Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

It’s a mistake to assume that people who are standouts in their field were destined to become the stars we know now.

The route we take to the work we like best may involve twists and turns. A final destination may not be clear at the beginning of the journey.

Take Burt Bacharach. The songwriter and composer is taking to the airwaves to hawk his new autobiography, Anyone Who Had a Heart: My Life and Music.

He got his start in music when his mother pushed him to study piano. With a background in classical music, he studied composition with Darius Milhaud, a French composer.

Students at the time were writing “extreme” music. Avant-garde stuff that was hard on the ears was all the rage.

At the end of a semester, he played with some trepidation the second movement of a piano piece he’d composed. It was melodic, rather than dissonant. Afterward, his professor told him to never be afraid of something with a melody. “Never be afraid of something you can whistle,” is how Bacharach remembers it, according to an interview with NPR.

Now imagine if Professor Milhaud had not been so encouraging and open-minded. Perhaps the world would have missed out on more than 70 top 40 hits like “That’s What Friends Are For,” “(They Long To Be) Close To You,” and “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.”

Had Bacharach ignored his instincts which drew him to catchy tunes, he might have become just another obscure modern composer. An angst-filled one at that.

The lesson? Listen to your inner voice.
 
Source: NPR, Burt Bacharach: ‘Never be afraid of something you can whistle.’

Photo credit: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration