One Word Musicians Need to Let Go of (If They Want to Perform Freely) 🍂

In honour of my first letter to you in September... 🍂

Let me introduce you to one of my favourite underrated words:

Fallowing — from the verb fealwian, "to turn yellow-gold" in Old English.

In Anglo-Saxon language, fealo (fallow) is the golden-brown shade of fire and autumn leaves.

They fallow.

Then they fall.

(You thought 'fall' was just because the leaves are falling, didn’t you? Me too… language is funny like that.)

And it made me think...

Imagine if a tree tried to cling to every single leaf.

Year after year.

It would collapse under the weight of what it was never meant to hold on to.

But trees don’t do that.

They let go.

They trust that by releasing what’s no longer needed, they’ll make space for what’s next.

And musicians?

We often do the opposite.

We carry every should we’ve ever been taught.

You should always feel calm before performing.

You should never make mistakes.

You should be further along by now.

The list goes on.

Each one feels small on its own...

But together, they weigh us down until it’s impossible to play freely.

As you can imagine (and probably have first hand experience of)...

Confidence doesn’t grow when you add more “shoulds.”

It grows when you release the ones that no longer serve you.

So let me ask you this:

Which “should” are you ready to let fall this season?

(See what I did there? 🤭)

Hit reply and tell me — I’d love to know.

And yes, of course I promise to write back.

With warmth and music,

Gökçe 💙