Excellence

So I was looking at this site on shamanic song, and I see it has a very typical feature of a lot of neopagan/new age thought. At some point it's talking about how you too can sing shamanic songs. So it goes into this whole deal about how you don't need any musical aptitude, it's just like toning, it's about the sound, not necessarily sounding beautiful or anything.

OK, so on the one hand, I get the basic idea here. People have a lot of hangups about singing and such, particularly because nowadays it's seen as restricted to professionals, that kind of thing. So I can get behind anything to get people out of that. What I can't get behind though is the other side of it. People never get beyond this. Well, I mean I'm sure some do, don't get me wrong. But you never see anything like, you don't need to worry about musical training, refinement will come with practice.

I mean, I'm sorry, but shamanic song isn't like toning, all about the sound. In general, though not in all cases, shamans or their analogs are excellent singers, knowers of epics, and so on. In other words, they're striving for excellence, not just bellowing whatever happens to come out of their mouths. Even with toning, I don't understand the whole, it doesn't have to be beautiful. I mean of course I do, to get past that initial, OMG I can't do that no I'll never make a cool sound! I get that it's not necessarily about making cool sounds. But then, I mean, OK, you're going, I'm gonna tone to balance my chakras.

If you're making a sound that's just going all over the place and all, that you yourself find just not pleasing, are you really likely to start doing it to balance yourself on a regular basis? I really don't think so. I really wish that more people considered the "it doesn't have to be ..." statements as initial things. It's ridiculous to not do it because you won't be excellent right out of the gate. But I think it's also equally ridiculous not to try to improve and all. Of course, not every sound you make will be beautiful. If you're say, immitating a bear, I don't think people are going to go "wow, make that beautiful sound some more!" I mean, it's a growling thing, it's just not something we typically think of as beautiful, not that it's not cool in and of itself.

I think this also comes from the idea that everybody should be able to do anything. While I'm a huge fan of this, it's not like it works in all cases. I mean, I absolutely think that everybody should be given the knowledge and a crack at trying it and all the help in the world at getting it right. But I mean, look, let's be honest with ourselves. I might want to be a glassblower, but that doesn't mean I necessarily have the aptitude for it. And really, I don't think that's a bad thing at all. That's why we have some people who are professional glass artists, and some who aren't. It's OK to not be able to do every single thing you set your hand to. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. Look at it in connection with what we started with. If everybody's a shaman, why have shamans? I mean, if I'm a mechanic, why would I go to somebody else to fix my car? Maybe if I didn't have time or something, but otherwise, hey, I can fix my own car, what do I need you for?