This is about Tchaikovsky, but I imagine the real lesson here is that sometimes even if your are creatively talented as say, Tchaikovsky, life can still suck. As I suggest in the title of the post – sometimes despite being really good it can be really tough day to day. Why? Because sometimes being really talented just isn’t enough. You got to bring a lot of resilience and a good dose of character along for the ride.
Anyway.
I will begin with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (because I happen to like it and it generated the item that will help me make my point).
His Violin Concerto was first performed at the end of 1881 in Vienna. And it generated one of the most notoriously negative (but incredibly imaginatively well written) reviews of all time written by a conservative Vienna music critic named Eduard Hanslick.
Let’s just say Tchaikovsky never got over this review and to the end of his life he could quote it by heart. The actual review:
The Russian composer Tchaikovsky is surely no ordinary talent, but rather, an inflated one, obsessed with posturing as a genius, lacking discrimination and taste….The same can be said for his new, long, and ambitious Violin Concerto. For a while it proceeds soberly, musically, and not mindlessly, but soon vulgarity gains the upper hand and dominates until the end of the first movement. The violin is no longer played; it is tugged about, torn, beaten black and blue….The Adagio is well on the way to reconciling us and winning us over, but it soon breaks off to make way for a finale that transports us to the brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian church festival. We see a host of savage, vulgar faces, we hear crude curses, and smell the booze. In the course of a discussion of obscene illustrations, Friedrich Vischer once maintained that there were pictures which one could see stink. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto for the first time confronts us with the hideous idea that there may be compositions whose stink one can hear.
(brutal … well written … but fucking brutal)
Regardless. I know I have trouble today locating the “stink” in what I consider a beautiful concerto (and I am certainly not a classical music aficionado by any stretch of the imagination). I am luckily backed up because it is a fact this concerto has, for nearly a century, simply been one of the four or five most popular violin concertos (which I believe is enough to shove it up Hanslick’s ass post mortem).
Yeah.
I am a fan of Tchaikovsky.
I have always felt no matter what he was composing he incorporated a little of Russia into whatever he composed. For example, in the violin’s entry in the concerto’s middle movement (Canzonetta) there is a distinctly Russian/Slavic melancholy. And yet he incorporates a certain Cossack bold passion in the final movement. But (to me) Tchaikovsky never failed to bring out the beauty of Russian-ness, its melancholy, its passion, its soul … into everything he did. For that alone I will listen to his music until the day I die.
Oh. And, of course, all of that is captured most famously in Swan Lake.
Which brings me back to why I wrote this.
It is tough being brilliantly good.
Just before he composed Swan Lake he had composed a piano concerto for his close friend Nikolai Rubinstein only to have the pianist — a close friend by the way — declare that work worthless and unplayable. Despite being (rightfully) crushed Tchaikovsky managed to arrange a performance all the way across the world in Boston (so that if it were a flop he would not have to be present to hear it himself). Ironically, that concerto rather quickly became one of the most popular of all piano concertos. Soon after, Tchaikovsky composed the ballet Swan Lake, arguably the finest ballet score of the entire nineteenth century.
Oh. And THAT was a failure in its first production. In fact, Tchaikovsky went to his grave never knowing that the world would regard his work as a masterpiece.
Look.
I am not a huge Swan Lake fan, but I do love his Violin Concerto. And, in general, I enjoy listening to all his compositions on occasion. But that’s not the point of this (although if even one of my readers becomes a Tchaikovsky listener I will claim this post a huge success).
The point is that you can be very very good at what you do and a boatload of people will not recognize it. In fact. Some people will just be down right negative with regard to your talent.
Fuck ‘em.
If you are good, keep on keepin’ on.
What’s the alternative?
Quitting?
Please.
That’s not an alternative.
And if you think it is?
Well.
Think about Tchaikovsky. Cause if HE had there would never have been the Swan Lake.
That’s why you ignore the negativity.
Doesn’t mean its gonna be easy.
And it doesn’t mean you won’t go to your deathbed without accolades or recognition.
The only thing I can guarantee is that you can go to your deathbed knowing you created your own greatness.
And that’s pretty good for anyone.
Ponder.
====
author’s note: I elected to highlight a Russian artist today on purpose. There is a war going on between Russia and Ukraine and I think it would behoove us to think about the fact this is not a war of Russian people against Ukraine people, its a war of one man against Ukraine. I have found Russian people, and the country, charming, welcoming and warm. Putin is none of those things. Let us remind ourselves there are more Russian Tchaikovskys in the everyday people than Putins.
=====
One of the most discussed behavioral things in today’s world is how algorithms trigger dopamine thru outrage and anger and fear to create perceptions and drive behavior. We speak a bit less about, well, happiness and the fact the people are ‘pleasure-seeking’ entities. With that said, one of the most difficult things to figure out is what to do ‘now’ when given a choice particularly if that ‘now decision’ would appear to provide some happiness.
I chose 
As noted earlier truth is most often represented in a big blob of swirling disparate fragments and, yet, on occasion if we look at just the right time all the fragments align and truth appears.
place an important piece of the puzzle in place.
Anyone who has ever worked with me has heard me use the “fluff and fold” reference.
Rules are dictated by what got you to the success you attained today. As a cautionary corollary, those same rules restrict you from attaining future “new unseen success.”
money, found people who needed me who actually didn’t really need anybody like me and the best things I did well were things that those same people could pay someone else to do.
Yeah.
Suffice it to say discerning what to keep and build some consistency, and what to change or adapt, is, well, the key to creating a successful business.
French values of 
… well … I fear that they only believe they can change the world through more altruistic pursuits and not traditional business. And, yes, they are important and good pursuits but, from a larger perspective, business drives the world. Business makes shit that makes lives easier and healthier and impacts the home and life in ways that it is difficult to imagine let alone outline in a few words <and the business office/working groups creates behavioral cues which ripple out into culture>.
It often feels like business people flee the stuff that matters only to run toward the shit that doesn’t.
This maybe a case of ‘be careful what you wish for.’
It almost seems like today’s world the self help people and brand marketing and the futuristic blowhards all encourage us to think there is something wrong with us. That we aren’t ‘enough’ or passionate or focused or … well … we are lacking in some form or fashion.
Escapa , non. Whether inside some finite space boundary or wandering aimlessly outside the boundary in some seemingly infinite space — fleeing yourself just doesn’t work.