"It is not a mystical thing, however, it is obvious and practical and I think that what the performer does is to try to get to that point with every choice you make from the phrasing in a tune to the choice of tunes"
About this Quote
Kottke’s little demolition of “mystique” is a musician’s way of defending the sacred without turning it into incense. He’s talking about that elusive point performers chase - the moment when a piece stops being a sequence of correct notes and becomes a felt inevitability - and he refuses to romanticize it. Not mystical. Obvious. Practical. In a culture that loves the mythology of genius (the prodigy, the lightning bolt, the artist as conduit), Kottke drags the focus back to craft: the granular, almost invisible decisions that make an audience believe.
The intent is quietly corrective. He’s not denying magic; he’s relocating it. The subtext is: stop waiting for inspiration to arrive and start building conditions where it can’t help but show up. “Every choice” is the tell. Kottke frames performance as an accumulation of micro-commitments: phrasing isn’t decoration, it’s meaning. A tune selection isn’t logistics, it’s narrative and identity - what story you’re telling about yourself, your lineage, your mood, your night.
Context matters because Kottke comes out of a strain of American guitar culture where virtuosity can easily become a parlor trick. By insisting on the practical, he’s resisting the trap of technique-as-spectacle. The real flex, he implies, is coherence: aligning touch, timing, repertoire, and intention until the performance feels less like demonstration and more like conversation. It’s a bracingly democratic view of artistry: not everyone has to be “chosen,” but everyone has to choose.
The intent is quietly corrective. He’s not denying magic; he’s relocating it. The subtext is: stop waiting for inspiration to arrive and start building conditions where it can’t help but show up. “Every choice” is the tell. Kottke frames performance as an accumulation of micro-commitments: phrasing isn’t decoration, it’s meaning. A tune selection isn’t logistics, it’s narrative and identity - what story you’re telling about yourself, your lineage, your mood, your night.
Context matters because Kottke comes out of a strain of American guitar culture where virtuosity can easily become a parlor trick. By insisting on the practical, he’s resisting the trap of technique-as-spectacle. The real flex, he implies, is coherence: aligning touch, timing, repertoire, and intention until the performance feels less like demonstration and more like conversation. It’s a bracingly democratic view of artistry: not everyone has to be “chosen,” but everyone has to choose.
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| Topic | Music |
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