Heroes & Role Models | Toxic Relationships [Part 3] (ft. Rosie Bennet)
Heroes and role models can be wonderful things, especially for striking inspiration and motivation in any aspiring classical guitarist. However, as Rosie explains, constantly comparing their musical path to your own can lead to unhealthy feelings of self-doubt.
As we may have already learnt — context is everything.
It is what allows us to moderate and assimilate our progress and praise, it is what allows us to relate to and understand others, it is what helps us accept where we have come from and what drives us to where we want to be.
Often when we feel that we have been misunderstood we find ourselves in a context crisis, grappling at explanations of a situation that prevented us from doing our best.
It seems that in most aspects of our lives we understand the impossibility of fully understanding another person’s context.
Our acknowledgment of this gap between peoples’ understanding is what makes the way we use heroes and role models in our lives so confusing.
It seems that there are rarely stories of musicians who have not been inspired by one player in particular.
It may be a story of one concert trip where inspiration was passed on in one small moment, seeing the dedication of a musician in the family, watching a movie where a musician achieves great success or listening to an especially heart piercing recording, all these stories share a person to be looked up to, a kind of hero.
If it so happens that we are not inspired by a particular musician at the offset, we will often be offered a hero during the course of our education — perhaps it will be our teacher, a student that we share circles with, or a player that our teacher or peers hold in high regard.
There is no inherent problem with having heroes and role models, it is great to have people to look up to who have experiences we can learn vicariously from but I think we could all try harder to understand their context better, for our own sake!
Every person has a context that doesn’t necessarily fit with the narrative of what they have ultimately achieved in their lives.
Of course it is normal that when we are asked about our lives in terms of one particular subject, we analyze our life with the microscope on the events that led us to where we are now.
Having a hero can be great, so long as we understand that the things they say come from a context that we cannot fully understand.
Ultimately, we should not berate ourselves over the things that we believe we are worse at in comparison to our heroes, especially considering that many things we hear of them may be from media sources with a particular publicity goal in mind.
We are all on our own journey and music is a difficult enough job without the weight of judgement coming from all aspects of our interactive lives.
We can love peoples’ stories, be inspired by their successes and their attitudes, without attaching comparison.
Respect for the people who have carved our pathways is important, but more important is the respect we have for ourselves.
Nobody’s saying you can’t be your own hero!
About Rosie Bennet
Born in London in 1996, Rosie started playing guitar at age seven. She received her early musical education at The Yehudi Menuhin School of Music and went on to study with Zoran Dukic (The Hague, NL), Johan Fostier (Tilburg, NL), Rene Izquierdo (Milwaukee, USA) and Raphaella Smits (Leuven, BE). She has performed in festivals all over Europe, including Open Guitar Festival in Křivoklát, Czech Republic, Glasgow’s Big Guitar Weekend, Scotland, Porziano Music Festival, Italy and the West Dean guitar Festival, UK. Highlights of her concert career include performances at Wigmore Hall, London, The North Wall, Oxford and concerts given on El Camino De Santiago.
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