Greetings from a prodigal blogger!
My, how time flies. It's the last day of April, and a perfect spring day in Colorado -- this evening's post is being typed outdoors in celebration.
Degree work has been quite frenzied over the past two weeks, and there's been a heavy dollop of concertizing on top of that, the most recent of which was with the community chorus conducted by one of my very dearest friends. He was short a soprano in his chamber group, so I filled in, and was thereby privy to two performances of a concert he'd entitled "The People's Chorus," a title I absolutely love...I find the concept inspiring. Too many people believe that music-making is a rarified-air kind of activity, that people who are musicians had to grow up in a special kind of family or live a special kind of life -- that musicians are born, not made, and you either are one or you're not. You either have a good voice or you don't. You either read music or you can't. How sad, especially in a world where people like Kodály have worked hard to get the message out: Music belongs to everyone. Art is a birthright, a necessity, something everyone can make and learn about and benefit from. Lots of people still don't believe this, and you'd think that a university town would have a greater proportion of people who do, who are courageous enough to be willing to take hold of their artistic inheritance and do something with it. And, to its credit, this particular university town does have many enthusiasts for the arts in various forms. However, the "rarified air" mentality is still hard to combat, maybe because it's either a cultural or a human tendency (and an extremely powerful one, either way) to choose to believe that one cannot learn/grow/change in order to fend off the guilt of not trying. So, we tend to stay the same....we dabble and form opinions, but we never really get down and dirty and comfortable with who we are so we can make a proper start toward who we'd like to be. Just think what would be possible if this were not the case!
One of the more magical parts of these concerts was a piece composed by another friend of mine on a text attributed to F.G. Lorca:
"The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves."
To my knowledge, Kodály and Lorca never interacted, but it definitely sounds like they were on the same page, doesn't it? However, perhaps Lorca reveals something of the Catch-22 involved here: by engaging with art, people come to understand themselves. But, without a pre-existing connection to their truest selves, how will they come to art to begin with? How will they recognize the solution to their thirst if they haven't acknowledged the thirst? This is the crux, and perhaps the hardest part of the musician's task. Obviously, the solution of teaching the very young to value art is the best one for our future, and it's usually a pretty short reach to get kids to be and express their true selves. But, what about the grownups? How can we reach out to them? Classical musicians can't out-spend Mark Zuckerberg or ABC, so how do we pry the public away from Facebook and "Dancing with the Stars" and get them out to a concert hall or a rehearsal or a class or a private lesson?
It strikes me that the answer may be "one at a time," but I think there might be something even closer to us that we must consider. In order to be compelling, in order to make art and teach lessons that are worth experiencing, we ourselves must be in touch with what compels us. In order to change the world, we need to lead by example. Heavy, I know, but necessary and beautiful....and maybe even sometimes fun. As mentioned above, kids are almost always rarin' to go on the authenticity-honest-self front, and they don't ever like to not have a good time.
So, despite the fact that you poor darlings haven't had a "real" assignment in weeks, I'm going to go with this as your task for the week:
All Levels
Spend time this week feeding your inner artist. For more specific advice, look here.
Spend time this week thinking about how you'd like to impact your community through music-making and teaching. Dream wildly. Imagine that money is no object. Be extravagant.
Feel free to email or call me up with your ideas -- 'tis the season for big dreams and brainstorming.
Also, get ready next week for the start of pre-AKI Solfa Boot Camp (my new idea for May and June). I'll be taking requests for specific areas you'd like to address, so again, feel free to email!
Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
The Red Sea
Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Happy Spring!
Predictably, it's been a crazy week -- not only was it Holy Week (meaning that I have spent large portions of the last seven days here, working with some of the best people I know. It's been exhausting, but also wonderful -- Holy Week in high church mode has always felt so full of magic to me, so rich with imagery and drama, and it never really fails to capture my imagination.), but....
I passed my final DMA orals this past Tuesday, which means that my five committee members have agreed that I will be graduating on Thursday, May 10....and they officially gave me leave to start calling myself "Doctor". !!!!!
So, now I have many loose ends to tie up (revisions, finishing up editing projects, etc.), but my trajectory towards graduation has been confirmed. This, in turn, means that I need to figure out what's next -- I need to find a job, figure out what to do with my living situation, and generally prepare myself for life after my terminal degree. GULP.
To be honest, I guess I started thinking of the completion of my DMA like my own personal Red Sea somewhere along the line. I got so wrapped up in the student life I've known for many years now that I guess I never quite expected it to end -- I mean, I did, but I convinced myself it'd happen to a me that would be much wiser and more prepared than the me I am currently feels. This theoretical person would be ready for all that post-student life demands and offers, and she would step proudly across the graduation stage and listen as her advisor announced her extremely well-conceived future plans to the people in the auditorium, and smile serenely, knowing that all was as it should be. The reality is that for me, everything is still very much up in the air. It's early yet, and I made the conscious decision to focus first on finishing, and second on finding a job for next year, which is all very logical -- one has to be certain one will have a doctorate before one applies to positions that require one to have a doctorate. But now, the Red Sea is parting....the miracle of graduation is about to occur, and I have no idea what awaits me on the other shore (not to mention the chariots who are giving chase....in my case, they're not people, but student loans and my perceptions of others' expectations of me). It's time for me to walk through, and I don't know what's going to happen, and sometimes this makes me extremely anxious.
So, Holy Week came along in the middle of my misgivings, accompanied by a flare of an old back injury that slowed me down enough to remind me to be careful and make me think. Holy Week, with all of its stories and rituals -- all of which I've heard and seen before, but part of the Red Sea story really sucker-punched me this time around. In the story, the Israelites have made their escape from slavery, and they're up against the Red Sea, and now all of a sudden, they're being pursued by their former captors. They do what we all sometimes do: they freak out. They start talking crazy. They start saying they wished they never tried to leave. Then, in comes a message: RELAX. They get that call that I really wish would come in for me -- they get told that all they have to do is keep still, and that their battle will be fought for them.
I don't really expect that someone else is going to find me a job or pay off my student debt or any of that (although if anyone out there would like to make either or both of those things happen for me, I will not say you nay!). However, the story still rings true, and it's true for everyone. If you're in a situation that you know to be unsustainable, and you make a choice to change it, it's true that it might be really difficult for awhile. It is also true that unsustainable is unsustainable, and when it's time to go, it's time to go. There's no getting around it, and no point in trying to beat yourself up for not being willing to stay where you don't belong. I have no doubt that now is the time for me to graduate and move on with my life. The fact that I'm not sure exactly what that looks like does freak me out, but the fear doesn't change my certainty that I'm doing what I have to do. I wish I could do more to ensure my future, but for now, this is it. I'm doing the work to go to someplace unknown, even though it's unknown and scary, and I have to trust that I wouldn't be so certain if something wasn't going to come meet me halfway.
Ok, so now for the big solfa tie-in...why do we sometimes stagnate in our musicianship studies? Well, I think sometimes it's because we're afraid of what we could do if we didn't have the obstacles we've come to rely upon as compass points. We've convinced ourselves that we need limitations, we need to be afraid of harmonic dictation or Roman numeral analysis or sight-singing or using the keyboard, because those limitations tell us who we are. And, these kinds of limitations are self-fulfilling prophecies -- if you tell yourself you can't play the piano, you're right, you probably can't. However, if you were willing to start chipping away at the thing you believe you can't do, if you started making friends with your abilities as they are right now and doing careful, thoughtful, compassionate work in order to build upon them, you would grow. You would become someone new. You might not even recognize yourself....and believe it or not, that could be ok, because you would recognize yourself again in time. You could re-draw your own borders, and make a whole new map of what you can do.
All Levels:
Spend your first 15-minute practice session doing a little soul-searching. What is it that you think you can't do in the world of musicianship? Write it down. I challenge you to be vulnerable and honest in your diagnosis -- no one has to know but you. If you can't get your head around it the first day, sleep on it, and come back to it.
Once you know what you'd like to work on, look back on some old posts:
http://49weeksofsolfa.blogspot.com/2011/09/body-remembers.html
http://49weeksofsolfa.blogspot.com/2011/09/like-cures-like.html
(etc.)
to find some concrete suggestions for activities, or feel free to design your own course of study.
In even just a week's time, I bet you'll find you were able to make some headway. Give it more time, though. Don't be afraid. The you you never thought you could be (the you who does flawless sing-and-plays or lightning-quick analysis or crackerjack sight-singing) is waiting on the other shore.
Predictably, it's been a crazy week -- not only was it Holy Week (meaning that I have spent large portions of the last seven days here, working with some of the best people I know. It's been exhausting, but also wonderful -- Holy Week in high church mode has always felt so full of magic to me, so rich with imagery and drama, and it never really fails to capture my imagination.), but....
I passed my final DMA orals this past Tuesday, which means that my five committee members have agreed that I will be graduating on Thursday, May 10....and they officially gave me leave to start calling myself "Doctor". !!!!!
So, now I have many loose ends to tie up (revisions, finishing up editing projects, etc.), but my trajectory towards graduation has been confirmed. This, in turn, means that I need to figure out what's next -- I need to find a job, figure out what to do with my living situation, and generally prepare myself for life after my terminal degree. GULP.
To be honest, I guess I started thinking of the completion of my DMA like my own personal Red Sea somewhere along the line. I got so wrapped up in the student life I've known for many years now that I guess I never quite expected it to end -- I mean, I did, but I convinced myself it'd happen to a me that would be much wiser and more prepared than the me I am currently feels. This theoretical person would be ready for all that post-student life demands and offers, and she would step proudly across the graduation stage and listen as her advisor announced her extremely well-conceived future plans to the people in the auditorium, and smile serenely, knowing that all was as it should be. The reality is that for me, everything is still very much up in the air. It's early yet, and I made the conscious decision to focus first on finishing, and second on finding a job for next year, which is all very logical -- one has to be certain one will have a doctorate before one applies to positions that require one to have a doctorate. But now, the Red Sea is parting....the miracle of graduation is about to occur, and I have no idea what awaits me on the other shore (not to mention the chariots who are giving chase....in my case, they're not people, but student loans and my perceptions of others' expectations of me). It's time for me to walk through, and I don't know what's going to happen, and sometimes this makes me extremely anxious.
So, Holy Week came along in the middle of my misgivings, accompanied by a flare of an old back injury that slowed me down enough to remind me to be careful and make me think. Holy Week, with all of its stories and rituals -- all of which I've heard and seen before, but part of the Red Sea story really sucker-punched me this time around. In the story, the Israelites have made their escape from slavery, and they're up against the Red Sea, and now all of a sudden, they're being pursued by their former captors. They do what we all sometimes do: they freak out. They start talking crazy. They start saying they wished they never tried to leave. Then, in comes a message: RELAX. They get that call that I really wish would come in for me -- they get told that all they have to do is keep still, and that their battle will be fought for them.
I don't really expect that someone else is going to find me a job or pay off my student debt or any of that (although if anyone out there would like to make either or both of those things happen for me, I will not say you nay!). However, the story still rings true, and it's true for everyone. If you're in a situation that you know to be unsustainable, and you make a choice to change it, it's true that it might be really difficult for awhile. It is also true that unsustainable is unsustainable, and when it's time to go, it's time to go. There's no getting around it, and no point in trying to beat yourself up for not being willing to stay where you don't belong. I have no doubt that now is the time for me to graduate and move on with my life. The fact that I'm not sure exactly what that looks like does freak me out, but the fear doesn't change my certainty that I'm doing what I have to do. I wish I could do more to ensure my future, but for now, this is it. I'm doing the work to go to someplace unknown, even though it's unknown and scary, and I have to trust that I wouldn't be so certain if something wasn't going to come meet me halfway.
Ok, so now for the big solfa tie-in...why do we sometimes stagnate in our musicianship studies? Well, I think sometimes it's because we're afraid of what we could do if we didn't have the obstacles we've come to rely upon as compass points. We've convinced ourselves that we need limitations, we need to be afraid of harmonic dictation or Roman numeral analysis or sight-singing or using the keyboard, because those limitations tell us who we are. And, these kinds of limitations are self-fulfilling prophecies -- if you tell yourself you can't play the piano, you're right, you probably can't. However, if you were willing to start chipping away at the thing you believe you can't do, if you started making friends with your abilities as they are right now and doing careful, thoughtful, compassionate work in order to build upon them, you would grow. You would become someone new. You might not even recognize yourself....and believe it or not, that could be ok, because you would recognize yourself again in time. You could re-draw your own borders, and make a whole new map of what you can do.
All Levels:
Spend your first 15-minute practice session doing a little soul-searching. What is it that you think you can't do in the world of musicianship? Write it down. I challenge you to be vulnerable and honest in your diagnosis -- no one has to know but you. If you can't get your head around it the first day, sleep on it, and come back to it.
Once you know what you'd like to work on, look back on some old posts:
http://49weeksofsolfa.blogspot.com/2011/09/body-remembers.html
http://49weeksofsolfa.blogspot.com/2011/09/like-cures-like.html
(etc.)
to find some concrete suggestions for activities, or feel free to design your own course of study.
In even just a week's time, I bet you'll find you were able to make some headway. Give it more time, though. Don't be afraid. The you you never thought you could be (the you who does flawless sing-and-plays or lightning-quick analysis or crackerjack sight-singing) is waiting on the other shore.
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