When I have one of those recurring memories that play like a short film, it can stop time. One that plays often is a short of my life as a child in the Philippines. My father was teaching me to ride a bike. It was a cool evening, almost dusk, and when he finally let go of the seat, a surge of excitement overtook my child brain. It was pure joy. Me, the wind before the storm, and my wild imagination taking me to places that my bike never could.

My dad had to let go of the bike for me to get there.

A few years ago a Young woman wrote to tell me she would like to visit with me at an upcoming performance in New York City. Whenever I’d play there, she’d always stop by to say hello. She sent CDs of her music hoping I would listen to them before we saw each other again. After the show, she approached me and asked if I had a chance to listen, soliciting my honest opinion; I knew she had come hoping  that I would share some arcane secret to better performance or composition. Instead I shared something infinitely more important with her. I shared insight by having a frank discussion about my approach to viewing my own work, something passed down me in a Book by one more brilliant, and prolific than I.

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them. – Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. – Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I had just finished re-reading Letters to a Young Poet before my trip to New York. It’s an epistolary of 10 letters written by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, to a student who had asked Rilke for an honest critique of his work. Inside are living, astonishingly personal revelations of the struggles, and successes of this amazing poet’s life. They contained themes that were essential tethers to the development of his own work over time. Could I ever say anything to her that could inform her more completely than this book that expressed everything I felt, but lacked the ability to express?  I gave her my only copy.

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. – And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. – Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I could think of no greater gift at that moment than sharing the richness, and timeliness of expression, of one of my favorite poets, writing to a young man who asked of him all the questions she had asked of me. All the questions I had asked of my mentor. I knew if she read the book and read my notes therein, she would see that even now, I struggled with all of the questions she had asked me to answer, as did the owner before me, as did RM Rilke and his protege.

The passing of this torch was a seminal moment as far as I was concerned, but her face filled with an almost unbearable disappointment. I held the book between us, her hands on the other end, and said, “After you’ve read it . . . call me and then we’ll talk about your work.” I secretly hoped that after she read it, she would realize that there was no need to call because what matters most is writing for yourself; learning to wrest from deep within those hidden motifs, modes of expression, that many of us have spent years trying to bury in an effort to “grow up”.

My dad let go of that bike, trusting I had everything I needed to maintain my balance and spare myself serious injury. I can only imagine what feelings he had, watching me pedal like there was no tomorrow, watching me gain distance, unassisted. I never realized until now, that it was probably as seminal a moment for him as it was for me.

I never heard from her again.

Letters to a Young Poet is available online, or if you prefer a copy of a book you can touch and feel, at Half.Com for as low as $1.75 (my favorite place for used books!) I urge any artist, in any discipline, who hasn’t read it already to do so.