Another Bad Review...

This particular tweet is one I often have to revisit.

Getting reviews and having aesthetical assessors rate our work is par to the course of being in the performing arts. It doesn't matter if you're a musician, actor,  playwright, or a choreographer, at some point, you'll have your publicly released work reviewed by appointed experts in the field.

I think I share the sentiment of many when I say receiving a great review can make you want to hold your head high and shout to the world, "See, I told you so." Adversely speaking, having your work misunderstood or worse, publicly picked apart will breed feelings of resentment, despair, or flat out anger. One can make you feel like the king of the mountain, the others like you want to crawl under a rock.

I see it like this: we need both. It helps to know what folks like about our work and what they don't. Or if they're getting it at all. The words written are not as important as how we respond to them.

The fact of the matter is that the opinions of no one should drastically swing our pendulum of self-worth in one direction or the other. The most relevant review is the impact that your work has on listeners when performed live. This is the review we should be concerned with.

Which matters more? The laughter a stand-up comic receives after telling a joke, or what someone writes about the joke the next day?

I feel that this is one of the reasons that musicians who perform frequently are less concerned with the later. They're often getting the validation that they need in realtime: from the musicians that they play with and the audiences that they play for.

Moral of the story: All of these factors play a role in our musical journey. All that we have to decide is who's playing the lead and who's merely an extra.