Practicing the Cello

My cello teacher tells me over and again that it is most important to notice what we are doing when we play a scale, a movement, an exercise.

She asks me to put into precise words what I was trying to do throughout the playing and what I noticed in my playing. Did I hold down my first and second fingers as I played the top C? Did I prepare and start to lift my hand as I played F and G on the A string as I moved higher in the scale? Were my dotted timings correct, my equal notes steady or was I subconsciously imitating the rubato of Casals whom I heard play the piece many times? Being specific in noticing is very hard for me but it is the way of getting better at the cello. The only way.

In the TV show, Psych, we see flashbacks each week to the protagonist's childhood. His father asks him to close his eyes and recall the very minor details around them. In this way, the son gradually learns to notice. Noticing takes work.

And when we take care to notice in our discipline, be it yoga or cello, knitting or sweeping the floor, we begin to fall into the practice of noticing more in our daily lives.

simone_schot's photostream

My Magical Owl

This afternoon, the sky was waiting for snow. Now I finally hear ice plinks begin as I start to write at 2 this morning. I hear that quiet sound I like, of slow cars moving on the wet road. I am not trying to be poetic, just simply writing of my surroundings as I have woken and found myself here - unchanged by an overnight, Kafaesk, metamorphosis; not mesmerized away by a novel; still here in Manhattan, not having suddenly remembered that, Oh, yeah, I flew in to Tokyo last night; and not still dreaming another landscape. But if I may wax just once, Here I, transported by the magic carpet to nowhere else, am. (Ah, the very definition of meditation - though I am currently bumbling through the apartment in the beta state of workaday thinking.)

This afternoon, (back to the point of this entry), I needed to get out of the house a bit and so headed across Central Park toward the Met Museum. I always (always, near to the point of an Adrian Monk obsession) take a certain route when I get to an edge of the Jackie O. Reservoir. I take the jogging path along side the water going toward the museum and come back home by way of the Great Lawn and the pinetum.

This afternoon, I had a feeling I wanted to leave for the museum the other way, by the Great Lawn. It wasn't a strong feeling, I just wanted to take the road "usually" not taken. It was as simple as when you want a glass of water and then you notice yourself automatically getting one. But there must have been some resistance because I found myself needing to say out loud, I want to go the other way today. And so, I went.

There was a man with a large telescope in the pinetum. It was pointing to the sky, and I guessed he was bird watching but the angle looked just too high for the top of the fir trees in the fore. I wondered if he was looking at something in the sky? I had to ask, he said he was looking at an owl. We got to talking about whether there were actually 60 million birdwatchers in the country as I had read just yesterday and he took me a few steps to the other side of the copse where his wife was photographing and the man positioned his tripoded telescope for me to see one of the two long-eared owls treed there.

This afternoon was the first time I saw an owl in the wild even though I grew up not in Manhattan, but wandering field and wood, even taking foxes, rabbits, a turtle and a skunk as pets.

Seeing my first feral owl let me know that I had been connecting to the Life Force, to the greater world. Certainly, we all want these acknowledgments that our gut feelings are spot on, we want these magic owls. But even more is the connection we tangibly have when we stop and ask, How do I feel inside.

Please ask now. Reading this was just a prelude. Your feelings don't have to be profound, they might be just quietly hooting to you, Relax or Get moving. Then go out and try to keep connected as you move about you life. If later you happen to want to buy a magazine you never bought before or take a different route on your way home from grocery shopping? Why not?

And let me know what happens, if you will... TheAncientSounds@Gmail.com.

Hoot, hoot.

From my kitchen window, the road now and the car tops are white, and the plinking of icy snow keeps me company as my family sleeps.

photo by Dave Schreier on flickr.

Coincidental Groceries

I went to buy a chicken for dinner and remembered what a teacher had said years ago, When you go to the bank, don't stop off and pick up your laundry or pop in the record store, just go straight there, and your determination will grow stronger (paraphrased).

I listened and was not be distracted (as was my usual wont) along the way, not by the bookstore or other interesting stores. I went straight to buy for dinner. (Mission accomplished!)

Coming back, I stepped right beside a close friend and we were able to talk as we continued on. (This being unusual in that neither of us had a child in tow and so we could leisurely converse.)

Then I went to Gary Null's Whole Foods and right there was my wife, returning from her work, checking out groceries and I was able to help her carry them home, (this, the first time we met unpurposefully in the 15 years we have known each other).

I guess I was just where I should have been. Perfect Timing, ten minutes later and I would have missed the coincidental meetings. But it's the feeling you get, not the coincidences, which let you know things are as the should be. That palpable connection to the life force. And the term was not coined by George Lucas, I've noticed that Rashi used it in the middle ages, though in Old French.

To begin to feel more connected, just ask now, What do you notice within? And remember, gentle reader, it's the attempt, the asking, not what you call results that matters most of all.

Image by © JLP/Deimos/zefa/Corbis

Sonnata for Tenor Blockflote and Steam Radiator

Yesterday, got my son laughing when I played the recorder and incorporated the steam radiator's soft, plaintive D into the song. The quite recorder-like radiator played somewhat regularly every 20 seconds, sometimes with and extra toot or two.

He also drew a map of the moon earlier in the day and after learning how to draw a perfect circle with his thumb as a compass point. There are few things poetic as the name places of our Moon... the Ocean of Storms, the Seas of Tranquility and Serenity, Crater Tycho (I love the story of when Tycho Brahe was walking home one night and realized a new star had formed, he was so intimate with the dark sky), the Sea of Crises, the Ocean of Fecundity, the Lake of Sleep, the Sea of Nectar (never heard of these last two till now) and the Sea of Cold. My favorite is the Sea of Rains. Ah, yes, and the Dark Side. The homeschooling dad in me gives you your first question of the day, where was the Apollo 11 landing?

In the Museum of Natural History nearby, there is a display which shows how scientists believe the moon was wayward planet which bumped into earth (I don't know, it was before I was born) and it shattered then reformed as the moon. In that same little exhibition room is a small rock you could comfortably carry in your pocket. I guess it came from a meteor and you can touch it. It is older than the earth. That is my favorite part of the museum.

I guess homeschooling can be fun, though it is workety-work just to be around your kid and providing quality attention/guidance all the time then staying up all night to write music or whatever. Today we get to go to our favorite cheep-o Japanese restaurant in midtown, Zhia (really wrong spelling, I know), and go skating behind the 42nd street library in gorgeous Bryant Park. Here's the last question of the day, what are the names of the two famous lions outside the front of that library?


Frank Lynch
LeggNet

Playing the Piano Like a Pianist

Certain things were impossible, others I just wish they had been. Then they wouldn't have happened.

I would have said that teaching my son, Sage, to play the piano "wonderfully" within an hour would have been impossible, but it happened and the un-parental part of me wishes it had been impossible. Yes, I am glad o' the resultants, but it was a frozen moment and peppered with beggings for him to consider quitting piano. He wanted to just play the notes not music and sounded as bad as most "talented" young pianists. (He is now a version 12.5 kid and has been at the keyboard now for two years plus a little.)

Sage did not want to adjust his hand/finger/wrist position/movements and play from the solar plexus. While dealing with his ego/crying/sheer anger and deeply analyzing myself as to my pushing him for my own paternal motives (the quote, paraphrased, comes to mind, that "The most important influence of childhood is what our parents did not achieve") and trying to figure out as quick as that instant-satori moment of Zen - what the heck were the exact, intricate changes he must make and how to communicate them? All this from me, who incorporates things musical then erases within, all trace of how they got there and why to do things so. Then afterwards, the playing feels intuitive, instinctive for me. And I knew the window of teaching him this was very small or he would have just closed off. Well, I did it.

It was like that scene in Star Wars, A New Hope where Obi Wan on board the first death star memorizes the mappings of that death star and how to disable its tractor beams at speed-reading speed. My mind raced.

Once I figured out his very specific needs it was sort of easy. I won't go into the details of the motions, positions and concerts of ebows, fingers and wrists - your eyes would just glaze over.

But once shown he played well, completely differently. And the actual physical teaching took only twenty minutes or so. And yes, I also know it will take some gentle reinforcement over time to make all this natural and habitual.

The next day my wife played hooky from school and heard Sage practice from the other room and wondered at the change - very noticeable. Then she came in to see him and later told me that he now looks like a pianist when he plays.

After Sage's two years of piano lessons, this is the second time I actually got involved. My wife said that this help is why, when if you come from a musician's family, it's a big advantage for learning music. but its also the learning from just noticing without knowing they are noticing how the musician parents do subtle things. His teacher is terrific for him (yes, most of the time parents think their child's music teacher is the greatest when the teacher might not be so, true especially for unmusician parents), but he needed a different help here. Yeah, I'm tooting my own English horn, but hey, I am convalescing from the lesson and still trying to deal with the aftershocks yet 36 hours later the quake.


The whole experience reminds me of the man who designed the giant, giant turbines for a dam (was it the Hoover?) and they stopped moving. He was called in to consult in the great emergency. He walked around and looked at the situation, picked up a sledge hammer and went to one of the turbines. THWACK. It groaned and fidgeted and then then hummed full force, starting the others with it. They thanked him but two weeks later had to call him up angrily at the $10,000 bill, which in today's money is probably like above 10 million dollars. Where did he get the nerve to charge $10,000 for just hitting the turbine with a sledge hammer? He capitulated by saying he would send them another bill. A week later they received the second bill, this time itemized... Hitting the turbine with a sledge, $10; knowing where to hit it, $9,990.

Sometimes it takes just a small adjustment but you have to be very precise and knowledgeable.

Please remember, this was for Sage's specific habitual technique adjustments and for his specific hands, everyone's hands are unique (though there are some very basic principles here). Maybe I feel a little better after my rant. It is 2.40 AM here in New York time, no wait, now that the pictures are in, 3.15.

photo links:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamie_marie/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arteunporro/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/residae/

Which Craft?

Several months ago, I was wondering where to focus my work and asked The Divine (no, not Bette M., the other One), what I should be doing now (other than raising my son and working on myself), you know, what I should be doing in the world, workwise. My music, my writing, seemed impractical, (how many actually mint decent gold coins at these)?

I didn't expect a clear answer but I did get two. Later that day in a bookstore, a bit anxious, I primed the pump and drew out one card from The Kabbalah Deck. That's just not something I do, cards or tea leaves (too hokus-pokus for me), but, hey, I just plucked out a card. Samech. I remembered the story of how Samech asked Ha Shem to be the first letter in Torah but was told it needed to keep doing the job it had been doing, supporting the poor. No, another, less busy letter would be chosen.

Unbeliever, I, looked up my letter-card in the booklet which came with the deck. Here's the part that spoke to me...

In this context, the early Hasidim prized the worth of stories - sipurim (whose Hebrew word begins with 'Samech') - to nourish the soul and give us a greater appreciation for the holiness existing around us. Such leaders as Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav cherished storytelling as a valuable way to arouse people from their inner slumber.

I didn't think the booklet would actually encourage something like story writing.

The next day, I found myself walking with my son and telling him embellished funny stories. He turned to me, Dad, you should be a writer.

I'm writing this story down here because when I write about things like being answered by The Divine, I'm focusing on them. Then maybe I'll start to notice them a little better when they are happening around me the next time.

To me there is a fine line between being closed minded and reading too much into events and coincidences, being an unbeliever and looking too much for signs and messages. I guess what I am striving for is the same as in my cello playing - rather a focused practice than a vague overdoing. Everything we get better at is by ever more refined focus, by ever more quality attention than we thought even existed a while ago.

A few minutes of cello practice that is very attentive to specific aspects, like correctly varying the bowing lengths in a Bach phrase or carefully adjusting the bow closer to the bridge as a scale rises, will help me get better. An hour of dull practicing will actually make my playing worse.


When a violin maker, a luthier, makes an instrument, there is first the lumberjack who hacks down the tree with a crude ax. Then it is sliced at the less crude mill into straight planks. The best pieces are cut into possible violin slabs and aged. The luthier then roughly cuts the ones he chooses to fit a pattern. Then he carves them into roughly the correct thicknesses. Then with more refined tools, he shaves them into the shape of violin pieces. Then the tools get smaller and smaller, to nearly doll house sized. Finally, and there have been complicated testings and noticings at each step, a days work becomes when he sands a few grains exactly here and not there. Eventually he varnishes the wood become violin.

That is what I attempt in my communicating with The Divine, in my following intuition... a process that must be worked at with increasing attention and ever more refined noticing, but never overworked.

I quote The Violin Maker by John Marchese who in turn quotes ...the great sociologist, C. Wright Mills ...The craftsman's way of livelihood determines and infuses his entire mode of living, there is no split of work and play.

To develop a craftsman's mindset, it helps to actually practice a craft. Which craft does not matter, it could be cleaning one's house or cooking breakfasts just as well as making a violin. It's not the craft, but the way you do it that matters.

What is your craft?

I have to acknowledge again John Marchese, for it was from The Violin Maker that I paraphrased the process of making a violin.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stedanby/Ste D's photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vphill/

diskcover

OK, sometimes the Life Force, our intuition, needs to tell us over and over again because we ignore it with such obstinance, (even to the point of putting our fingers in our ears, loudly humming a tune to drown it out).

Last night it was trying to give me a message in a dream. Finally it kept saying (while I held an empty CD disk case), "Disk cover, disk cover." I woke and realized... oh, DISCOVER. In other words it was like Yoda saying, You idiot, just listen, discover what I am saying. Just listen.

One of my old teachers wrote that the inner self, intuition, speaks in images and puns. In other words, that part of our brain likes rebuses, it's our inner language, very direct.

OK, I better start listening to the dream message. If only I could taste a potion which would let me notice my intuitions rather than working at it, however easy. Patience, grasshopper.

I just now remembered that I picked up a white button with one word, Patience, on it. That was yesterday at the main NYC public library. Yeah, I guess I was on a roll yesterday...

When I went out yesterday I put my now favorite book and a small duck head umbrella in a backpack. I got on the subway and went for the book. I noticed the missing umbrella that my family liked a lot. Oh, well, I said, and opened the book to page 104, the first line said, How many times do I have to tell you not to lose your things? It went on to tell parents (and we to ourselves, I transposed) not to criticize at all, that there is no constructive criticism. Instead, tell the little ones they are wonderful and responsible because of showing concern for their mistakes.

The book gives nice examples. People need only positive talk and then they do change. But many times what we really care about is getting out our frustrations, not in helping others to change.

When we criticize, we are telling our loved ones (or ourselves)... this is how you are, (in this case someone who tends to loose things). Thank you, this gives me a chance to vent on you about your imperfections. I was already frustrated at having to trudge through life today, now I can yell at you and feel in control and macho. Stay just the way you are, just do it more often (loose umbrellas, don't clean up your room).

Encourage instead. Yeah, maybe I should have a button made that says that too, encourage instead.

Better yet, they should make an encourage instead potion. I wouldn't even have to pay for it, my son would pay for me, believe me. Believe me on this one.

www.flickr.com:photos:frozen-in-time:.weblocfile
ifnoif

The Perfect Meeting

Somehow I missed yesterday's meeting for NY Indie Publishers. I went to the McNally-R. bookstore where it was to be held but was told there wasn't a meeting.

Every rare once in a while (hope it gets more frequent) I get a strong feeling about something beforehand. Before this meeting I knew two things (no idea how I did), I was supposed to go and I wasn't supposed to go. So I was curious, I went.

This is what I found there... it doesn't matter to where you get (the most beautiful private beach or a grimy subway platform). It doesn't matter if there is or not a payoff for being there, just having followed your intuition makes it a wonderful place to be. This is Frost's Road Less Traveled, to me.

I sat down and listened to a couple of poets at the poetry reading which took place when my meeting was supposed to happen, then walked around the bookstore. Nice enough place.

Perhaps there was a payoff though. Found a book that I might not have found in Barnes and Noble. Framed by my mindset, it took more significance. In a future post, I may talk of the book. For now let me say this, it feels good to be intuitively connected to the greater world and that matters most. Yet, sometimes the book you find at the end of the process is more than just a book.

Perhaps we need to count the importance of things differently (it can be the smallest shift). Then we might recognize the path that is laid out especially for us, notice the giant's beanstalk we were overlooking, climb our own personal Jacob's ladder. (OK, lol, am I just kind of blabbing this last, unedited-out paragraph most only because I want an excuse to include this wonderful picture?)

And dear reader, trying to notice you intuitive feelings just once today is worth more than studying 100 books on it.

Right now, what do you notice within? Listen. What you notice is often less important than that you took notice.

Credits - photo of natural ladder from sitting rock on flickr (he interestingly calls it Guide); Mendocino beach photo from Rita Crane on flickr; selecting a book photo from Roberdan on Flickr.

My Son's Last Tooth-Fairy Letter

Hello My Dear Sage,

I see through the window when you are not looking, when you are sleeping, when you are practicing music, when you are looking at the tv or computer.


And sometimes I pretend to be a bug or a window-ledge bird so I can take a longer look. (Oh, don’t worry, if the me-bug gets squashed, I don’t get hurt – it doesn’t work that way)...

When I look, I see a happy boy whose father is trying to make into a hard working person. Well, try to be both.

I have retired but you also are retiring childhood and this is the last time I will be leaving you with a letter and a gift and yet, I will think of you from time to time and visit you unawares between the stuff I do that retired people and tooth fairies do.

I have never shown a picture of myself to anyone but as I am leaving, I will give you the only one. (I took it myself, so, sorry I aimed a little low. Well, perhaps that is best anyway)...

I have seen quite a lot of things in my journeys, but you have been my very favorite client, child, friend-though-we-have-never-met.

There were these identical twins in Idaho (or was it Wisconsin?) whose mother could finally tell apart when they lost different teeth, this one spelled “L,” look closely...


(P.S. and her name is actually Lauren which, you know, begins with “L.”)

One nice and rather strange boy wanted to grow up to be a tooth fairy and asked to be apprencticed...














I saved this letter that I especially liked...

One girl’s mom made this for me. Her dad had died earlier in the year. I found it under her pillow with a letter the little girl wrote. In the letter she asked if I would marry her mom to make her mom happy...


Another girl asked for two gifts when her goat lost a tooth the same week as she did...

I got the idea for this photo-letter when I saw your dad late at nite working with photos. I guess we learn to be funny when we are around funny people, nice when we are around nice people?

I know your dad wasn’t going to reserve your Halo 3 on time so I did for you as a farewell. Remember me sometimes. The receipt is below this screen, I paid for it under your dad’s name at the 83rd Street Gamestop.

Enjoy it (but don’t forget to eat and sleep) lol!

You are quite a sage already, little one,
Dusky

Credits: photo of boy in blue cap from starfire on flickr, many credits to yet be given.

1000 Pictures, 1000 Cranes

My wife's name in English is 1000 pictures because her mother, Saddako, liked to draw and paint watercolors.

1000 means a great amount and we love round numbers, Arod's 500th homerun and Matsui's 100th occurred last month with fanfares (both are Yankees). And in Japanese tradition, if someone (or some friends) make 1000 paper cranes, it will bring luck, healing, good results for a cause.

YOU GET TO SEE THIS POSTING IN PROGRESS, LOOK INSIDE MY BRain...















I am returning to this unfinished post after a couple years. I wonder how many people will dig through the pile of my old posts to read this little note?

Anyway, I am not going to tie together all the things I was going to here. But I will finally explain this picture, why my brain is a picture of a sideways girl.

What below, here where we run around and eat, is masculine; is feminine above, in the dimension where we connect to others as who we are, not what we do, also called heaven or the above. And vice versa, the feminine is masculine above.

The scope of what feminine and masculine are is beyond this small writing. If you are interested, study the left and right qualities of the sephirot, or better acquire a rare teacher who is willing explain.

Cold Brewed Green Tea?

I read an article on cold brewed coffee and as we alike Joe Torre prefer green tea (my wife is Japanese), I thought I would give cold brewed green tea a try. We loved the cold green tea we bought from Jas Mart in Manhattan but it was a tad expensive because my wife, my son and I go through it like water.

I put six tea bags into a gallon of water and placed it in the refrigerator. (You need to let it steep in or out of the refrigerator for a couple of hours, and... you don't even have to take out the tea bags! The tanic acid which comes out by over-steeping in hot water isn't found here and you can drink the concoction for days.) The result was terrific. It had a lighter, cleaner taste, more refreshing like cold water. The refined aspects of the tea were not destroyed by the brewing process. We love it!

I love when we use four jasmine tea bags and two regular green tea bags but my wife's tongue has a Japanese sensibility and it is too perfume-y for her.

The photo is of hot matcha green tea but I couldn't resist the beauty.

Here is the article on cold-brewed iced coffee, if that's your cup of tea...

June 27, 2007
The New York Times
Iced Coffee? No Sweat
By CINDY PRICE

BEFORE I go telling everybody that the secret to great iced coffee is already in the kitchen, my friend Keller wants me to confess: I didn’t know from iced coffee until he showed me the light.

It’s important to cop to this now, because not a summer goes by that he does not painstakingly remind me, a rabid iced-coffee drinker, that he’s the one who introduced me to the wonders of cold-brewed iced coffee. The funny thing is, when the subject came up we were holed up in a summer rental with three friends off the coast of Puerto Rico, on a tiny island not exactly swimming in upmarket coffee houses.

Our first morning there I brewed a blend from the local grocery in the coffeepot, laced it with a little half-and-half and sugar, then let it cool. Classy, I thought, carrying the pitcher to the table. “I’ll just take it hot,” he mumbled, while I blinked in disbelief.

Clearly, this boy didn’t know any better. A drink has a time and place. Surely he didn’t subscribe to drinking hot coffee in summer?

“No, I only drink iced coffee if it’s cold-brewed,” he said.

For five days we watched him sullenly sip his hot coffee on a broiling Caribbean island in the dead of summer. We chided him for his pretensions, ridiculed him, tried valiantly to break him, but he patiently waited us out. Once we tried it we would understand, he explained. Like friends disputing a baseball stat in a bar with no access to Google, we had no way to settle the argument.

Two weeks later, back in Brooklyn, I saw a sign: “Cold-Brewed Iced Coffee Served Here.” Fine, then. I threw down two bucks and took a sip. Though it pains me to admit, the difference was considerable. Without the bitterness produced by hot water, the cold-brewed coffee had hints of chocolate, even caramel. I dropped my sugar packet — no need for it. The best brews hardly need cream. It really is the kind of thing a gentleman might spend five days in hot-coffee solitary confinement for.

Most days I’m too lazy to hunt down the elusive cold-brewed cup. But recently I discovered an interesting little fact. Cold-brewed coffee is actually dirt simple to make at home. Online, you’ll find a wealth of forums arguing for this bean or that, bottled water over tap, the 24-hour versus the 12-hour soak. You can even buy the Toddy cold-brew coffee system for about $30.
But you can also bang it out with a Mason jar and a sieve. You just add water to coffee, stir, cover it and leave it out on the counter overnight. A quick two-step filtering the next day (strain the grounds through a sieve, and use a coffee filter to pick up silt), a dilution of the brew one-to-one with water, and you’re done. Except for the time it sits on the kitchen counter, the whole process takes about five minutes.

I was curious to see how it would taste without all the trappings. The answer is, Fantastic. My friend Carter, something of a cold-brewing savant, turned me onto another homegrown trick: freeze some of the concentrate into cubes. Matched with regular ice cubes, they melt into the same ratio as the final blend.

Very fancy. Can’t wait to tell Keller.

Credits -
Photo of matcha supplied by michenv's flickr photostream.
Photo of iced coffee supplied by disneymike's flickr photostream.

The New School Year Blimp

On the first day of this year's not-school (my son of 12 stays home with me and also learns from music teachers, an art/cooking teacher, and a swimming instructor), we were watching Kiki's Delivery Service which features a blimp prominently. We looked up and saw the Goodyear blimp circling around and around our window! We took it as an omen that this would be a good school year. (We measure our unschool year from when my wife goes to teach high school.)

credits -
Photo by Langston McEachen from LSUS Archives which was supplied by mikerosebery's flickr photostream. The photo was taken in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1948.

Study Plans - Turn on Your Long Term Memory

Here is a small article from Time Magazine by Catharine Rankin, enjoy...
Do you try to learn things by blocking off a large chunk of time and going over and over the material until you've got it? Or do you study for short periods of time with breaks in between? Experiments with a variety of animals, including humans, have shown that spaced training - short blocks of learning repeating the same material and separated by rest periods as long as thirty to ninety minutes - works better than does training without breaks. Genetic studies with fruit flies, mice and sea slugs have demonstrated that spaced training triggers the development of long term memory by turning on a gene called CREB. When this powerful learning-and-memory gene is experimentally turned off or blocked, memory fails to form; if enough extra copies of the CREB gene are added, long-term memory is triggered after a single short term session.
I have had this up on the inside door of our cupboard for years.

Photo Link - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jayswww/

Learning is a Two Step Process

I hear that practice at music schools is changing a bit. I hope so. At places like Julliard you would try to grab one of the limited number of practice rooms. Ok, you mananged to get one, so you camped out and practiced for hours so you wouldn't lose having a place to play that day.
Now, I hear, they take more breaks.
When we learn, it is a two step process. (1) Take in information. (2) Incorperate the new information into what we already know and believe.
If you study math for 2 hours then read history for a while, you won't find you retained the math as well as someone who took a break and shot hoops or napped afterward. Yeah, that's why people do well when they memorize right before bed. Learning is a two part process.
It is interesting that even exercise is a two step process. First you run, swim or lift weights. This makes small tears in your muscles. Then you rest at night or over a few days. During your resting, the small tears are repaired as new muscle tissue grows to connect them. It is the complete process of exercise (tearing down) and rest (repair) that is important.
Look at my post on Study Plans which quotes a Time Magazine research article showing how you learn as much studying in little bits as those who plod on unceasingly. Then you might want to get off the computer and take a walk or make a dagwood sandwich so you'll actually remember what you read...

Credits -
Photo from aaroscape on flickr.

Why Ancient Sounds?

Ancient Sounds is the title of a Paul Klee masterpiece. The name also reflects my interest in music. When you choose a career, you should look at the small clues. Do you like the smell of wood shavings and sawdust, then think perhaps of being a builder. As a child, I loved the sound of one even one piano key struck. And I have found that this deep down resonance has stayed with me. Klee had to choose between being a violinist or visual artist. I hope he choose what gave him the truest small pleasures, I think so. But not even creating great works such as his could ever make up for giving up what you were meant to love doing. Choose wisely.

Credits -
Photo taken from WebMuseum, Paris.

Please click on this Klee photo to see texture.