Reliability
This post is part of a series discussing how to build trust in artistic practice, allowing artists to create artistic experiences that stand in the gap of ideological, cultural, and social differences and reaffirm our connection to our shared humanity. This series uses the acronym BRAVING from Brené Brown as a set of tools to understand the anatomy of trust and how we can best apply it to a variety of musical settings; previous posts in the series will be listed below:
The next element of trust in the BRAVING acronym is Reliability. Oftentimes when we think of reliability in music our first thought goes to preparation for performances and teaching commitments. If you are reliable, you show up on time, you are well prepared, and you are a cordial and professional colleague. This sense of reliability comes from an outside projection; a transaction between an institution and an artist that makes it more likely to find continued work. This sense of professionalism is important, but I believe that finding trust through reliability also necessitates a more introspective look. Finding internal reliability though is difficult, especially if we have learned habits from the external understanding of reliability that can occasionally be directly contradictory to actions we need to take to find our own internal reliability.
Before digging in, I think it’s important to talk about how elements of BRAVING relate to one another. As we move through the anatomy of trust as a lens through which to examine artistic practice we will see that these elements do have some occasional overlap. While some of our artistic practices may overlap with more than one element of BRAVING, each element is a unique and critically important facet to developing a holistic artistic practice grounded in trust. Every element is distinctly powerful in its own right, but when they all work together, the resulting degrees of self and interpersonal trust are strengthened.
Brene Brown defines reliability as follows: “You do what you say you’ll do. This means staying aware of your competencies and limitations so you don’t overpromise and are able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities.”
This statement is something a younger version of myself needed to hear. In fact, I only began to understand how important reliability is to artistic practice a couple of years ago during my doctorate degree. Like many people studying music, I prided myself on being able to stay extremely busy. We are trained to just say yes to everything in order to find exposure and experience and so I did not know how to say no to any opportunity.
Now with the benefit of hindsight, I am amazed that it took me nearly ten years of full-time musical study to realize that my concept of reliability, someone who could always be counted on for gigs and teaching opportunities, was actually the exact opposite of internal reliability grounded in trust. Perhaps the reason it took so long for me to come to this realization was that I became very good at this juggling act, so much so that my teachers would comment on how busy I was and how impressive it was that I was staying on top of everything. That facade came crashing down when a wonderful teacher told me that she actually thought I was doing too much and my work was suffering for it. Only then did I realize what a burden I was putting on myself. While I was staying above water (barely), the quality of my artistic work was suffering. On top of that, I wasn’t giving myself any time for exploration, to figure out what truly mattered to me in the work I was doing. Every performance I gave was good, but everyone was short of the standards I set for myself, and I was always ready with an excuse for why that was other than “you took on too much.”
The first time I said no to a musical opportunity, I felt guilty and inadequate. I felt that I was letting people down by choosing not to offer my time and talents as a gift. However, that choice gave me more time and attention to devote to preparing for my last degree recital and teaching. When it came time to present that recital, I was able to see how that choice to prioritize and not overpromise paid off. I was most proud of how I was able to learn more during the preparation, show up more fully from an emotional standpoint in the recital, and more authentically deliver the experience I wanted the audience to have. When we set priorities in our work and learn to say no, we unlock deeper investment and learning in the activities to which we say yes. We can give more physically and emotionally to those activities and show up as our whole artistic selves more consistently.
It’s also worth examining reliability in the physical sense when thinking about our bodies and the physical demands of playing our instruments or singing. I’ve been encouraged to see the growth in concern for musician’s health over the past decade, but all too often, we still hear stories of musicians, especially young ones, playing through pain and sometimes doing irreversible damage to their bodies, either due to lack of awareness or because they are being forced to by the demands of a job or education. Finding reliability in our bodies necessitates developing strategies for practicing and performing that encourage freedom and openness, and also recognizing what artistic situations and experiences create tension within us and figuring out why that occurs. The knowledge that we can rely on our bodies and perform without tension or pain takes diligent practice to cultivate; however, the tradeoff is the self assurance that you will deliver a performance that focuses on artistic connection and not managing pain.
Reliability comes from the Latin word “regliare” which means to bind or fasten together. I find it particularly illuminating that at its core the origin of the word reliability and our understanding of it both in ourselves and between us and other people is grounded in connection. Reliability is key to building relationships through artistic experience, especially through work in community engagement.
In recent history, community engagement work has been epitomized by the one-off concert, and if we are going to transcend the standard definition of community engagement in our field and build artistic experiences that affirm our connection to our shared humanity, we need reliability. The one-off model, in which organizations typically send a group of musicians to perform single engagements for an audience not reached by their standard programming, does not promote trust and continuous engagement between artists and communities. Instead of building pathways for social connection, the one-off model promotes the idea that the art is being brought as a gift to those communities who don’t have access to it. This treats art and culture as a commodity rather than a vehicle for building more equitable and inclusive societies.
Building reliability, and by extension trust in community engagement work, means going back again and again to provide programming in which the community has creative agency and ownership. The repetition of the programming is critically important because relationships grounded in trust and authentic connection are inspired through continuously showing up. Only through repeatedly meeting with communities can we learn about their lives and what values, hopes, and concerns they have which we can address through the cocreation of art. If we just show up one time to present our art, the message conveyed is that our motivation is to share art with a community because it should make their life better, not sharing art as a means to create meaningful dialogue and connection.
While continually showing up is the first step to building reliability in community engagement, how you show up is also critically important. Our agenda as artists in community space and our transparency about that agenda is foundational to creating the mutual trust necessary for meaningful dialogue and connection. If we seek to create those spaces of mutual trust through art, we need to be clear that our purpose in community engagement is not transactional, but instead relational. We are there to create and hold a safe space for dialogue and connection and our art-making is a vehicle for that. We must bring our whole artistic selves into the space and listen louder than we perform.
By listening louder than we perform and coming to artistic spaces with the intention to create meaningful dialogue and authentic connection, we create the reliability necessary for mutual trust. With that trust, we can also begin to ask for reliability from those who are participating in the art. Much like trust, we cannot ask for something we do not have, but we should not feel shame in asking participants to also reliably bring themselves to the space, whether that be a community engagement event, a performance, or a lesson. We can be self-assured in the value of our work and as long we set the intention of cocreating its value with the participants and reliably show up to do the work. Only with that intention and follow through, can we expect the same reliability from the audience, students, and participants we work with.
