If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two impostors just the same…
(Rudyard Kipling, "If—" 12–13)
I have won a few prizes and awards, and it's always a good feeling.
I have also seen enough award-acceptance speeches to know how happy and validated people appear when they win something. An extreme example is American Actress Sally Field's acceptance speech for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 1985 Oscars, in which she infamously gushed, "I can't deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!"
Losing is an experience I also know very well — losing and I go back a long way! — and it can sting. I have been close to winning a couple of competitions where I was one of five finalists and the winner's name was announced in front of a large audience, and those have been particularly (and surprisingly to me) disheartening experiences.
Surprising, because in both cases I had been smugly confident for weeks that I would not win, and then, at the last minute, as some long-winded person was about to read out the name of the winner, a little voice in my head suddenly hijacked my powers of reason and began whispering (more like shouting, actually) to me that maybe, just maybe, this would be my lucky day — the day I could finally gush in public, just like Sally Field did in 1985! And me without a speech! What should I say? Should I joke my way through it, like I do pretty much every time I speak in public? Should I shed the comedian facade and speak from the heart? How the hell does one do that??? Should I thank my dog, who is perplexedly and inordinately fond of me (and I have the pictures to prove it), for believing in me when my other pets didn't?
"If—", a poem by Rudyard Kipling, was written as fatherly advice to his son, counseling stoicism (or its British equivalent, "stiff-upper-lip-ism") as a response to life's ups and downs, and the lines above explain how to do this: By regarding "Triumph and Disaster" as impostors. They are not real!
It is an interesting concept to react with equanimity and stoicism to life's gains and losses, but it is a difficult thing to put into practice unless you happen to be hard-wired that way. I'm not even sure that it's a desirable thing to put into practice; do we really aspire to be in a position one day to say, upon winning our Academy Award, Pulitzer Prize, or a significant accolade of somewhat-lesser magnitude, "I am unable to give thanks for this, because it means nothing to me; it's not real. Oh, and FYI, in the long run we all die."
To me, stoicism would be a useful attribute upon which to draw when faced with disappointment, because (a) disappointment can hurt like hell, and (b) it can be counterproductive to allow negative feelings to overtake you.
The good advice most of our moms probably gave us on this topic can be succinctly summed up by the lyrics to this wonderful Jerome Kern / Dorothy Fields 1936 song (Pick Yourself Up), which even quotes the last line of Kipling's poem ("You'll be a Man, my son!") at the end of the chorus:
Nothing's impossible, I have found
For when my chin is on the ground
I pick myself up, dust myself off
And start all over again.
Don't lose your confidence if you slip
Be grateful for a pleasant trip
And pick yourself up, dust yourself off
And start all over again.
Work like a soul inspired
Until the battle of the day is won
You may be sick and tired
But you'll be a man, my son.
For when my chin is on the ground
I pick myself up, dust myself off
And start all over again.
Don't lose your confidence if you slip
Be grateful for a pleasant trip
And pick yourself up, dust yourself off
And start all over again.
Work like a soul inspired
Until the battle of the day is won
You may be sick and tired
But you'll be a man, my son.
The reason I didn't write, "it's always bad to allow negative feelings to overtake you" above is that I wonder if there may be benefits to feeling upset about disappointing results, as long as you don't allow yourself to be down in the dumps for too long (and no, I don't know how long too long is, unfortunately).
Dissatisfaction over not winning a composition competition or not getting a commission or achieving some other desired goal can be discouraging and make you feel like quitting, which of course is not good (unless you want to quit for other reasons too, which may be fine!), or it could motivate you to improve the quality of your work when future opportunities arise. Improving the quality of your work may not be sufficient to win prizes and commissions, but it is its own reward and is an objective we should always have, no matter how old we are or how successful we become. Would we be as motivated to improve if we considered winning and losing as "impostors," to be regarded with with equanimity?
Possibly, but possibly not… only a stoic could tell us for sure, if such a creature (a stoic) really exists.
Perhaps more to the point is this: "Winning" and "losing" are, in most cases, not very useful terms to describe outcomes that are meaningful to us as composers. It is great to win a prize or get a commission, but there are many other indicators of success for composers, such as:
- Finishing a piece (believe me, this is a big deal!);
- Feeling like the piece we finished is, at present, as good as we are capable of making it;
- Feeling like the piece we finished represents a step forward in terms of our compositional development;
- Performance(s) of our composition(s), even if part of a student recital;
- Getting positive feedback on our composition(s) from audience members, friends, or family;
- Getting useful feedback on our composition(s) from anyone;
- Getting feedback from performers that helps us to write better for their instruments, or improves the composition in some other way;
- Getting performers to play our music, and having them do a good job, in part because our score was very clear, we picked good/supportive performers, and we coached rehearsals;
- Having performers ask you to write a piece for them, irrespective of whether it is a paid commission or not;
- Submitting our music to a competition, and receiving a "runner-up" prize, or an "honourable mention," or having it selected for a reading/performance;
- Submitting our music to an organization that provides a useful critique of our composition, such as the Newfoundland and Labrador "Arts and Letters" competition (2013 deadline: Nov. 22, BTW), irrespective of whether it wins a prize or not;
- Having our music recorded; or
- Having our music broadcast.
Furthermore, winning and losing are dependent to some degree on factors beyond our control, such as the stylistic preferences of judges, what they had for breakfast, and even back-room shenanigans. The success indicators listed above, on the other hand, are mostly within our control.
In this sense, "winning" and "losing" are indeed impostors, and you don't have to be particularly stoic to recognize this!
In my next blogs, I will write about the value of accolades, and experiences I have had as a competition judge and commission jury member.
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