Chapter 4

The interview 

4.1 In dialogue with students about specific topics

Throughout the material I presented before I used quotes from the reports I keep from the conversations I have with students that contact me. In addition to that, I invited students that contacted me in the period between November 2018 and February 2019, to do a structured interview. I was interested in a direct response on the topics that reflect the main issues I distilled from the work I did until that moment and compare students from several schools/departments or performing /creating artists (see supplement 1: Topics for interview). Therefore I decided to construct a list of 10 questions and present it to all the interviewees (see supplement 2: Interview questions). I invited the students by e-mail so it would not directly affect our meetings; they could decide to take part in the interview by taking a look at the questions I sent along with the invitation. In the e-mail I also informed them about how their response would be used in the research. With the students that agreed (all of them responded in a positive way but in two occasions there was no interview in the end) there was a conversation of about 45 minutes, based on the questions. In total I interviewed 14 students (see figure 3) and the interviews were recorded so I had time to focus on the conversation. Afterwards I summarized their response in one or two sentences for each question (see supplement 3: Response on interview questions). To ensure anonymity, every detail in the response that could lead back to a specific student was left out. After the draft of my thesis was available, I mailed it to the interviewees so they could decide if the final version of the interview was a fair representation of their opinion about the topics given during the interview.

Figure 3: Overview of gender, age, department and school of the interviewees

4.2 Comments that stand out from the perspective of my research

The comments I received during the interviews (see Supplement 3:  Response on interview questions) focus around the topics presented below. Responses that were surprising are added separately below each category.

How does the problem affect your work/ playing?

·      I do less work / I procrastinate / I cannot sing.

·      Having less focus / It narrows my horizon.

·      Feeling vulnerable.

But also:

·      It made me write a lot of material though so I also got something out of it.

How did you deal with it?

·      Depressive thoughts and anxiety

·      Being passive / Make things perfectly and please other people.

·      I couldn’t stand ground / I went too far and got an injury.

·      I couldn’t talk, I was thinking in loops / Talking about it really helped.

But also:

·      Some believe to be creative you have to struggle.

How important is your work/ playing as a way to express yourself?

·      Expressing myself into music is easier / A way to externalize instead of talking / I’m thinking with my hands.

·      It helped me to connect to my feelings / I write my own lyrics that are personal. They contain wisdom that is still hard to achieve in my own thinking / When I am truly motivated and passionate about a project it is most likely because it is a very personal project.

·      I’m in the process of expressing myself more.

But also:

·      Never thought about this.

·      I perform as a character. I tell a story and express my creativity.

How much is saying what cannot be verbalized or speaking directly a theme in your work/ playing?

·      I don’t need to use words; with my playing I can go deeper / I personally feel it speaks better than my words because I am more of a visual person rather than an audio person / I go further in my lyrics it’s easier to express myself that way. The things I say I can portray in music / It’s easier to speak through my viola than with words.

·      Recently I wrote lyrics with autobiographical elements to a song. I performed it and I got a lot of positive feedback.

But also:

·      You don’t need to express anything.

·      When I couldn’t play I lost the option to express myself through my instrument but I learned to talk.

Does your talent feel like an obligation?

·      More like a choice, not as an obligation.

·      No I want this myself / From myself to myself.

But also:

·      In our times you have to be ambitious. We are expected to do well.

Do your parents have a connection with art?

·      My mother played the piano and my brother painted / My mother was interested / She herself was painting / My mother did art academy / My mom signed me up for drawing classes and an acting class / My mother wanted to be a singer.

But also:

·      My dad was a guitar player.

·      They both like figurative art.

·      My mother allowed me to play with her pupils and my father accompanied me on piano.

Did your parents affect your artistic development?

·      My mother tells me: ‘you play very beautiful’ / My mother helped and stimulated me / My mother stimulated me / My mom signed me up for a few art classes / My mother in particular was encouraging / I also was listening to my mother’s singing /My mother supported me doing art courses.

But also:

·      If I pointed at a guitar he [father] already bought it.

·      My father played music.

How much is connecting to your fellow musicians/ audience while performing/ creating important for you?

·      I’m able to say what I want and enjoy being in the moment more.

·      Sometimes this leads to a great experience; it helps dealing with yourself.

·      When I open up I play better.

·      Having success is also something that affects me.

·      I love talking to my audience before I perform.

But also

·      Under stress it is difficult to connect to my fellow-musicians.

·      It only works if those people are sensitive.

·      It’s hard to receive appraisal.

·      I hate it when people play in a predisposed way.

And also:

·      In composing it takes away my freedom if I connect to the audience.

·      I have to deal with selling my design without becoming a pleaser.

·      I have it more with the musicians I compose for; we create together. I use their specific sound.

·      I always think about what people think, and I was obsessed with making it good. Now I try to work without worrying, be more spontaneous and taking a risk.

How much is connecting to yourself while playing/performing/creating important for you?

·      This is where the problems started; I didn’t have a good connection with myself / I find that hard to do.

·      While practicing it’s more difficult to connect to myself.

·      In the way I was taught it didn’t seem important.

·      I need to find this balance. In the past I lost the connection to myself.

·      First to myself and then to the audience, being in my body.

·      My work should be something about me and about what I feel.

But also:

·      What does ‘connecting to yourself’ mean?

4.3 Analysis of the data and discussion

The students that took part in the interview mainly contacted me because the problems they deal with interfere with their work/playing. Of course, there might be students that struggle with problems or vulnerabilities but don’t look for help. Some of them even may be convinced - like one reaction stating - that their struggles help them to be productive. The overview (see figure 5) shows that more female students are contacting me, compared to male students. This seems to go along with my experience through the years. It supports my impression that female students find it easier to reflect and ask for help. The age of the respondents represents the average age in both schools, al students are in their twenties.

The interviewees obviously struggle because of their problems, or tend to use coping behaviour - with negative side effects - dealing with them. Most students mention having negative thoughts, feeling vulnerable or becoming passive with a negative effect on their productivity. Some however decided to talk to someone. In the end all of them decided to contact me.

Seeing their work/playing as an opportunity to express seems to be important for most of them regardless background, with examples like: the ability to be personal, writing their own lyrics, creating a character. At the same time performing musicians mentioned about the opportunity to express: ‘Never thought about this, but I do have an opinion about how the music should be played’ and: ‘You don’t need to express anything’, which surprised me.

Surprisingly most interviewees don’t see their talent as an obligation. Either they internalized the obligation (‘it’s me who wants this’), or there is no obligation. In case there is an obligation, having to face friends back home was mentioned but it could also come from their parents since they were all affected or stimulated by them. The outcome however suggests that the parents mainly had a positive effect. All parents were interested in art or doing art, there was music around, they were going to museums or they were offered the opportunity to take lessons. Many interviewees mention their mother as a direct influence but like mentioned above, most of the responses came from female interviewees.

Connecting to the audience seems to be important, especially for the performing musicians, except that opening up for appraisal can make them feel vulnerable. For artists who create on their own, the connection to the audience can also make them feel they are turned into pleasers, which puts in danger the connection to themselves. A student composition however mentioned that she creates with the musicians she writes for using their specific sound. Connecting to fellow musicians while performing is considered important for musicians but more difficult to do when they are stressed.

Most interviewees seem to agree that it is important to connect to themselves but also hard to do at times. Like in connecting to the audience, there seems to be a difference between performing artists and creating artists in how they tend to translate being connected to themselves. Some of them see being connected to themselves as being genuine. Some are surprised by the question, or realize they were not taught like that. Some tend to translate it in a physical way, mentioning injuries and ‘being in my body’ as being connected to themselves. These and other responses like ‘believing in yourself’ suggest a relation to the vulnerability of facing an audience. From that perspective it is not surprising, that all of the comments above come from performing musicians. Does the fact that some respondents perform someone else’s music play a role in their ideas about being connected to themselves (or as mentioned above about music as an opportunity to express)?

In general the outcome of the interviews didn’t come to me as a surprise, it seems to confirm what I observed throughout the years listening and talking to the students that contacted me. Of course the relevance of the data is limited, there is a limited amount of students, they are from different departments and from different schools. Compared to the topics I was interested in (see supplement 1: Topics for interview) I was hoping to find more evidence of examples of arrogance, pleasing the audience and destructive entitlement playing a role in their work/playing. Maybe this needs another approach or it takes different questions. Evidence for speaking directly was less obvious when it concerned musicians. In the few examples I have from interviews with students from art school, speaking directly seems more obvious to them, certainly if I also take into consideration my conversations with them in general. The interviews made me realize that different forms of art require their own specific way of dealing with the connection to the other (fellow-musicians or audience) and connection to yourself. For creating artists, being a pleaser seems to be the worst that can happen. Maybe if you play someone else’s music, why would you worry about being connected to yourself? Even a Jazz musician can focus on chords, scales, licks and sound instead of being connected to himself. Singers maybe take a special position in regard to being connected to the audience and to themselves, almost like playing a role in theatre. They cannot hide behind their instrument. This is also reflected in their response during the interview.

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