Parents Practicing

It takes a lot of energy to teach for 4 hours.  I was pretty hungry when I got on the train back to New York.  But also very energized.  Somehow seeing a person and then looking at them even more deeply pulls energy out of my.  It's there, if I don't try to bottle it up.

Teaching children is a window into a family.  Just as I start to see certain physical habits that appear in kids, I can hear certain tropes with parents.  Children that say straight away, "We forgot to practice!"  or "We didn't practice at all!"  being tempered by a parent apologetically trying to explain that they did a little or something to that effect.  The truth is perhaps somewhere in between, but it doesn't matter to me so much as what is happening in that moment.  People can be very concerned about being right.  How does this happen to them?  It isn't everyone, but it's often the people that are deemed "successful."  I sometimes reflect about what I miss about my high school.  Maybe that is part of it.  There were people that were unafraid of being wrong, or unconventional.  Maybe not the most successful people (though the magic was when that wasn't the case), but they offered a sense of freedom to the grind.

I'd like to share this with the parents of my students.  I do care that they practice, and I do know that this takes effort, it's not all fun all the time.  But it is ok to have fun, it is ok to break out of the routine of practice for a minute, to run fingers across the strings in a way the teacher never suggested, to try something new and perhaps risk being wrong.  And it is especially ok if I get to enjoy it and know about it as well.

I was tired after the day, but am really excited for the year, for what I will learn from this experience of exchanges.

To Flushing

I spent a lot of time on trains today and even a car up to Connecticut.  In the afternoon, Andrew and I went to Flushing, Queens to look at another venue, riding the 7 all the way to the last stop.  I had heard that Queens and Flushing in particular was a really diverse part of New York City, but wasn't prepared for the level of authenticity of this Chinatown.  The sidewalks were crowded with Chinese people, and while signs often also had English, it was obvious that this was not a market for non-Chinese speakers.  At one point we stepped into a mall and it was like being back in Asia, the spacing of the lobby, the smell, the decor.  I felt a part of me buckle up again at not knowing all of what was around me, a childlike ignorance and curiosity that was as much a part of living in Japan as the signs and smells.

And although there was no express train running on our return, the 7 runs above ground which meant that we got to behold a beautiful sunset over the Manhattan skyline after a hurricane inspired day of grey and rain.  And we think we might have a venue this time, which is icing on the cake.

Venture to Bushwick

This evening Andrew and I ventured to Brooklyn, to Bushwick, to check out a potential wedding venue on the roof of a large building.  It had a nice view of the Manhattan Skyline to be sure, but other various things about the venue, location, and rain back-up plan made it seem less desirable than we had hoped.  So we walked about 3 miles to Williamsburg, watching the "industrial" neighborhood (so called by the woman that gave us the tour of the building) turn into housing projects, to fringe bars and groceries, to full-out gentrification.  And then we ate some really good Polish food on Bedford and caught the subway home.

beautiful view from Bushwick rooftop

Picnic in Central Park

After talking about it for awhile, we finally set a date and went to Central Park for a very special evening.  And now we are making decisions for the future, being amazed at the money that people charge in New York for....anything.  But mostly, very excited.

Picnic in Central Park

Dalcroze and Arizona

It has been awhile since I've written. The past two weeks were filled with an intensive Dalcroze workshop and then this weekend was a trip to Phoenix, Arizona for a friend's wedding.

my Dalcroze partner for Level 2 Certification, Miyuki Watanabe;
This was only my 2nd Dalcroze test, but the feeling before taking one is not unlike the one I have before doing a belt test.  There are many parts and subparts of the test [Eurhythmics: performing a song composed to a given rhythm, walking that rhythm while conducting, canons in 6/8 and 3/4 (stepping what the piano played in the previous measure, while listening to the current one!), follows, complementary rhythm in hands and feet and switching, etc; Solfege: sing various keys in fixed Do; and Improvisation:  playing the piano!  doing it for people to move to, doing it as an improvisation, and playing for a given image], and there is an element of the unknown.  Sometimes people are judged to be ready and sometimes not.  It is not a guaranteed thing that by taking a summer workshop you will be able to advance to the next level.  My biggest challenge was, and still is, playing the piano, because I am not a pianist.  I found myself trying to internally balance the feeling of wanting to succeed with the pleasure of learning for the sake of it.  It is a difficult thing to let go of, in myself and I think in the culture in which we live.  Being entitled to success based on the work one has done or because people have always said you are smart, is a tough thing to let go of.  So it was good to have another opportunity to face those feelings.  In the end I passed, but just barely in the piano skills area.  I will be continuing this training specifically, thanks to the encouragement and support of the mentors in the program, who, lucky for me, live in New York!
This was the other cool thing about the program–meeting the people who came from different parts of the world to be there.  One of whom is pictured here, a woman from Japan who spoke and understood about as much English as I do Japanese.  It was a good chance to speak Japanese, and to embrace someone doing something difficult in another language.  Luckily for her, she is a piano and solfege teacher in Japan, and has a wonderful sense of harmony, so once the instructions were understood she was set to go.  It was great to meet another Japanese friend who has now returned to that repository of untouchable friends living somewhere, thousands of miles away in this world.  Or so I believe.  Good to have had the experience with her.

Wedding!
We spent the weekend in Phoenix, AZ for the wedding of Christina Havens and Michael Byerly, two friends from Japan.  And they were married by another good friend from that time.  They held the wedding in the Musical Instrument Museum which was a really cool collection of instruments from everywhere in the world, and with a gathering of only about 50 people, it was a special and intimate experience.

I also learned a lot about another part of the country.  It was really mind blowing to see the dessert, so different from any landscape I had grown up in and certainly different from New York City.  And I learned that they get monsoons this time of year and that they are sometimes preceded by dust storms, one of which is pictured her in the distance.  

There were so many cacti and they were beautifully dramatic during sunset, silhouetted against the mountain ridges and rich sky.  I failed to have a camera at any of those points, sunsets or otherwise, but couldn't leave Arizona without at least one picture.  They are very large and very old, and grow just about anywhere, even intersections.   

Walking to Harlem via Morningside Park

I didn't realize that my doctor's appointment was only 3 blocks from the school where I taught all year.  This morning I retraced the path that I took several days every week and remembered the hopefulness or dread that I felt as I descended down the Morningside Park steps, and the relief and perplexity I felt returning up them, after another day of not quite getting it right.  It's a beautiful park, overgrown now but still really beautiful.  I remember seeing that beauty at at times a distraction from what I was feeling or thinking and other times an affirmation of the good in life.

Things feel very different now.  Yesterday was a nearly euphoric day of teaching in Westport, CT.  The sense of nervousness beforehand is yielding to excitement, and afterwards an internal debriefing of a different kind.  What a strange thing that in this world there are families that although not without problems, are able to shelter and raise their children in a mindful and safe manner, and that there are others that cannot give their children this kind of attention.  There are so many threats and stresses to everyday life that there simply isn't the space to invest in the future.  The present is enough of a handful.

But it is a different story in Westport which means it is a different story for me.  It makes it much easier to teach, to have a parent there, taking notes, following through during the week, sending emails and messages about their child's practice and demeanor.  They have systems for behavior that I don't have to create or mitigate, ways of motivating that seem to do the trick.  It is really easy to teach in this way.  I am able to give what I have, and the children seem so much more able to receive.

It is not a simple thing to figure out what are the causes of this discrepancy and how they can be alleviated.  My time here in New York, spent with the incredibly privileged owners of several vacation homes, nannies, and teachers and tutors galore, as well as those families with single parents, multiple jobs, and distrust of authority, has really highlighted the disparity of living in America in a visceral way.  The same place is not the same place in a different state of mind, the same path is often not the same.

Summer Sun

These are beautiful summer days.  I have the time to practice several interests, the time to read, the time to sit and stare and reflect on the past year and the past years.  Having this space, filled with reflection, exploration, teaching, playing, has meant a reawakening similar to what I felt when I lived in Madison.  I was very content there, but to have a similar feeling elsewhere must imply that we can feel a certain way independent of place.  But what are the elements, what are the pathways, the relations, the practices, that lead to a certain state of mind?

One of the practices that I am undertaking now is one specific within cello practice, that of memorization.  I am trying to memorize my Suzuki teaching music as well as some far more challenging music that I had learned in the past.  I have always had a difficult, if not impossible time memorizing, even the simplest little melodies.  Fingers, ears, eyes, always got in the way and confused, fighting for control of how to produce the melody on my instrument.  But somehow now it comes.  Several years ago I started to memorize poetry that I loved as a way to get there, and then chose one piece that I loved, and now several years later I can identify numerous possible leads that might be helping me memorize large chunks of music relatively easily in addition to these practices: martial arts, improvisation, doing it for my Suzuki class, feeling the lack of pressure to prove anything with the cello (in other words, feeling a freedom of enjoyment), Feldenkrais, any other body practice that has increased and integrated my sense of awareness, not stressing about it....

There are so many things that come together to create a person.  There are so many experiences, sensations, dispositions, and openings, if we allow; and it is terrifying and liberating to realize how fragile and flexible we are.  What more can we become when we allow ourselves to be unlimited?  

I feel like the days can go on forever right now.  That feeling of limitless sun in a single instant.