LeslieUpchurch.com

Really "off" this summer.  It is giving me perspective.

I had the best summer ever this year.  For some reason I am choosing to be truly off teaching sometimes.  I have not called some students so I could relax.  I almost never do this. Working with some advanced students who have playing injuries has taught me the importance of breaks. Of course I KNEW they were important, but to actually realize it is far different.  When you do this realization, you don't repeat past errors.

The Buddhist tradition has leaders who have fully realized all of the teachings.  That means, in a sense, they have learned in the feeling way about the way to live fully.  They are enlightened.  Each person has some aspects of enlightenment in their lives.  They just have it ALL!

It is important in life to use the things that we do as everyday material to realize wisdom and how to live well. I grew up in a workaholic family.  It has been a long road to recovering from that.  

Working all of the time makes it impossible to have any type of true wealth in your life.  I work less and have much better financial balance now.  It seems to make no sense at all.  I made quite a bit more money before.  I am just grateful for the result and don't really need to cognitively understand it.

All of this does have to do with Dalcroze.  When the correct effort is applied to making music, with the proper motivation, it is possible to make the most of the music. One student with a major playing injury told me that she really wants to learn jazz piano, not classical, and may have preferred to study photography.  Her parents would not allow this.  Her trap was that her older sister could play 12 hours a day with no negative physical consequence - yet.  However, her younger sister was permitted to study jazz.  The older sister is fine as I said, but the younger sister was dancing quite a bit and also studying jazz piano. Now she has a severely injured back.  All of this makes me think about pressure - from family and from self.  If there is too much pressure from any place, it does not work.

What is the point of Dalcroze when related to all of this.  It has the ability to connect people to the "why" of their choice of doing music in the first place.  The reason is usually enjoying the sound of the music.  Now, honestly, do you always enjoy the sound of your playing?  Or, do you EVER enjoy the sound of your playing?  If the latter is a no, it is time to reflect on just what you are doing studying music.  

Reasons to play that are NOT very healthy - for your parents or to be against your parents, to make money - highly questionable, because you happen to have an affinity for it, because it is a challenge, because you want to please your teacher (parent figure), because you could not really figure out anything else to do, you name it.....

Reasons to play that are healthy - you love the sounds you make, you find the composer's music compellingly interesting, you feel great when you play, playing expresses things you cannot find words for, you name it here also..........

Of course we all play for all or most of the above reasons at different times - maybe even within the same hour.  The biggest reasons would be what you want to look at.

Dalcroze connects you to the biggest reasons.  My role as a teacher working with people with injuries of course has that in it.  But, even if playing for all the right reasons, there are issues such as posture, alignment, and correct effort. Dalcroze exercises provide you with tools to work with at your instrument.  It is not always going to transfer immediately.  I found this out with myself.  I had to injure myself to figure out all of the connections in my recovery.

So, where to start with injuries?  It all depends!  The problem could be purely physical, though most things are a combination of emotional and physical.  The most physical reason would be doing something else that bothers your hand or hands and THAT transfers to piano playing.  The least physical, not really knowing your motivation for playing or fighting against the truth in an effort to justify your choice to pursue music.

Most playing injuries are a combination of the two.  I have a nephew who loves making money but does not like his banking job.  He is nearly 30 and he and his wife have decided against having children due to health issues she has.  So he has started to talk about doing what he initially wanted to do - be a marine biologist.  When he spoke to my daughter, his cousin, recently she said he sounded like the kid she knew whom she dearly loved.  Throughout the business/banking years she did not like him much.  When he was about 25 I asked him if he liked his job and he said he liked the money.  I suggested that he look closely at that and get out as soon as possible before he got accustomed to the money.  Seems he is at least considering doing that.   My nephew is in a position to live frugally and save, save, save for a bit and then go for it. Even if he was not, just in case this is the only life you get - or as my brother who does not have any belief in reincarnation said, you don't remember past lives anyway - so GO FOR IT in this lifetime!

Now, some rules for playing correctly - once you figure out you really should be playing at all .... don't really mean that. Everyone benefits from playing music, but how much and in what part of your life should it play a role?  It can be like in golf - everything from a weekend duffer to Tiger Woods - well, maybe Phil Mickelson is a better example to think of?  But maybe not.  To play music to the exclusion of growing and maturing personally is not healthy.  It may be it makes you rich, famous, and successful - don't we all wish? - but have you truly lived a balanced and gratifying life when all is said and done?

One very young Dalcroze student of mine has a father who is a wildly successful music producer.  His wife told me that his father cut him off because he went into music.  When threatened with being cut off he said he was doing it anyway.  Now, he has produced Miley Cyrus - who incidentally "can't sing" according to his 5 year old daughter.  They want her to have music be an important part  of her life and they obviously don't want her to have Hannah Montana be her role model!

In Qi Gong there is an emphasis on not emphasizing your gaze.  Staring too hard makes it impossible to truly see. Ones laser type focus blocks out everything else.  The teachers speak of a soft focus.  Have you ever had the experience of just enjoying the sounds of the piano with no goal in mind?  Taking this a bit further, with a little more focus, do you ever improvise at the piano to just hear what if?  Improvisation can of course be focused but I can tell when a supposed jazz solo is planned.  The lack of spontaneity is obvious to a trained listener, if not all listeners.  Dalcroze includes training that will lead you to enjoy improvising.  And even benefit musically from it.

In closing my "all talk and no do" portion of this session, I invite you to be fearless in examining your musical life.  If nothing seems amiss, you will have found a deeper conviction for why you make music.  If something is not in line with what you say you are doing, you can set about to discover what is going on with you.  And, just in case this is the only chance you get..............

Enough for today!