The lute player knows how to play. He sings well and has fine clothes. But he still trembles when he walks on stage. He understands music, but he doesn't understand what a crowd is. He doesn't know what shouting means or what ridicule is. He doesn't know what anxiety is — whether it's his doing or someone else's, whether he can stop it or not. So if the crowd praises him, he leaves the theater all puffed up. But if they make fun of him, he deflates like a punctured balloon.
So the lute player knows how to play, sings well, and has a fine dress, and yet he trembles when he enters on the stage; for these matters he understands, but he does not know what a crowd is, nor the shouts of a crowd, nor what ridicule is. Neither does he know what anxiety is, whether it is our work or the work of another, whether it is possible to stop it or not. For this reason if he has been praised, he leaves the theatre puffed up, but if he has been ridiculed, the swollen bladder has been punctured and subsides.