certainly do not need to tell all you smart people, that when you practice something, you get better at it. In any endeavor, this creates a kind of freedom that did not exist in absence of the practice. A snowboarder is free to do things in midair that the rest of us are not free to do. We would snap our bones like kindling if we tried.
In music, the freedom of discipline manifests in a number of ways.
If you know your instrument really well, you are freer to
Write better music. You’re not struggling to play, so you can better access and actualize the writing muse.
Perform complex music that requires extreme skill and rigorous practice.
Improvise!
I am, of course, blown away by perfect performances of complicated pieces. We’ve all seen many examples, especially in this era of videos proliferating on social media. An interesting example is the world-championship-winning bagpipe medley performance at the end of this post. My brother and sister were in a pipe band for several years, so I have seen a lot of it…and the band below are very good. They have practiced a lot in order to play that well.
But today, I really want to focus on how someone improvises—taking the basics of a song and then really making it their own.
Below are two different versions of Samatha Fish playing Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You.” Each is different from the other. She goes different places. Hits different notes. Finds different moods. (I recommend watching them in order, though my favorite is the second of them.)
Her mastery of her instruments—her voice and guitar alike—means that she is free to access something…deeper. There are no struggles to stand between her and this depth. A condition of freedom exists between her heart, mind, soul, hands, lungs, and mouth. This freedom produces interesting and soulful results.
Greater greatness is inside everyone. Discipline and mastery are one of the ways in which it can be unlocked.
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Love the bagpipe band!
Nice essay. I am glad you called out FDR, man truly makes me nauseous.
"Freedom from want".. aka Death.