I co-led an hour-long seminar this summer on the business side of being a composer.\u00a0 We covered a lot of topics: commissions, publication, recordings — the works.<\/p>\n
At one point, I mentioned what a small world it is, despite appearances.\u00a0 We keep running into the same people over and over in different contexts, and the way you treat people when you are young will almost certainly have an impact on your future.<\/p>\n
The quick and easy answer to this situation is to always treat everyone with respect and grace, which seems like a wise rule to follow in any interaction.<\/p>\n
But what to do with people for whom you feel little respect, once you get to know them? \u00a0Should respect be paid when you feel it is undeserved?\u00a0 Is insincerity the right path?<\/p>\n
Those are questions I wonder about from time to time. \u00a0My default is to assume ignorance — ignorance on my part, that is.\u00a0 I always figure there must be something I\u2019m not aware of, some aspect of a person\u2019s life that makes him who he is, that makes the way he behaves make sense, even though my first reaction to his behavior may be dismay.\u00a0 In other words, when I encounter someone whose character or music I find disturbing or uninteresting, I tend to attribute it to differences in background and expectations.<\/p>\n
With 7.5 billion people on this planet, it stands to reason I won\u2019t understand some of them.\u00a0 In fact, it\u2019s easy to imagine that I would understand very few of them.<\/p>\n
So I find it relatively easy to show respect to people even when their actions are at odds with my beliefs.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t work 100% of the time, but in the world of human interactions, what does?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I co-led an hour-long seminar this summer on the business side of being a composer.\u00a0 We covered a lot of topics: commissions, publication, recordings — the works. At one point, I mentioned what a small world it is, despite appearances.\u00a0 We keep running into the same people over and over in different contexts, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1129,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions\/1129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}