"I Don't Believe in Kangaroos"
Maybe you shouldn't believe things just because people told you. Ditch the anti-curiosity mindset of narcy-narcs in favor of scientific thinking and questioning premises.
One night when I was a kid, I overheard a conversation between my younger brother and one of his friends.
Friend: “I don’t believe in kangaroos.”
Brother: “What do you mean? There are pictures of them all over the internet.”
“I think they’re fake.”
“Well, I’ve seen them in zoos, too.”
“I’ve never been to the zoo, so I’ve never seen them for myself.”
“Don’t you think you should believe in something when there’s lots of evidence to support it?”
“I’m not going to believe in kangaroos until I see them for myself.”
I’m sure that the actual conversation was a little less diplomatic and more emotionally charged than I just related to you. We are talking about 6 or 7 year olds, after all.
I’m also sure that my brother’s friend has since changed his mind.
In fact, I heard a few months later that he went to the zoo for himself and got the confirmation he was looking for.
Good for him.
While not believing in kangaroos is a little absurd even for children, I can’t help but think that my brother’s friend had the right idea about a few things.
Let me explain:
The Musicians’ Cannon
Most musicians have a lot more in common than just knowing all the same music, having the same rehearsal schedules, and being endlessly exhausted from practicing incessantly.
They also happen to believe the same things.
This set of standardized beliefs I like to refer to as “The Musicians’ Cannon,” and it typically includes the following beliefs:
Practicing more is better. (Repetition)
Exhaustion is necessary to succeed. (Abuse)
Anyone who the Historians™ have deemed to be an Excellent Musician™ is certainly that, and their genius is beyond your comprehension and can only be understood if you pay the Musical Priestly Class™ enough money and kiss enough butts. (You can’t figure things out for yourself. You need us to explain them to you)
Getting good at music depends at least in part on nebulous predispositions that can’t be named, touched, isolated, experimented on, known, discovered, measured, changed, or defined. (Talent)
As you can see, a good portion of what I write about here on substack is dedicated to refuting these philosophies. (Except it does look like I’m going to need to write a full piece on that third bullet point there. Whoops!) But in this piece, I’m actually not going to ask you to stop believing any of these things.
The point of this article is to invite you to experiment on them yourself. So that you can stop believing in “kangaroos” that don’t actually exist or work.
Because the best way to change someone’s mind is not by wagging your finger and telling them they have to listen to the Experts™, but by letting them experience the truth for themselves.
Or in the words of Leonardo Da Vinci:
“Many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence…not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. (Emphasis added.)1
The Anti-Curiosity Mindset: Curiosity Killed the Cat.
A side note:
One favorite tactic of narcissists and lizard people is to take a quote, saying, or idiom, and shorten it until it’s understood to mean the exact opposite of what it originally said.
For instance:
“Jack of all trades master of none.”
Full quote: “Jack of all trades master of none, but far better than a master of one.”
“Blood is thicker than water.”
Full quote: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”
“Curiosity killed the cat.”
Full quote: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
Unfortunately, narcissists tend to dictate a large part of the commonly held philosophies of the day because their control-freak tendencies enable them to feel no remorse about hounding people endlessly until they get people to change their minds. People who aren’t aware of this pervasive tendency usually swallow these ideas without giving them a second thought, and then when they’re miserable and abused, they’re at a loss to explain their feelings.
It’s no mystery, believe me. Believing the things that narcy-narcs tell you is a surefire way to a tummy ache.
Or worse.
Regardless, there seems to be a strange anathema to curiosity in our modern culture.
No one will dispute that curiosity in and of itself is a good thing, of course, and the term seems to carry positive connotations generally speaking…
But then at the same time, asking questions is usually met with scowling and short answers, experimenting to verify information is considered unnecessary at best and foolish or a waste of time at worst, and then the other side of the argument is either never mentioned or criticized as backwards and deplorable.
This kind of anti-curiosity behavior enables narcissism and encourages emotional, knee-jerk reactions to having your preconceived ideas questioned.
—Or maybe your preconceived authority questioned.
Either way, the truth of the matter is that ultimately, all learning is self-learning, all teaching is self-teaching. There is no shortcut way to understanding that leaves out the bit where you have to know and experience something for yourself.
Narcy-narcs will try to convince you that there is danger in being curious. What if you get Massively Overinflated Head Syndrome™!?—A terminal condition, to be sure…—Or what if you come to the Wrong Conclusion™!?—Then you’ll be without a roadmap to tell you where to go!
To these I say: better to have a terminal condition and have investigated things for yourself, and better to have no roadmap at all than one that leads certainly to the wrong place.
Musicians should be truth seekers.
And the truth is just what works.
So how do you figure out what works?
Scientific Thinking in 2 Questions
Lots of people are under the impression that scientific thinking is “really hard” and “only for smart people.”
But here’s the thing…it’s actually not, it just takes some practice—real practice though, not just repetition.
And the best part about it is that the main principles are so simple, they can be summed up in two questions:
What does that really mean?
How do you know that?
The first question helps you know what exactly this person is trying to say, and the second question helps you get at the underlying assumptions and premises of the statement.
These two questions are also the basic building blocks of how to become an effective communicator. What are you actually trying to say? Can you make it more clear? Are you relying on confusing or nonspecific language to make your point? If you are, do you even know the point you’re trying to make in the first place? How do you know that that means what you think it means? What observations led you to that point?
If you can’t answer all of these questions (yes, all of them), you’re going to need to develop your observational skills until you get the information to answer them in explicit detail. This is the way to bring clarity and understanding to your conversations.
To further illustrate our two questions, here are some examples:
“There needs to be more ‘swing.’”
What does this really mean?
Do you mean the upbeats need to be later? Do the downbeats need to be more precise?
How do you know that?
Are you sure that that’s the problem in the first place? What are you hearing that leads you to come to that conclusion?
“Transcribing solos will make you a better improviser.”
What does this really mean?
What do you mean “transcribe?” Do you mean memorizing the notes of a solo? Do you mean write it down? Do you mean memorize the notes and then transpose them into all 12 keys? What will the transposing do?
How do you know that?
Have you done this before? Did it work? Are you sure it wasn’t something else you were doing at the same time that made you a better improviser and you’re now conflating that thing with “transcribing?”
“You need to exhaust yourself practicing every day. Only then can you have success.”
What does this really mean?
What does “exhaust” really mean? “Practice?” “Success?”
How do you know that?
Is it the exhaustion that makes you better? Or is it the practice? What about the practice made you better? How do you know that that’s what made you better in the first place?
Other platitudes that people like to throw around as if they mean something include “practice makes perfect,” “perfect practice makes perfect,” and “copying down musical scores by hand will make you a better composer.” When this glib advice doesn’t work, they’ll usually resort to saying things like “write more music, “play more pieces,” “spend more hours in the practice room,” “play in more ensembles,” or “listen to more music.”
I hate to break it to you, but this is the musical equivalent of “doom-scrolling.” And we all know how bad that is for your mental health.
Stop doing these monotonous and useless things and start asking questions.
Final Thoughts
The only way to truly learn something is to get to know something so well that those words, ideas, phrases, skills, and techniques become your own. Learn them so that you know what they really mean. And how you came to know that.
It’s tough to stick to your guns and believe your own scientific thinking rather than the word of whoever happens to be talking at that moment, but this is the way to become an independent, scientific, and creative thinker.
Also, it won’t be the curiosity that kills the cat, it’ll be the backlash from narcy-narcs for having their authority questioned.
But again, I’m betting that satisfaction will bring it back.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Notebooks_of_Leonardo_Da_Vinci/I
Thank you so much for writing this! As a self-taught composer, the only way I can build my craft and write music is to have the orientation you describe here. I have to be curious about why something works and ruthless when it doesn't; there's no backstop of "well that is the proper way to have written that passage" or "this smart person told me this is what is popular among the hottest folks at a conservatory" that is convincing or comforting to me. So please do write more about that third bullet point! ("Anyone who the Historians™ have deemed to be an Excellent Musician™ is certainly that, and their genius is beyond your comprehension and can only be understood if you pay the Musical Priestly Class™ enough money and kiss enough butts. (You can’t figure things out for yourself. You need us to explain them to you)") I try to refute this bullet every day by not substituting the judgement of critics/musicologists/theorists/fanboys for what I think is good and great—and then digging into those things to figure out what it is I like about them. But it can be SO hard and it's very tempting for me to think I just need an eminent teacher or composer to make me see the light of day (fwiw I do think I need a composition teacher to help me with my craft, but not to convince me of the worth/quality of music I don't care for).