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Kurt Vonnegut on Choosing Our Stances and Creating Reality


Tuesday Quotes are short explorations of music, life, and the daily endeavor of practicing classical guitar. Find more here. Enjoy!


“We are what we pretend to be so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Words matter. They form our version of reality.

Through our words, we create our feelings. And the feelings give more power to the words. They make them true.

When we convince ourselves that we’re too busy, for example, we create that reality. We feel busy. And so we may lose focus and become stressed.

We create many of our limitations by pretending they already exist. We act the part, we talk the talk, and so they come to be.

But we could also “pretend” that we have all the time in the world. We can choose to believe we have plenty of time to do anything we want.

(Ray Dalio suggests we can’t do everything we want to, at least not at once. But we can do virtually anything we want.)

We can pretend to be anything we want. And we can pretend to be however we want.

We can “make believe” we learn things easily. We can try on consistency and patience. We can imagine ourselves calm and aware and engaged.

Then we simply pretend we’re not pretending, and it becomes reality.








Allen Mathews

Hi, I’m Allen Mathews. 


I started as a folk guitarist, then fell in love with classical guitar in my 20’s. Despite a lot of practice and schooling, I still couldn’t get my music to flow well. I struggled with excess tension. My music sounded forced. And my hands and body were often sore. I got frustrated, and couldn’t see the way forward. Then, over the next decade, I studied with two other stellar teachers – one focused on the technical movements, and one on the musical (he was a concert pianist). In time, I came to discover a new set of formulas and movements. These brought new life and vitality to my practice. Now I help guitarists find more comfort and flow in their music, so they play more beautifully.
Click here for a sample formula.




I also want to thank you for including more video lessons on the Bridges Guitar Series. I have learned to play Calatayud's Waltz. The most exciting thing about having done this is that I sight-read the entire piece as I was learning it. Six months ago looking at a sheet of music was like looking at Egyptian hieroglyphics. Learning to read notation is empowering and I appreciate the sensible way you are teaching us to learn to read music.

 

~ Steve Simpler


-Steve Simpler

Allen I have looked for the right online teacher for classical guitar for 8 months. Spent some money in the process. Never got anywhere. Then I found your site. Excellent! I now believe I will reach my goals in playing some beautiful music in the future.

Thank you,

Chuck


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