How My Paintings Transformed My Musicality

by David Kenyon Seacord

What is a musician? Is it not an artistically skilled person who uses sound to touch and move us in ways nothing else has to power to do?  And is not music the ‘food of the soul’? Is there anyone who does not know this from direct experience? I find that unlikely.  Yet there is one facet of music that many people are quite unfamiliar with…and that is PERSONALLY CREATING YOUR OWN MUSIC.

Culturally, for most of us most of the music that we listen to in our lives has been created by somebody else…. it’s given us by the availability of professionally created audio recordings capturing or editing musically perfect takes.

It’s wonderful to listen to, yes? Yet is it an expression of YOU the way YOU singing in the shower expresses YOU?  Of course not. Because ONLY YOU can fully express YOU. And here’s ‘the secret’. YOU can only truly express yourself when the ‘you’ doing the expressing is the true and real and authentic YOU.  In other words, to express the true you you must be free of the constraints that inhibit that expression. If there is shyness, or stage-fright, and fear of rejection etc. present… the real YOU doesn’t get ‘well-expressed’.

I know this directly from my own life. Music was my ‘first love’ artistically.  And as an innocent ‘family-protected-and-encouraged’ child I expressed my joy of singing all the time. However in time, I discovered that childhood is both a beautiful AND a painful time, and events happened that constrained my exuberant musical self-expression.  In fact, these insecurity-creating events pretty much killed off my youthful dreams of ‘being a musician’ in the professional sense, and as an adult I settled for expressing my musicality in ‘safe settings’… in choirs, churches, and when alone. Because, even though I was certain I had valid musical talent,  whenever I would get up the courage to ‘publicly perform’ the voices of my past memories would inevitably sabotage my experience.

Given all of this as my history, it’s simply honest to say that discovering myself as a painter was the miracle that allowed me to also discover my self-validity as a musician.  You see, painting art professionally does NOT require a ‘performance’.  It only requires ‘exhibition’. And ‘exhibition’ is normally done only AFTER the painting is finished. This is radically different than ‘live musical performance’, wherein YOU are ‘the living music-making exhibition’ under audience scrutiny.  In terms of stage-fright self-sabotage, for me, this marked difference was HUGE. I have always painted in complete privacy… so it has not ever mattered how many mistakes I made or how long the process took…what mattered was the result on the canvas when it was ‘done’.  THEN I could step back and receive other’s opinions… but they were never opinions about the process… they were only opinions about the END RESULT.

While I do know that my genre of art is not for everyone, by the Grace of God I have always been blessed with much positive appreciation for my painted creations.  And it is this consistent appreciation of my paintings that has over time allowed me to stop being insecure about All the gifts of talent that I have been given, and my responsibility to use them for the purposes that they were given.

I have observed that as ‘the ground of being that you authentically own’ is gained in any area of life, it naturally spreads to other areas. My positive view of myself as a talented painter thus began to impact my self-confidence as a ‘musician with enough talent to be comfortable performing in public’. And amazingly, performing music publicly has become an increasingly positive experience, one that I am happy to lean into… with the vision of being ‘the best late-blooming’ musician that I am able to become. Of course I don’t expect to become a classically trained concert pianist. That’s not even my interest.  My goal with music is the same as with my painted artworks: to allow the Grace of God to use me as it will to give this world as authentic a body of beauty as I am able, in the time I am allotted to be here.

Practically speaking, yes, currently the level of my painting is far superior to my music making, and I understand that I’m playing a catchup game. That’s ok. I appreciate the wisdom of the ‘beginner’s mind’.

The main reason that I am publicly sharing these home recorded samples of my musicality is simply one of authenticity.  I’m a painter and a writer and a musician. As well as I am able, this is the whole me I’m giving you.

My Blessings to you!

David Kenyon Seacord