Recently I led a music workshop in Paris—or, more exactly, a workshop on thinking, feeling, doing, sensing, talking, listening, sharing, enjoying, giving, receiving, analyzing, and celebrating, some of it related to making music. And some of it related to life.

Imagine a musician playing for someone else: a lover, a family member, a teacher; a colleague, a conservatory director, a competition jury; a dozen distracted listeners in a bar, a thousand attentive listeners in a concert hall. These situations are all manifestations of the same principle, which we might call “from the composer to you, via me.” A musician playing by herself, to herself is also manifesting the principle, because . . . because the walls have ears, and what will the walls say?

And the musician gets a little nervous. Very nervous. Windmill-in-a-storm-nervous. H-bomb-nervous. I’d-rather-slit-my-wrists-than-play-for-the-walls-nervous.

I think this is a central feature of music-making, and a central feature of life for everyone. If you’re not a musician, read on and mentally translate the post to suit your needs. Vast subject, brief discussion, we scratch the surface, the surface scratches us back.

Audiences (“other people”) have expectations (“problems”). By wanting or hoping to fulfill other people’s expectations, you (1) usurp their role and (2) sabotage your priorities. To begin with, you can’t really know what is in another guy’s mind and heart; the other guy probably doesn’t know himself. You make assumptions about expectations. More precisely, you make unwarranted assumptions about other people’s mysterious and contradictory expectations, or as Sigmund Freud used to say, “oy vey ¡ay caramba! oh la la.” To meet another guy’s expectations is an impossible job, and it’s not even your job. It’s the other guy’s job to marinate his own expectations, slow-roast them, and eat them with salsa picante.

What to do? “My job is to show you my growth, my change, as it happens in this room, in this workshop, in this rehearsal, in this performance. I show you ‘my today,’ and if you’re curious about ‘my tomorrow’ please come back tomorrow. Do you know how painful it’d be for me to show you not ‘my today’ but ‘someone else’s yesterday’?”

A colleague and friend of mine once told me that one of her students was very disappointed with me—a student I’ve never met. “He admired you a lot because of your book, but then he went on YouTube and saw what you were doing these days.” This made me laugh. A stranger used to love me, and now he hates me. Should I have cherished his anonymous and undeclared love, and should I now fear his hatred, just as anonymous and only declared through a third party? His love and hatred aren’t my business. My business is to live, breathe, sense, react, make a choice, take an initiative, and perhaps grow and change. You may witness some of it: through a book, a blog post, a YouTube video clip, a greeting, a lesson, a joke funny or unfunny, a moment of impatience or thoughtlessness, my quirks and flaws (or, as Freud famously wrote, “Meine Warts-und-Farts”) (in his 1910 treatise Der Die Das, Des Den Dem, Dada Mama) (which he didn’t write but actually dictated) (to his nanny) (who was called Cigar) (but let’s not go there).

Everything you do today is a preparation for everything that you’ll do tomorrow. If this isn’t the case, “there is no tomorrow.” Baby to toddler, child to adolescent, 15 to 16, 16 to 17, and onward evermore. There have been a few cases in which a toddler went straight to old age, skipping the in-between stages. These cases are generally considered tragic. Intermediate steps are necessary, obligatory, inevitable, desirable, usually fun, occasionally a pain in the—wait. What am I saying?

Everything is an intermediate step to something else.

It’s an absolute law, from which there are no exceptions.

Practicing, performing, passing an audition, entering a competition, winning, losing, anything that a musician does is an intermediate step. To deny the intermediateness of life is an existential illness as grave as the Seelenjucken, the Angstsuppe, the Mutterkomplex. Freud couldn’t stand it when his patients Denied the Intermediateness, and he delighted in labeling different shades of the disease according to the physiognomy (nose, chin, earlobes, Koiffure) of the sufferer. If you don’t believe me, look up his posthumous monograph Telefunken im Volkswagen.

How many intermediate steps? Dozens, hundreds, thousands—depending on the task and the person. How long? Seconds, minutes, centuries—depending on the task and the person. But it goes much faster if you embrace the intermediateness.

Everything, every last thing is intermediate and in flux. Books get revised and rewritten. The Bible is three thousand years old but it’s still being tweaked, in translations and interpretations. Also, the Catholic, the Protestant, and the Jewish bibles are quite distinct. There doesn’t exist “one Bible, fixed and objective.” A musician might record the same piece multiple times in his or her career. The pioneering cellist Anner Bylsma, for instance, recorded two complete sets of the solo suites by Johann Sebastian Bach, in 1979 and 1992. Does the later recording invalidate the earlier one? Should Bylsma be punished for having at his disposal more than one way of playing the same piece? There doesn’t exist “one performance, one recording, fixed and objective.”

Compositions, too, get revised and transformed. Johannes Brahms published two versions of his Piano Trio in B major, in 1854 and 1889. The two versions are significantly different, and some people would consider them different pieces as opposed to two versions of the same piece. Mahler and Brückner kept revising their symphonies long after their premieres and long after they had been published in print. Mozart kept composing some of his masterpieces in the very act of performing them: the composition was partly born of the performance. A composition isn’t a “thing,” but a field of possibilities, some of which are crystallized more readily than others.

Logically enough, when you embrace the intermediateness of everything you solve many problems (though usually not the Mutterkomplex). You practice more gladly, you perform more willingly, you think of yourself more tenderly. “I’m intermediating between yesterday and tomorrow, yay! Come to my party!”

Okay, I talked too much and told too many Freud jokes (or “Freud’s rhoids”). In repentance, I offer you a numbered list with constructive advice.

Play the same composition or snippet multiple times in a public setting, like a workshop or in that bar with the Inattentive Dozen Listeners. Play and enjoy, play and tweak, play and exaggerate, play and vary, play and play.
Practice out of pleasure, not out of obligation. When asked why he continued to practice the cello three hours a day at the age of 93, the cellist, conductor, and composer Pablo Casals answered, "I'm beginning to notice some improvement.”
When you get really good at something, become a beginner in something else. Got the hang of playing the cello? Take up the French horn. Zen mind, beginner’s mind. And share your beginnerness. If you embrace intermediateness, your beginnerness is more lovely than the expertness of someone who refuses intermediateness.
On the eve of his foretold death, Socrates received a visitor. The visitor was surprised to find Socrates studying the rudiments of Persian. “Why, if you’re going to die tomorrow?” “I’ve always wanted to learn Persian,” Socrates answered. “It’s a beautiful language.”
Perfection is the acceptance of imperfection.
Learn the Ultimate Question; to it, give the Ultimate Answer. The learning is immediate, as long as you sync your breath and your heartbeat. “Do you love being perfect?” “Yes, totally! Thank you!”
Language is strange and revealing. “This blog post is now finished.” “This blogger is now finished!” No! I have finished, but I’m not finished! I am famished, but I’m not Finnish! I am famous, but I’m not fishy! The famous famished Finnish fish is finished. Or, to put it differently: let’s be careful about using the word “finished” as regards our artistic processes.

During a recent visit to Chicago, I witnessed a high-caliber theatrical performance that was as troubling as it was thrilling. It took place in the subway, or the “L” as it’s called in Chicago—logically enough, since most tracks for most trains are “eLevated.” Subway is the wrong name.

But don’t let me confuse you with terminology. I was riding public transportation late in the evening, when a large, a very large black man entered my car, settled down cater-corner from me, and started his performance. He had a big voice and a big personality to go with his big body, and he wore a bright, a very bright Marlins shirt and matching baseball cap. The thing is, the Marlins aren’t a Chicago team—they’re based in Miami. And somehow the bright shirt from the wrong team contributed to the performance’s hypnotic power.

Let’s call the big Marlins guy "Merlin," since he was quite the wizard. Speaking loudly enough for the entire car to hear him, Merlin invited everyone to take a chance on the guessing game: “Here are three little red cups upside down, here’s me putting a little white cube under one of the cups, here’s me shifting the cups around. Take a guess, my friends! Where’s the little white cube now?”

His performance is a con, variously called three-card monte and find-the-lady and the shell game. Merlin knows how to move the cups faster than your eyes can track them, and he knows how to cheat, and he knows how to get you to part with your money, and he knows how to get you to love him although he’s ripping you off. Needless to say, the con is illegal. It's impossible for you (aka "the mark") to win the game.

“It’s free to guess, and if you guess right I’ll give you twenty bucks! No, fifty! No, a hundred bucks, a crisp C-note! Guess it right, and it’s yours!”

A fellow sitting right next to me points at one of the cups, guesses right, and wins a hundred dollars, completely risk-free, easy easy easy! Merlin hands the fellow the money, and everyone riding that L train laughs and claps and loves every second of it. Why, how, why is Merlin just giving money to a complete stranger? Anyone can guess where the little white cube is, easy easy easy! Plus, Merlin isn’t even asking you to wager anything. Guessing is free!

The fellow who won a C-note is Merlin’s confederate. There’s another fellow who plays the game, guesses right, and wins easy easy easy—and he, too, is a confederate. The trio is extremely well rehearsed, extremely efficient, and extremely fun to watch. They are life-loving, people-loving, and Chicago-loving, and Chicago loves them back unconditionally.

After everyone is hypnotized, the real game starts, because the free rounds are over and now you have to wager to play—twenty bucks, for instance. “Bet $20 and guess right, and I pay you $20. Guess it wrong, and I keep your money.” And Merlin will keep your money, because you can’t possibly win the game.

The whole thing got me thinking about performance, persuasion, and connection. It’s tempting to consider performance the domain of the stage or screen: a theater company gives a performance, or a professional pianist gives a performance, in a specialized territory like a concert hall. In truth, we’re all performers, and we perform more or less nonstop, sometimes privately, sometimes publicly, sometimes knowingly, sometimes blindly. Waiting in line at the airport security check, you perform your take on the harried traveler, or the victim, or the stoic hero, or the rebel, or the cynic, or the . . . well, you get it. To live is to perform.

Merlin and his co-conspirators are trained professionals: they make their living performing. And to perform is to persuade, which involves the suspension of disbelief. Merlin made all of us, or many of us, or some of us, forget that he was a con and a thief and a cheat and a liar. We believed he was a wonderful human being, heaven-sent to elevate our moods with his booming voice, his bright shirt, and his generosity: “Take my money!”

You watch a movie, and if the movie is any good you forget it’s a movie (pixels on a screen, “people who don’t exist doing things that never happened”) and you get carried away, identifying with the actors who play fictional characters and their struggles. Then it’s your turn: you perform for your wife, persuading her that you never, ever said that needling little remark that so irked her. She’ll believe you, or not. Good luck with the performance!

Why are we willing to be persuaded by performances, authentic or misleading? We want to believe in something, and we want to be part of something—that is, we want to connect. Merlin brought us together, gave us the feeling that we were privileged and special because he loved us and he was big and wore a bright shirt and embodied the spirit of storytelling and of play and of generosity. These are good things to believe in when they are true. But we’re willing to believe them also when they aren’t true, too, because . . . because without belief there isn’t life. The word “belief” comes from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to care, love, desire.”

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The L reached my destination before anyone lost money to Merlin’s big lying heart, but it was such a clever performance that I, too, would have lost twenty bucks willingly. As for losing a hundred bucks willingly, or a thousand, or five thousand . . . suspension of disbelief can be expensive. I’m glad I got off the train.