“Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted in to something.”
– Frank Zappa (1940-1993)
With the great performance bands — like Cowboy Mouth, Cake, the Eagles (when Joe Walsh was playing), Clapton, Lyle Lovett (and his Large Band), Gov’t Mule, Dan Auerbach (and The Black Keys)… You can feel the performance, even if you close your eyes. I have a suspicion you could feel it if they turned down the sound. They make something additive with only the connectedness and the passion of the performance.
I saw Zappa perform live once. It was mesmerizing. It was also horribly, inappropriately wrong, yet musically unreal and truly spectacular all at once. I can still “feel” some of that performance nearly 30 years later. They sculpted something in the room that night that literally has hung with me for almost two generations, and almost 20 years after Frank died.
What if it we sculpted something in the air in our workaday lives, too? What about those times when we do — like they say in the Corona commercial, when we “crush it…” Do those days feel better than most?
If your job involves “routine” work, who’s fault is it that it’s routine? If your job can be performed by rote — remember that when you saw your favorite band on their biggest tour — it WAS the 300th time they’d played that set — it FELT like the first time ever because of their commitment to prepare for the performance.
Sculpt something special with the air around your desk — see if that doesn’t make a difference.
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