The Vice of Time
42/
Robert Jordan wrote about the Wheel of Time. But time always felt more like a vice to me. Something squeezing me slowly, relentlessly, with unstoppable force. I would wake up each morning knowing that my life’s potential had been reduced since the day before. It was the same way every day.
I could create more potential via diet and exersize. And could keep what I already had by taking my medicine. I could also increase my potential by learning new things. But it would never be for free. It would always require some serious effort to take place today.
You can resist the vice of time a little bit. With herculean effort, you might even slow it down for a moment. But no one can bring it to a stop. It closes on all of us eventually. That’s how I felt throughout every single day I was in music school.
I was counting the days until I needed to be making it as a professional musician. Every day there were fewer of them than the day before. The temptation was to rush. To try to fake it as a great musician rather than going through the process of becoming one. A lot of people don’t know the difference or it doesn’t matter to them.
At Interlochen Academy I was around precocious high school performers. But when I got to college I was around truly great musicians. Lots of them. The difference between me and them was so vast it was humiliating. They were running completely different software. Their brains were full of pathways that were totally absent from mine.
I was going to have to build those pathways one neuron at a time. I still sucked at the saxophone. But I knew how to learn. You visualize the result that you want. Then you do it slow. Then you go back to step one and you do it slower.
Going slower than slow is the only way to resist the vice.
