I’m speaking in Charleston, SC this morning on making music with your life, family, and business.
Going for three years running now, Charleston has been called one of the best places to live and travel to.
Their formula?
Be friendly. Eat well. Breathe deep.
Life, family, and business can’t help but be drawn to such aspects of what it means to be human.
Thank you Charleston for showing us the way and the warm welcome. It’s easy to see why everyone is ‘friending’ you.
The music is the experience that is enjoyed and the story that is written when one’s passions, ideals, conscience, and core values intersect, collide, and crescendo in this world we exist in.
Running in circles of noise, often missing the point, it never hurts to get back to, define, and remember the point of it all.
The point is your music and your music is the point: our gift to receive and the fulfillment of your days.
You and why.
To define one is to define them both.
Show me a man or woman with a ‘why’ and I’ll show you someone who isn’t wondering what, when, where, or how to do their some-thing.
Your something is your why.
Your why is the theme of your life. Your why is your constant living and breathing verb. Your why is your metaphor – your meaning, purpose, and fulfillment that sails just below the surface. Your why isn’t who you think you are or who you think we think you are – it is simply…who…you…are…meant…to be…and become.
Which leads us back to you.
So why you? In short, only you can fulfill such a unique, stand-alone, and divine cause.
And herein lies the holiest of all pursuits: that we would become what we are meant to be.
A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning, or effect, and even, to the point of being trite or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel.
The first problem with the concept of cliché is that those that claim something to be cliché are the non-believers. They probably never tried whatever they’re mocking and, in doing so, have never tasted, seen, and experienced its fruit and/or benefit. The second problem is that they want to put their disbelief on you. If they don’t believe, then you shouldn’t either.
Here’s the catch…
There will come a day when you offer the world your music and, probably, most will claim your venture into such creativity and offering to the world to be cliché.
However, part of music being music is that it’s not for the masses and some will call it noise. It’s for the unique few…even if that means millions…it’s not for billions.
Part of the richness of life are those joy swapping moments with the people who believe what you believe and that rally behind, around, and in your music.
Outsiders will call letting your music play cliché.
We’ll call it fulfillment.
So who is right? The artist or the scientist?
The artist, with his art instrument clutched in hand, feels a certain way and then paints what he feels. He felt something and, in doing so, found he is right. “You’ll see”, he says.
The scientist, with her proven algorithms and spreadsheets on display, has consistent, repeatable, and predictable proof. What goes up must come down. She knows she’s right. “Wanna make a bet?”, she says.
Back to the original question…who is right between these two? Thought: Just because the artist and scientist clash on their process of getting to what is true doesn’t make one of them wrong.
Leadership, today, recognizes that – simultaneously – the arts (if one finds joy in their experience) and the sciences (if proven in their research) are both right.
So what are you making with your life, your family, and your business? Whatever your answer is here I think, in order to be fulfilled, you need a dash of the both the arts and the sciences.
Some need to see it to believe it. Some need to feel it to believe it. But we all will believe something within an experience that lets us both feel and see.
And that’s what you’re here to give us: that thing you can explain and that thing you can’t explain.
You’ve got a big job don’t you?
Happy Monday in your happy mediums.
Ashton.Gustafson 