A True Poem

Welcome, dear students!

It's new year's eve, and everybody's talking about it....including me, it seems.  This is, perhaps, a little silly, since today really just feels like another new day, and it will come and go as winter days do (but with extra bluster here in Denver....gusts over 60 MPH, they say).  Everyone feels a certain urge to take stock of things -- which my astrologically minded friends might say has more to do with Saturn frowning down at us little earthlings as we labor under the influence of Capricorn than it does with the somewhat arbitrary turning of the year.  But, who am I to fight this influence....as you all know, I seldom turn down a chance for some good reflection.

2011 was turbulent, violent, and downright frightening at times.  Revolutions and disasters and deaths of prominent people seemed almost commonplace.  Hope and fear have danced wildly, as it seemed like every day brought news of some new financial resolution or disaster for the global market.  I remember frequently thinking to myself, "Is every year this eventful?  Why don't I remember anything like this before?"  And, it could be that my own state of affairs as a person finishing a terminal degree (in other words, coming to the end of my last journey as a student to academia's never-never-land) is the cause of my take on 2011 -- I am certainly guilty of being mostly out of the loop on world events when my own little life has me otherwise occupied, and maybe a part of me is just waking up to what everyone else has been saying for years.  However, I hear a lot of people around me saying similar things about this year in particular....2011 was a doozy.

So, what to do?  We are musicians and artists, not economists or world political leaders.  We aren't even engineers or doctors.  What can we do?  Why does our intonation or rhythmic acuity or performance practice matter in a world that is eating itself alive?  I ask myself these kinds of questions a lot (here and elsewhere), and every once in awhile, I get a sliver of answer...

Last night I had dinner with a good friend, and she had spent an absurd amount of time that afternoon at the DMV, during which she passed the time by talking to someone next to her in line.  The person she spoke with was a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and he had some very interesting things to say about his experiences there, particularly about the ways in which the US is "helping" the Afghan people.  Specifically, he mentioned that US troops are building schools, which sounds like a lovely thing, right?  Well, there's a bit of a problem...there's no money or infrastructure to put books, teachers, or students in these school buildings and run them as schools, and the intended students are part of a culture that doesn't conceptualize education in the same way we do, so the western concept of a school is something that just doesn't compute.  So, the buildings wind up standing empty, or they wind up getting repurposed by insurgents, and US troops then have to blow up the buildings they just built.  This guy was really frustrated about all of this -- frustrated enough to tell a stranger in line at the DMV about it, and honest enough to say that he didn't know what the answers are.  I certainly don't have the answers either, but I can take a stab at diagnosing the cause.

When I first arrived in Hungary for my 10-month stint, I showed up expecting to be disoriented.  I expected to need to learn about my environment, adjust to new things, find my way around, etc.  I was not at all ready for the constant gnawing feeling that it took me weeks to acknowledge, and probably months to name.  The problem was this: nothing about my environment told me that I was who I said I was.  The signs on the street, the people around me, the procedure for buying produce at the grocery store -- all those things were foreign, they had been the way they were long before I got there, and would be that way after I left.  It had nothing to do with me, and that scared me to death, and I didn't know why.  In retrospect, this was just culture shock, but many Americans go through their entire lives without working through a case of it, so we have no idea how "American" we actually are.  We live our lives calmly unaware that our pragmatic choices are extremely value-laden.  We can't buy a carrot or wash a sock or drink a glass of water without having assumed a whole slough of things about the world around us, and those assumptions are almost 100% unconscious.  We think we're being objective, we think we're being pragmatic, and we're actually preaching a gospel we don't even know we believe.

So, what's art got to do with it?  Well, what do we learn from art?  We learn subjectivity.  We learn exactitude.  We learn expression.  We learn about difference.  We learn about interpretation.  And, while we still probably have to be caught in the act a lot of times before we really start to get it, this training does give people a basic construct for the idea that different isn't necessarily wrong or bad, and that subtle changes really do matter.  It's funny, isn't it?  Artists get a pretty bad rap for having "artistic personalities" and for following crazy whims and making irresponsible life choices, but an artistic education might be the best hope any person has for understanding and respecting other people.  Why?  Because as long as your judgments are unconscious (and therefore you just think of them as "logic"), they control you.  As soon as you learn to acknowledge judgments as judgments, it might knock you off-balance, but then you get to be in charge...and you can change your own mind.  Like the writer of this poem says, you keep working on it, even though someone might get hurt.  You examine yourself, become responsible, and you are able to help others do the same.

My friends, 2011 is at her end.  We have worked hard, and we will continue into the new year.  I invite you to be the reflective people you are, in your personal lives and your artistic lives, and to allow one to infect the other.  Be happy.  Enjoy your lives of teaching and music-making.  Work on yourself, build up your weaknesses and celebrate your strengths and the strengths of others.  Nurture yourself and your students with beauty and goodness, so that you can be strong enough not to shy away from difficulty and ugliness.  Say yes.  Love each other.

All Levels:


Just some listening assignments this time around....

Cells Planets - Chanticleer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl12ZXZeqa4

Conspirare/Craig Hella Johnson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_qfeE0TjyY

Sweet Honey in the Rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCVvoL_F5gA

Happy new year!