Hello All,
I recently was part of a mission trip to Guatemala, and we stayed at Lake Atitclan in Panachel at a mission house. As the only whistler (musician?) among the 24 attending, I did not want to tire people, so I played my Tommy CPVC Bb sparingly and out on the yard. Yet several people came by with happy smiles and said, “Thanks, Kelly! You play MUCH better than you used to!”
…so, I want to ask, how bad did I stink before??
no you don’t … just smile and thank them
As bad as we all did when we started. Thanks to the patience, endurance and goodwill of the ones surrounding us we get to practice and get better. Never forget to thank them for that !
It’s better then when you play something that you deem a personal embarrassment and some twit comes up gushing about how good ya sounded.
Thanks for the encouraging replies! Actually, I found the comments in Guatemala humorous; how we sometimes give backhanded compliments without really meaning to.
I thought you all might be amused. Has anyone else received backhanded compliments like this?
No backhanded compliments. My family goes straight for the jugular. I often wonder about compliments and comments. One of the things specific to music that I think is that there are not a lot of musicians out there like there used to be. There always used to be someone in a neighborhood who was learning an instrument and before air conditioning most of the nearby neighbors got to hear the progress. So I don’t think that non-musicians know what goes into playing an instrument and they don’t know what to say. They only know fully produced store bought music and not homemade music. That’s sad.