[brazil, week 16] Struggling with finding direction
Today I cleaned my apartment. Pretty much the entire thing. The only part that I've yet to do (and that I'm not completely sure if I will do) is to clean my kitchen and clean the fridge. I've actually yet to do that final one for a bit longer than what I want to admit, but I guess that's just a truth of life at times. Maybe I'm at bit hard on myself at times, considering that I have basically moved alone to the other side of the world.
I'm struggling with finding direction in a few things. I think the biggest change of my life (so far) this year, isn't the entire moving to the other side of the world-thing. Rather I think it is that I don't have the same urge and drive to work as a musician anymore, at the very least not in the same sense. I don't feel the internal drive (and external pressure) to practice jazz for hours each day, nor do I feel the drive to book and play alotta concerts. I'm not sure if I'm feeling contempt or empty, but this is the first time in a while where I don't feel like I have this goal infront of me.
It's both relieving and stressing. Relieving since I do now realize that a noticeable part of my motivation for practising came from external pressure, fear of judgement, economical worries, the idea of needing to do or become something big, or perhaps more the fear of "failing" by ending up doing something else. Stressing because now everything except for economical worries are kicking in.
I'm not failing anything though, but damn does it feel like that it times. It's a marathon not a sprint, you can change your path many times. I have also been far from wasting my time; I've learnt alotta stuff and I don't have plans to stop neither listening to, playing, or working with music, I'm just adapting the path a bit. My interest has changed from learning how to play the best to learning how playing affects us all.
I'm getting more and more interested in what happens around the music rather than the exact notes that are played. I'm also getting more and more convinced that there's nothing "big" around becoming a musician, but rather that it's just something people do. Moving away from Norway has also made me... let's say adjust the idea that you need to be a working musician to play and to play well. After all, the best music I hear here is just played on the street.
Perhaps I'd rather become an educator. Perhaps I'd rather become a researcher. Perhaps I'd rather abandon the idea that you "become" or "are" one of these things and rather recognize that there is more nuance. Perhaps I'm rejecting the entire idea of career and all this stuff pushed onto us in a worldview centered around money and capital.
I used to think that I, that we could change the world. Perhaps I've abandoned that idea now, rather believing that we can for the most part just influence our immediate circle. Perhaps I've become radicalized and lost the idea of "music for music" having it replaced with "music for purpose", regardless of whether that purpose is human, joy, or social. Perhaps I'm still coming to gripes with this idea that we can't change the big stuff.
Alot of things happen when you move to a new country. I was warned of that. I guess I'm experiencing that a little more than usual right now. Perhaps this text would've been written differently if I didn't just have a convesation with someone else going through similar stuff. I certainly don't have the answer.
There has still been good stuff this week, of course. It's rare that I spend all my time contemplating like this, it's just that this creates a good room for me to do it and to put everything on paper.
My girlfriend has stayed here pretty much all of this week. She left for São Paulo yesterday (sat) and is coming back either tomorrow or Tuesday. We've shared many nice moments with the highlight probably sitting on the floor of our tiny balcony having coffee and journaling a little bit together. That was the first time I wrote in my physical journal in two months or so.
We had a really nice walk around town going to different stores and one of the tiny parks here. We found some cookies I haven't seen since I was a child visiting my family in China. They cost 30 reais per bag but you bet your ass I bought both of them.
We've made lots of good food, including feijoada and one of my new favorites, canjica. Norway won 4-1 and Brazil won 3-0 in the hypocrisy-cup, a hypocrisy which I am very much a part of right now, probably for the first and last time. She's started playing BotW for the first time in her life, and I've really enjoyed getting to go to sleep and wake up by her side every day.
I've had people over in a 'more formal' way for the first time in as long as I can remember. Three times actually. I'm talking the typical "we'll make some food and you guys can come over"-kinda stuff. It feels a bit too formal for me, inviting people over, but I think that feeling will pass. I want it to be more like just hanging out I guess?
Today I was listening to Karpe (as always) and going more into the early stuff. God damn that is hard. I also played some tf2 for the first time in a month or so yesterday, that was pretty fun :)
Now as I'm finishing this text, it's 18:20 here. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do after this. I know I'm sure as hell not proof reading this though. Perhaps I should go hang up the rags I just washed.