Eyes of Children

It is amazing to me that I do not remember any of my cello lessons with my incredible first cello teacher.  Except for the time I accidentally drooled in my lesson.  I learned so much from her, but my child's memory doesn't remember the moments in our lesson time.  I remember her standards, I remember her passion and hard-work for keeping the Suzuki program in the schools, but I don't remember working on the pieces, or what she said, or how she said it.  I wish I did, because she was a very good teacher.

It's occurred to me that many of my interactions with students may be washed from them in the end, but not their impression of me.  I remember the aura around my teacher, that she was serious about doing things correctly, that she was unapologetic about her advocacy of the program in the face of funding cuts.  I learned how to hold a bow from her, how to hold a cello, how to put my fingers down, what a key signature was, how to read music (also with some help from my father).

It's amazing how well I learned without remembering learning.  How important that teachers give themselves as whole people, because words will likely be forgotten.  Perhaps the same for all interactions.  Important to self-reflect, to be self-aware, because as forgetful as children may be, they are very aware, even without their own awareness of being so.

Rainy Bus Ride Home

I've just taught lessons near Times Square and am headed home on the bus, my Tuesday night luxury. The bus is really slow and unreliable, but sometimes it feels good to give the time, like waiting for an empty "Don't Walk" light in Japan.  We have more time to give than we think and the bus is a reminder.

Ironically, I'm sitting with my cello and my bags, typing this on a blue tooth keyboard and my iPad, balanced (some would say precariously) on my backpack on my lap.  The bus ride, luxurious as it is, is also a working time for me, when I can get ahead and type up the notes from my lessons so that I don't have to do so at home.  I have the time, but alas, I am using it.  

Time is an interesting thing.  As I became more experienced as a performer, I came to learn that filling out the time was an asset.  No rushing, no hurrying:  You have the time.  Take up the space, own it, breath it, define it.  It is a concept that can be hard to live in a world of instantaneous everything.  My teaching is still rushed.  The more I'm teaching, the more I'm learning to fill out the time, to become fascinated with something, to have faith that it will come.  Words are one thing, living it is another.  

Perhaps this is a way to become an expert at living.  I'll be 33 in a few weeks and realized that I while I'm not without care for my age, I worry about it less and less.  I was the oldest I've ever been at the age of 19.  Youth is so concerned with getting older, but how strange that as I get older I'm not so concerned about it anymore.  If only had known, if only I could know a little better now, as I imagine I will in a few years. 

It's raining and dark outside, and I've lost track of the cross street.  Perhaps it's time to look up for now....

Daily Living

There are basic things that we have to do to live, so basic that it is easy to forget how strange they are.  We have to eat, we have to spend hours every night in a shutdown mode, sleeping.  And because we've done these basic functions everyday from the time we were born, the other things that we acquire as we get older are more noticeable and seem like inconveniences.  Things like taxes, laundry, getting the handyman to unlock the door to the bathroom that somehow snapped shut on its own.

It was the first day off in many many days, not counting the time away with family.  It's rare to have an adult catch-up day, where I practice and stare at a computer trying to figure out how to categorize expenses.  It seems absurd that for other things to function this sort of cleaning needs to happen, but after an bland day of teaching not one student, I can see the value.

But just like sleeping, and eating, in any given second we are living in our skin.  The door won't open, he'll have to get a saw, the carpet cleaning will be twice as much as quoted, that expense should have been divided into two others.  But alive.  Watching another move, moving and breathing so that more can be done.

G. V.

It is exciting when a very new student comes into my room.  Soon to be 4-year-old, daughter of an Italian family, brave little voice singing the cello parts.  What will become of her and us in the coming months, or in the coming years?

After one morning, there is snow all over Manhattan, and even the warming air and gentle rain has yet to dissolve it. There is something very magical this time of year; perhaps it is the abundance of holiday parties that every workplace seems obligated to host, the twinkling lights, the unavoidable Christmas tree tunnels that line the sidewalks up and down Broadway.  Everyone seems to be blissfully unravelling.  Something seems very protected here, a safety in this cocoon, on this little island of millions of people.

Between the Baroque Christmas Tree at the Metropolitan Museum and a holiday party at a Columbia co-worker's apartment on 70th and Broadway, we walked through a snowy and lonely Central Park.  There were a few bike delivery workers, raccoons, a horse-drawn lit carriage, rats scurrying around the thick puddles of wet snow, a gathering of men on park benches laughing and warming with a few bottles.  From where does this invincible power of snow come?  It illuminates our steps and muffles the rest of the world.

Giving and Receiving in New York

I don't ever expect to sit down, even with my cello, but when I got on the bus today, a man in one of the prime seats offered it to me and was already up on his feet, ushering me in.  He was a small man, perhaps Hispanic, with a dumdum lollipop in his mouth and the remembrance of dark green tattoos, on his hands which gently, nervously twitched.  He carried a large piece of card board, the back of which had some sparse notes, including a phone number in red pencil.  I later saw the other side to discover that it was a backgammon and checker board.

Shortly after he gave me his seat, he dropped his rider card, which slipped to my feet.  I tried to grab it again and again, and finally pealed it off the bus floor and handed it back to him, uninspected.  It wasn't until I saw his hand on the pole in front of me, with the card held there firmly that I saw, "-isabled" peaking above the index finger.  I expected him to get off at the next stop, but he didn't.  His continued presence spoke to the giving he had in him.  A seat offered, a card returned.  In Japan there is such apology for the giving one receives.  It is a different lesson to assume it from and for others.

This is the kindness of New York.  It bears a very different face than that of the midwest.  It is assumed but not expected, something which flows outwardly, never to be received again from the person to whom it is given.  There must be an explanation for this, a small amount of altruism that seems to defy genetic barriers.  Maybe this is part of what makes this city so wonderful.  It is a family of people through actions and not through blood.  Sometimes they don't show their best face, and yet more often than not, I feel very fortunate to be in their presence, learning from their exchanges.

New Home

I find that I don't write so often and I think it is for a few reasons.  One is that I live with my partner and life is now filled with another person.  But another reason is that much of what I experience and think about is related to the students with whom I work and as such, I don't wish to share to much of them without their permission.  There is a lot of cuteness, a lot of courage and I respect them and don't want to ossify them in words.

But this morning I received an email that is part of the essence of what I enjoy about teaching.  I encourage parents to send me videos and pictures of their children practicing, or to verify things they don't understand.  And this morning I watched one that was prepared for me by one of my families, that I just began teaching last week.  They moved to New York about 2 years ago from the Ukraine.  This was a video of her entire practice session, her sisters sitting behind her, holding her book of the exercises I had assigned her, sometimes distracting her, sometimes helping.  If one of them said something in Russian, the father would say, "in English" and I knew this was for me.  This was a practice performance made for me.

I got to see their family, their space, their interactions, posed but honest.  For ten minutes I was almost uncomfortably close.  How rare that we are invited into another space in such a way.  And yet this is what happens every time that I teach, or what I feel is the goal of every time that I teach.

It occurred to me in a lesson yesterday that I can calm my body when I am with a student to a place of trust where I have no fear or discomfort of their mistakes.  The goal is to be with them, completely, to give to them what we all wish we could give to ourselves or another, that sense of safety and trust.  I sometimes like to just think about them before I start a day of teaching.  Each individual person, apart from our work.

Every since I was little I fantasized about being another person.  What would it be like to leave my body and experience the world as another?  It is something that none of us can do, a super power I wish I could have if I could have one.  How strange that we cannot understand one another, despite living together, despite living for a lifetime.  But it seems that in teaching, perhaps there is a beginning to this possibility.  How deeply can one listen?