Best Present Ever!

Rafa's eight finals in Rome! After a very fierce performance on clay, his happy hunting ground, beating Berdych with straight sets, Rafa will be in another final on clay. Super comeback ever. Love this guy forever.

 

www.atpworldtour.com

Mediocrity Trap

One of the strongest trap exists in this world is mediocrity. Because it's actually not a bad thing, but it's keeping you from giving or doing your best. 

Tonight I had to cancel a concert by two international artists who will guarantee top quality performance because the priority is given to (1) local soloist and (2) local community of musicians. 

All rubbish, of course.

After years of working hard to present good quality performance to public, this is really upsetting, and I felt like experiencing a huge setback. Why is quality never the first, and foremost aim? Why do we have to compromise all the time? When are we going to achieve excellence when we always have other considerations beside quality?

Now I wouldn't be so upset if those two reasons above is valid. 

First, about local soloist. Honestly, I don't have any grunts about local players. I work with them a lot, and some of the amateurs I know are the most promising musicians with great talents, strong motivation and solid idealism who, I believe, will be the future of Indonesian classical music scene. But in this case, I had to give the priority to one particular local soloist who is not good but wants to be paid as professional because he claims himself so. A claim only he himself made, because as far as I know, nobody I met ever admits his quality as a classical musician. Tough luck mister, but that's just the reality. And this leads to invalidation of reason no. 2. The committee president (with whom I work, who made this decision) said that by bringing this one particular person to the festival, we are serving the community of musicians who will come to see him. It's ironically hillarious, because actually people knew his reputation as a boring player and how is that supposed to attract many audience? If you want to get more people to come, why not bring all other local talents who will surely play better and have more supporters?

And that's the trap. If you don't put quality on top of your list, if you make decision based on other things, then all you get is mediocrity. It's bad because you don't realise that it's happening until you find yourself surrounded by all things middling, second-class, and merely passable, while others are getting the best out of this world. 

Be careful. Be very careful.