You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Is ENVY The Thief of Joy?

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

Peter and Adam dive into the sticky topic of comparison and envy. We all feel it but what can we do about it? Join us in the discussion.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Adam. Yeah. Are you an independent adult or are you a dependent adult? I'm a strong independent dude. You are? Doing my thing, yeah. What about your hands? Are they independent of each other?

Not as much as I'd like them to be, honestly. Okay. That might come up today. Oh, good. I'm Adam Anis. And I'm Peter Mark. And you're listening to The You'll Hear at podcast. Music advice coming at you.

Coming at you. I realized, Peter, I just missed an opportunity to, like, quote, all the Adams that are independent, throw your hands up at me, you know? I could have. I could have been. You know, you throw these intros at me. No, full disclosure, we do not prep each other. Oh, they know.

They can tell. We don't even prep ourselves. It's whatever, it's weird, it's really modeled after the way that I think a great jazz improvisers, truly, solos. It's like, are you going to be open to the moments? It's something great happening. Well, it's funny you say we don't even prep ourselves because I feel like our modus operandi, our MO, if you will, is some.

It's an ebb and flow. So on occasions where there's no prep for anything. that we ever do. Yeah. On any platform. Prepless. Prepless. And then there are other occasions where there's a whiteboard full of

preppy tasks, ideas. Yeah. Get it? Criticism. Whiteboard. Preppy. Okay, keep going. And then we try that for a while.

And then we're just like, no, that doesn't work. Let's get no prep going back again. So, but yeah, I feel like everybody who is listening and watching fully understands. But it's such a, it really does remind me of that feeling of when you're soloing, and I don't always get to this, but I sometimes judge like, yeah, exactly. I judge, like, my readiness to really be in the moment if, when it gets to the beginning of my solo, like, if I have no idea what I'm going to play, and that I'm, like, confident that something will pop into my brain or pop out of my hands or whatever.

I don't even know how it happens. And then sometimes, you know, it's like you end up sort of falling back on something typical. I always disappoint myself when I do that. Even if it sounds good. That's an opportunity, though, to change course when you fall back on something typical. But you're right. The worst thing you could do is have some kind of grand plan for your solo. Right.

It's not going to go well. Yeah. So it's like don't have a grand plan, but also have a few things in your back pocket to pull out. And then don't judge yourself too much if you have to do that because the special moments, they're not special if they happen all the time. That's right. And then you get into that thing of trying to replicate it and then compare yourselves to other versions of yourself or other musicians or whatever, which we're going to be talking about. We're going to be talking about today. We've got a great speak pipe.

Some segue. I'm always a step in line. You're at least two steps ahead. What's happening, by the way? Two steps ahead. That's major thirds, buddy. Which is a bit of an Easter egg for another episode coming up here.

What's happening is, well, there's not going on in open studio. That's kind of what I was going to ask you about because I was out of town for just a couple days. And I saw it. I know we've got, oh wait, is this the week that Genius Chords warm-ups is coming out? this weekend, the weekend of June 15th, 2023, my new course for Open Studio Genius chord warmups

is coming out, which is really exciting because, you know, these are based on these little short warmups I've been doing on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok everywhere. Everyone's TikTok? Yeah, I am officially back on TikTok for some reason. Kind of it, you look like you appear to be a TikTok jazz star, which henceforth was not a thing, but now it is.

I don't know about that, but we've had a lot of great response to these specific warm-ups. And we've actually talked about these on the podcast, Peter. This is that thing that we do where it's like, you know, you can practice multiple things at one time, especially with something like an atude, which is what these really are. We call them warm-ups, but they're really short at-tudes to sort of like get your mind. They sound good. They do sound, well, that's the crucial thing about.

No one wants to play an atude that sounds bad. No. No, you want to play something that sounds good. So these warm-ups are sort of designed to get your musical brain moving to get your hands and your body warm to get you sort of ready to play the piano. And they're based on the most popular one and the classic one that we call the standard. Yeah. It's like you just take, you know, a diatonic seventh chords in any key.

Up and down, you know, and then you practice getting to those diatonic seventh chords. Secondary dominance to each one. And then we do different inversions. A little connecting the dots, perhaps. That open studio move, you know. practice tritone subs so then you can get just in different ways

to structure the voicing. It's great. So this is the genius chord warmups. It's not, I'm a genius at all. That's not what I wanted to ask you. Does the student become a genius and you're already a genius?

The student might. Or is the student already a genius and you're trying to teach up to the... You're missing the whole boat here. Who's the genius? The warmups of the genius part because they're dealing with like up to three or four things

in these one little, one, very simple, very easy to play. That makes sense because otherwise it would have been called geniuses with an apostrophe chord warrants. But it's not. It's genius cord war. So yeah. So if you're an open studio member, that's going to be on your dashboard this weekend.

Yeah. Enjoy it. Then let me know what you think about it too. Like hit me up. I know, like I've had so much positive feedback to these little individual ones. Yep. The course, I take you through all 12 keys literally. You know, because at the end of the other ones of the short ones, I'm always like, just take it through all 12 keys and you're good to go.

Well, in the course, we actually do walk you through 12 keys. Right. And you slow it down. full PDFs, e-book, the whole thing. Yeah, and so this is something that I don't know if you've noticed. We've been getting a lot of comments, a lot. We've been getting several comments, like, especially on the shorts, especially on your brilliant, your genius level shorts, where it's like, slow it down, whatever.

And, okay, we've got to explain something to the folks out. The two comments are, slow it down and where's the PDF? And that's what the course is. But this is not a bait and switch that we're doing. No. YouTube, and I think it's only YouTube, gives us a very strict. 59.9 seconds. Yeah, because we've made some exactly,

you can't do 60 seconds. No. You can do anything up to, like, literally, like if you go one frame above 60 seconds. They will not count it as a short. So we're trying to get a lot of information,

you know, and really kind of show, we rarely have time to go through all 12 keys, but there is a way to slow it down if you Google it. But you know what? I love this challenge.

It actually, like, you know, from a content creator standpoint, it reminds me a lot of when you get half a chorus to solo. You know, like you're playing in a, a more pop setting with a singer. You get half a chorus.

You got to shoot your shot. That's right. You don't want to overplay. You still want to build something. Restricted soloing. It is. And so these little shorts that we're making, because you know, we're used to making,

I'm used to making 20 minute long YouTube videos, 25 minute long lessons. So these little 60 second shorts are a fun way to try to get some really useful things in the short amount of time. And you are a master of it. But you know who's even more of a master? Why are you bringing this up?

Oh, because you're transitioning now to the episode. I have one more question about what's happened at Open Studio, because I unfortunately missed this. Let's put a pin in that, though, because I want to address that. It's definitely put in a pin in it. Okay. So we are doing a thing called mentor sessions now. Is that the permanent title? We like that title.

Yeah. Full disclosure. We stole that title. From, yeah. We're not going to talk about from where. Okay. Well, there you go. But it's a cool title.

It is. Right. But the idea is that once a week, the whole community gets together, the whole community, whoever wants to. It's not a requirement, but a lot of folks have been joining in live on Zoom

or some other kind of format that we have a choosy Zoom. But we gather together with one of our teachers often as you. This week it's actually going to be me, I believe on Friday.

But last week we've had Emma Cohen. We've had Fred Hurd, we've had a lot of different folks. Yeah, Taylor Ixte was just on one. We've had all of our, of course, all of our open studio teachers, Chris Parks.

And just some randos, too, though. Some randos coming in off the street. Well, Last week we had Warren Wolf. Warren did a great session. That's what I want to know about. On rhythm.

But he started off the session sort of giving his history. So for those of you don't know, Warren Wolf is probably one of the greatest mallet players walking around the earth right now. I mean, he undoubtedly is, right? Like he is such a great vibes player. But he's also a great pianist, bassist, drummer. He can play every instrument.

But he was a savant. Is that the correct usage of the term? He was a musical savant. He was definitely a prodigy when he was younger. And he talked about his upbringing a little bit, his sort of musical upbringing. So, you know, his father has.

had him practicing 90 minutes a day every day. And he would spend like 30 minutes on jazz, 30 minutes on classical, 30 minutes on like pop music and R&B and stuff like that. And he did that for years when he was a small child. And it's how you get to be warm. That's how you get to be. Consistency.

Yeah, and he's- Well, and you think about people, we talk about like practice, you must have practiced eight hours a day, you must have done this, that's fine. But better to practice 90 minutes a day every day for your whole life. I mean, that's a tremendous amount.

of practice, especially for a youngster. But think about it. Youngster. Okay, now, you know, I'm going to call out some parents today. Okay. Right now. Okay. Some of these young millennial parents.

Okay. I mean, I guess young parents now, parents of young kids are generally millennials. There are undoubtedly Gen Z parents. Well, that's true. That's happening now, too. I mean, just like, so we screwed up a lot of things in our generation as parents for sure. And there's, you want to know.

Well, the verdict's still out of you. That's true. So far so good. Big shout out to Heather. Yeah, exactly. But the idea that 90 minutes a day, how much screen time, TikTok time are these kids spending easily, on average? 90 minutes? Yeah.

So why can't you be practicing mallets and stuff? What a great time that we came up, Warren came up at a time when there wasn't those polls. And I know it's hard. But 90 minutes shouldn't be a lot of time to be practicing something that's engaging your brain and your spiritual side and your musical and your creative side. What a gift. I think the fact that you said spiritual side is something that is missing. in like the screen time that you just aren't getting. That I do think that...

And I get it. It's entertainment. They're not watching TV as much as we did. It's just so, you know, not to sound like... Listen, we're not going to be able to stop this, but it is so different. It is just a way... It's a different way to put your attention. The intensity of our attention on screens,

for us, not just our kids. Yeah. But even for us, is so much different. Like, do you remember the first time your spouse got a smartphone? And you were like, why are you staring at that thing so much and not looking at me. Right.

It's a different vibe. My spot still stares in me with loving eyes. Oh, lucky you. No, but... When I'm holding my phone up in front of me. Look at this, honey. It is, this is a whole other discussion,

but the sort of like, intensity level of our attention is totally different. And true for kids as well. Right. Oh, I just noticed something. Yeah. We have something, we have a beloved feature

that has resurfaced here on the You'll Hear podcast. Caleb Cam. Caleb Cam. Producer Cam. Let's see it. Oh, hey now. All right.

Easy come, easy go. No mic. Just a cam? No mic. He said, I'll translate. No mic. Thumbs up or thumbs down. All right.

Well, we look forward to leave us a comment on YouTube if you want to get some. Man, this is, we're not even in the introduction yet. I mean, we're not done with the internet. 11 and a half minutes in. We're still introducing. Okay. Just to let you guys know how this works. In our pre-production meeting that we occasionally have, Adam did tell me.

He's like, okay, if we don't get to the meet event, I'm going to mention something. I'm going to be checking the time. And you were. So that was good. I didn't do a very good job of steering us away from getting off track. No, listen, relevant discussions are fun. Of course.

A podcast should all be about. It's just, you know, and this is for another episode where we talk about YouTube comments. I think you should do an episode where we just address a lot of YouTube comments because it'd be fun. Do we get comments? Oh, we get lots of comments. But one of them is always like when people come into our YouTube videos thinking they're going to be tight tutorials. And it's just you and me BSing. for 25 minutes.

Like, get to the content. So much waffling. It's like the meat of the podcast is waffling. That's right. Well, so just to put a pin in the mentor session things, I'm looking forward to doing mine. I'm actually going to do it as a sort of structure. Sometimes we structure around a theme. Sometimes we do Q&A.

You had a fantastic Q&A. Look, these are always available too. Like if you can't, if you're a member and you can't join in live, it's right there, which is cool. It's fun to be there live because you can chat and kind of go back and forth and experience it. But I'm going to do mine on hand-dive. independence because I've been thinking about it. I've been getting a lot of, we're always getting questions about that. I think it's a little bit of a mysterious area. That's great. So we're going to

be talking about that. But it's just a fun thing. I get excited on Fridays. Yeah, the Friday mentor sessions are amazing. And those are for all open studio members, not just Open Studio Pro folks, but the entire Open Studio community. If you are a member, you can come to these Friday sessions. I know we have a lot of Open Studio members that listen to this podcast. So jump in tomorrow on Peter's Mentor session. And what is it? 2 p.m. Eastern. 2 p.m. Eastern. And look, we have a very special feature, too, because it's 2 p.m. on a Friday, a lot of folks work. So depending on what your time zone, if you're in, you know, the west coast of the U.S., it's earlier, Europe is later, Asia is much later. But we have a feature where if you want to kick off work early to watch the mentor session, to take off early from your job. We will write you a note authorizing it. Right, Caleb, we can do that, right. Is that thumbs up or thumbs down on that? Don't you say. Caleb will sign it as producer of said mentor session and deliver to your boss. That's right. And maybe we'll even have. have like, you know, we might have a certificate of completion. Yeah, all our open studio artists,

Ron Carter, Christian McBride, they'll all sign it. We'll forge it if we have to. But you like I like I went with maestro first. That's good because that's, that's always saying sure you need. I think that's the person that at their boss would seem like, okay. Okay, Brian Carter says it's okay. All right. So what are we talking about today? Are we going to listen to a speak pipe per time? Yeah, we've got a voice message from Mari here. So this is a speak pipe. This is what we speak into the pipe here. You can go to you'll hear it.com. And you can ask us a question.

This is from just a few days ago from Mari, and this is a very good question. Hello, I have a question for you guys about bitterness, because I wonder if you have any advice on how to deal with that in this quite competitive workforce when colleagues or friends are having more success than you at the moment. and it's not really a nice feeling to have and it's not really feeling that I want other people

to know that I have either. So thank you so much for your great podcast. I listen to it almost every day. See you. Yeah, Mari, that's totally common. You should know this idea of comparing yourself to others and how do I measure up. That's the human condition is what you're describing.

It's very, difficult to shake. And so you're not alone on this. Everybody deals with this feeling of like, well, why are they doing so well? And I wish I was doing this, this enviousness, this jealousy that can come up. It is totally natural. It's also called feeling jelly. That's how something a little jelly. Yeah, it's totally natural. It happens to literally everybody. If someone says they never feel like that, they're probably, or have never felt like that. They're likely lying because it just is part of our makeup as people. But there are some things that you can definitely do that,

especially, Mari sounds pretty young, I'm just guessing by her voice, but you and I were not super young and have been around the block on this for a while, and I'm assuming you've had to deal with these kind of things. I know, like, you've talked about when you were younger, your peers doing things that you wish you were doing. I've had the same feeling.

And even today, Marr, like, Peter was just razzing me a little bit about someone having a... 600,000 views short. So this happens even as we're making open studios stuff. Well, to be to be fair, somebody on open studio. Yeah. One of our artist, Chris McBride, has had a short that is our number one viewed video. And that used to be my spot with the sugar cords video. And so yeah, I compare myself to that. And there are healthy ways of using that feeling that you have. The first thing you want to do is to really not try to block that out. So you said, I don't want people to know that feeling. So you should,

understand people know that you have this feeling. Yeah. You can't fake not having it. It's hard to suppress and it actually makes it worse when you try to suppress it. So the first step for anything like this is to really try to feel that feeling and try to investigate that feeling. Like what does that feeling actually physically feel like the feeling of like this person is doing something I want to be doing or why am I not in the place I should be?

What does it actually feel like in your body? Yeah. This is like a mindfulness technique that's a, you know, been around forever cross-cultural is to just feel the feeling physically because that helps you to kind of put a place, put a location to it, put an actual feeling to it. And maybe pull a little bit of a power from it. You 100% pull power from it. That's why you do that is when you acknowledge it, when you accept it, when you try to feel your way through it, it takes away the sting big time. You don't ruminate on it. You don't swirl out. You don't get stuck

on that feeling of inadequacy or jealousy or envy or wanting to be somewhere you're not, which again is going to happen. It's never going to go away. It always happens. But learning to, first of all, be like, oh, there's that feeling. Of course, it's here again. This is why it would be happening. But you can actually use that as a little bit of motivation.

So when I think about Christian McBride passing me for Open Studios number one viewed YouTube video. Let me check. Oh, yep, yep, he's still there. By like 100,000 views. Thanks, bud. Thanks. No, I don't anymore.

I don't take that personally. Like, you have to realize that that feeling is, it can, you know, make a, become a personal attack on yourself where it's like, I am not good enough. I am not doing well. What is, that's not true. Like, what you're making is not, like, popping off at the same time as something else or someone else has nothing to do with you as a person. Right.

Right. So it really is not a personal thing for me. Now it's just like, okay, why does Christian McBride, why does he, why does that video doing so well? What can I learn from that, you know, and what can I do? What is it? Is it because of what he's teaching? Is it how he's teaching? It is the camera angles. It is the sound. Is it just because he's got a great vibe about him? That's probably it because he's such a, you know, charismatic person. So some of that stuff I can just accept as like, oh you know what like that's what is happening now I have my own thing I'm just gonna work on my own thing I'm gonna learn from this and move on but really what you don't want to do is just like trying to suppress the feeling and ignore it or

pretend like it's not there you know don't do that now that's such a I think a balanced and mature and honest way of dealing with it in a positive way what you just described specifically with how you do that and can be so beneficial to your growth and to your connection with something bigger. I mean, we talk about these concepts and it can get a little bit, you know, wishy-washy and like, oh, of course, we all want to be connected to something bigger. But we really can use these things. I was thinking about, you know, this can be, and first of all, big shout out to Mari

for asking this question and being honest. It sounds like she's really done that first step of like identifying this and even saying she doesn't want others to see this in her. So like she's sort of wanting to deal with this issue, I think for the right reasons it sounds like totally, you know. And as you said, if she's younger or whatever, certainly age can help. Yeah. But we also see a lot of bitter, not competitive. Age can also hurt.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, it's not, you can't just be like, oh, when I get older. It's like it gets easier to kind of get that mindset because you've just had experience with dealing with these things. But if you haven't been able to like go through the mechanics of doing it in a positive way, as you described, it won't. just automatically come, but you'll get more sets and reps and opportunities to try it. Anytime you feel it, use that as a rep. Use it as a practice session to practice like, oh, here's this feeling of bitterness again. I'm not going to let this, you know, grab me. I'm going to notice it.

I'm going to embrace it. I'm going to accept that it's here. And then I'm going to try to turn this into a positive, right? I'm going to try to spin this around into something that has positive momentum as opposed to bringing me down. Yeah. And I think at the sort of most macro level with this treating it as a positive would be sort of the yin and yang or the both sides of the coin you've got the envious or jealous kind of emotion but then you've

got the competitiveness like can you turn that envy into a positive sort of competitiveness and not competitiveness in terms of I want to beat them but I'm competitive to really produce something great to really grow myself so like when you said you're going to take and learn from Christians

thing Christian McBrides what is it about that And then how does it apply to you? Not how can I take him down or how can I imitate him or how can I use my envy to try to get better? But it's like, how can I actually look at that and be like, well, what can I apply to making my thing? Like that's such a mature way and potentially productive way at looking at something. You know, what it does is it turns it from I got to beat this person or I'm going to compete with them to this is inspiring me. Yeah.

For my own thing. Yeah. So I'm now inspired to like work on this thing or like I see. what they're doing, I'm inspired to get to that level. I'm going to, you know, but it doesn't mean that you have to, you know, again, want to try to compete with them or change yourself or say like, well, I'm not as good as them. None of that is true. Right. None of that is true. It's all circumstantial. It's all conditional. And so you can control some of those conditions. The first thing you control is how you react to these feelings. Yeah. And so if you try to stuff them down or if you try to

change yourself or beat yourself up for it, that is an endless, cycle, but if you work on and practice, and it is a practice. It doesn't happen overnight. No. But if you practice, like, maybe I can have some acceptance around this feeling. I'm going to feel like this. Yeah. We all feel like this. Yeah. I can still be me and I can use this as inspiration. Now I have, for me, I have 600,000 in my sites. Right. And that wasn't there a year ago. Oh, wait, let me see. Now, he's up to like 600. He's up to 630,000. It doesn't help that I have a friend like Peter. We're friends like me. Who needs enemies? No, but I'm fine with that because I'm like, oh, okay, well, here's something to shoot for. Like, I love this. This is great.

And also, I've just learned, because I have, you know, all the information about the video. Yeah. I'm learning a bunch of what can make a great video. Yeah. And I think that that, like, once we can connect ourselves to something bigger than, like the smallest way to look at what our potential, you know, artistic output and impact on the world could be is to just think about ourselves, right? And then you could go a little bigger and be like, well, I'm going to think about my trio or my group, or my company or my organization or my nonprofit or like, you know, in a family standpoint of just my smaller family. But then when you look at the bigger family, the cousins and the grandparents, and then you look at the community, the city that you live, and then you look at the country.

Like there's all these ways we can restrict ourselves, but the ultimate level is connecting with all of humanity potentially. But I think that even if we think of, say, within the jazz world, like, you've got like the pianists and then you've got like the New York cats or whatever. but like how do you get to the point where you're celebrating the success and really authentically being a part of that? Like because I can remember you would, you know, when I was coming up like different pianists, Eric Reed, Brad Meldow. I mean, these are all guys that are like my exact same age. Rini Rosasniss was already like established in New York when I got there, but she was somebody where I was like, damn. Like, and I used to think about it more like, I'm good.

How come I can't get to that? But then I would start comparing and we talk about, you know, comparison and jealousy and all these things. or the thief of joy. You can insert your whatever. Yeah. But the competitiveness is not necessarily a thief of joy. But envy is definitely the thief of joy. As long as the competitive is not embodied in you as a person, I'm bad because I didn't reach this.

Or I'm not good because I didn't do that. But when you start getting in that thing of like, I deserve this because I'm this, like, that's a dangerous place to be. And then you're always going to find comparisons where you can belittle somebody else and be like, well, they shouldn't have that because, and look, have I been accused and guilty of that for sure. Well, every human being has. Again, it's kind of a what we're hardwired to do in a sense, but there's a higher level to that, you know, whatever, however you want to get into this. But one thing that I'll just add for this when you really break this down is you're envious

of someone because of something you perceive to be happening for them that you want to happen for you. And why do you want this thing to happen? Because you think that you're going to be happier as a person or more fulfilled if you had that happen. But just know, too, there's someone looking at you right now that thinks that they would be happier. I would be so happy and fulfilled if I was just Peter Martin. You know what I mean? I would be so happy and fulfilled if I was Adam and had a sugar cords video or whatever. But that's obviously, it's just a never-ending, you know, hedonic treadmill that we can get on where we're just constantly spinning our wheels there. what happens is if you can again really work on the acceptance of your situation and this goes

musically what in life and business the acceptance of you and you're okay as you are then you get to have fun and then you get to you know then you can be competitive it has nothing to do with your value as a human you're still deserving of love and respect and you can just play and that's when you hear people like chick or herbie or amadjamal talk about music and the things they create, I get the sense that they are super comfortable with wherever they, and they always, not always happen. I know all of them were competitive against each other.

Of course, but it was not, like, you don't get the feeling that if Herbie lost the Grammy to Chick, he'd be like, well, I'm terrible. Right. Like, it's fun because, you know, they've realized that their worth is not based on these superficial, artificial, arbitrary results that we put on ourselves. But I know a lot of people are listening to this and say,

oh well chick korea herbie hancock herbie loses uh grammy to chick that's easy for them because they both won grammies they're at that top level of course it's easy to say but you don't get to that level they have that already yeah they are they are who they are because they have that and it's not because they have the grammies it's because at a certain point they they crossed over that rubicon of like i'm doing this and i'm going to be the greatest to like service right of like i have something to share why is herbie still why was chick career up until he passed. And big shout out Chickariah

who just had his birthday a couple days ago. Gemini in the house. But why is Herbie out here still playing? Why is Ron Carter out here still doing stuff when they don't have to? Because they're serving. They're serving community.

And they get joy out of that. Their prize is to be able to know that, first of all, they're having fun what they're doing, not because they're like, I'm competing against whoever, but because, and look, Ron Carter, it could have stopped competing along.

time ago if he's just thinking about that against other bass players but it's kind of like how do you serve there's a there's a there's a quote i don't know who this is from i'm forgetting now sorry for not giving it um it's proper due but you play stupid games you win stupid prizes that's right you know what i mean so like once you're you're really trying to to be envious and competitive at a small level you're going to win you might win but it's going to be a small prize once you start to think bigger about things then you can win some great prizes which is like this that joy of and satisfied of serving and helping others, if that's through entertaining, if that's through teaching, if that's through whatever, through uplifting. So I look at like the jazz community as like

any time something great happens, I'm a part of that. And it's fun then. You know, it's like, I don't have to be the one playing. I know when it's my time to get up there and play. I got to serve and I got to deliver, but sometimes it's going to be somebody else. Sometimes it's going to be somebody younger. That's a great thing. That means that the humanity that comes from this music is going to continue, and we can all celebrate that. And there's no external accomplishment that you can achieve that's going to make you feel that way. Right. It's, it comes from within. Right. Right. Like, and you can, Mari, the good news is you can have this right now. Like that feeling you think you will get if you are on top of the mountain. Yeah. You can already

achieve that feeling with acceptance of where you are. And then you get to shoot for the top of the mountain with ease. Right. And I'll just say one, you know, I'm just, I'm just kind of putting this together. I'm glad we talked about this. But Jeff Kieser is another pianist that we're about the same age. And when I was coming up, I was definitely, like, envious of. Yeah. Because, you know, he got the gig with Art Blakey. I wanted that gig. Yeah.

Got the gig with Betty Carter. So a lot of pianists that are envious of Jeffrey Cesar. Ray Brown. Yeah. Yeah. Which I did play with Ray once. And, but the idea of, like, it continues on potentially forever. Like, Jeff Keiser just won his first Grammy as, as his, you know, for his own project.

And I didn't think about it until just now, but I'm a little bit like. It's a little surprising. Well, it's not, it's surprising that he, Yeah, that it's happened. But I also was just like, wow, I remember when that happened, I was just like, I want to do that. I wasn't at all envious, but I was a little competitive in terms of like, I want to try to get a Grammy. But it's another one of those not stupid, stupid game, stupid prizes, but like, not necessarily for that. But like, I want to have my work out there where it would be considered in that way.

So it inspired me in a way that I think is really positive. It's like keep making music, keep putting your stuff out. The prize is not the Grammy. I meant it was surprising that he had won one until now. Right. Not that it's surprising that he got one. Totally. Well,

well, this was great. Thanks, Mario, for the great question. Yeah, thank yourself for putting yourself out there for something that we all deal with on different levels and that we need to talk about more. A very courageous voicemail left. And just, you know, at the end of the day, just be kind to yourself first and foremost as you're going through this because it's hard for all of us. That's right. Until next time.

You'll hear it.