Hide Your Brilliance Under a Bushel

“It is good to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous, to love what you are doing and not to show off.”

We live in an age that asks every professional to be a brand, to make the persona, the self, as, or even more important, than the task or service being done. It’s like a constant visible proof of brilliance. Against all of that, Krishnamurti's line lands like cold water: it is good to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous, to love what you are doing and not to show off.

In music and performance, we believe that everyone in a room can feel the difference between someone playing for the music and someone playing for applause. There is a particular freedom in being anonymous inside your own work. There comes to mind the session musician laying down a perfect bass line that no listener will ever credit, the accompanist whose entire art is to make someone else sound better, the player in the back of the section. These people often have a relationship with music that the spotlight-hungry soloist never gets to taste, because they are not using the music to be seen.

Krishnamurti pairs anonymity with loving what you are doing, and the pairing is the whole point. When you genuinely love the work, the need to be recognized for it loosens its grip. The love - the doing - is the reward. The showing off is what we substitute when the love has been crowded out by the hunger for status. One is full. The other is always starving. One comes from a source of honesty and the feeling is of sharing. The other is a selfish attempt that feels artificial and negative in the long run.

We’re not against being seen, or not pretending the industry does not run on visibility. But we’ve noticed that the best playing, performance and results happen when we forget to be impressive — when I am, for a few minutes, anonymous even to myself, just loving the thing at hands. That is the brilliance worth having. It does not need an “external witness”.

Reference: Krishnamurti, Think on These Things

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