What World is This?

I am a music teacher.  I have taught piano and voice to students of all ages (3 to 76, in fact).  It is a rewarding, frustrating, exhilarating job.  Nothing could have prepared me for the challenges I have faced over the last 10 years.  And I mean that literally.  Nothing.   Majoring in music education in college was, in my opinion, a joke.  How could pedagogy classes- given by stuffy old professors, whose sole joy in life is dissecting chord progressions and forcing students to guess the composer of a two-bar soundbite of one of the millions of symphonies ever composed-  possibly prepare aspiring teachers for the enormous task ahead of them?  As a college student, no one warns you of the saint-like patience that will be required of you.  No one tells you that half of your students won’t care enough to practice and that their well-meaning parents will continue to send them, week after week, even though their progress is slower than molasses.  And, no one warns you of the hostility you may face from other teachers.  I have been trying to understand where that hostility stems from, and I have come to believe it is all over differences of opinion regarding the priorities and focus a teacher should have.

Music is entirely subjective; it deals with emotions, aesthetics, art.  It is intangible.  We can manipulate it, reproduce it, transcribe it, pick it apart and assign all kinds of terms and symbols to it, but these parameters we ascribe to it are meaningless.  They have nothing to do with the music itself.  Each person walking this earth has a unique musical upbringing, if you will.  Every song ever composed  has a  different meaning and nuance to each set of ears that encounters it.  How then, can we possibly impart the knowledge we have gained from our lifelong experiences with music, to another person?  Each teacher has a different idea of how this should be done.  I have found that they very seldom agree with (or respect) one another.

I have been facing this problem a lot over the past few months.  I have had many discussions with other teachers and students and former students.  I have taken students who have come from other teachers, confused and frustrated, and I try to fill in the gaps.  I have become aware that, between the varying teaching styles, there is one particular chasm which divides them all.  That is between teaching students to play music and teaching students to read music.  Let us hypothetically take two examples of piano teachers:  teacher A and teacher B.  (There is a teacher C, but she really never should have become a teacher, since she lacks communication skills and hates children.  Hypothetically, of course!)

Teacher A loves to perform on the piano.  She holds membership with several music teacher organizations and loves to enter students into competitions within these organizations.  Her students play with passion and stage presence and have won awards, and even scholarships!  They perform around the community, receiving high acclaim and most people would never know, nor possibly see a problem with their dirty little secret:  they can’t read music.  Every song requires the teacher, sitting on the bench with them, showing them what each next note is, teaching the fingering and eventually dynamics.  Hours upon hours.

Now let us examine teacher B.  He believes technique is the foundation of all great music made on the pianoforte.  His students spend countless hours practicing scales and arpeggios and learning to play without glancing down at their hands.  They know the circle of fifths clockwise and counter and, while they may never learn Fur Elise, they can do Hanon exercises at an astonishing pace!   These students have all technical skills – and zero passion.  When they play at recitals, one may see individuals in the audience yawning and fidgiting, glancing at the program for the hundredth time hoping this song will be over soon.  Anxiety, boredom, rote memorization, all of these can be not only heard, but felt by the listener.  Passion from the performer is imparted to the listener, even through recordings!  I have tested this theory with singers in a chorus before:  have half of the chorus face away from the other half, and have one group sing through a passage, just concentrating on getting the notes right, with no emotion.  Now have them sing it again, but this time with smiles on their faces, trying to impart some excitement, or emotion.  The difference is almost palpable.  Now if I can just get someone to pay me to teach this to telemarketers….

I believe it is possible to bring up good, skilled musicians who are passionate about their music!  I like to equate learning music with learning another language.  If you learn to read a different language, but are never given the opportunity to use that language, what is the point?   You are likewise limited if you learn to speak a language but never to read it, like in past centuries, when children were taught to recite passages of the bible by heart, but never taught to actually read the bible themselves.

Music is a language:  the language of emotion.

How beautiful this world would be if we could all become fluent in the language of emotion.

Why is it that I can only write after 12:00 am?

What is the definition of a grown-up?  Someone who behaves responsibly?   Someone who puts the needs of other before his own?  I don’t believe these are adequate descriptions of what goes on mentally when we are judging someone else’s behavior.  No, the real definition of maturity is when someone behaves the way you think he should.

I mean really, think about it.  Maturity has a different meaning for all of us.  We all have different values, priorities, standards.  Whomever I may think is irresponsible, may seem incredibly mature to someone else.  I’ve seen 3 year olds and 70 year olds behave in ways that I disapprove of.  They may say the same about me.  With strangers, this can be dangerous- isn’t this how wars start?- but this causes damage in our daily lives, with those closest to us.

How is it that you can give birth to a child, watch her grow, learn what makes her tick, and still expect that somewhere between the ages of 18 and 22, she will magically transform into your vision of her perfect self?  Her personality, her control dramas, her nature does not change just because she blows out some candles on a cake. You see your child making what seem to you like the same mistakes over and over, as if she were banging her head on a wall.  You ask, When will she grow up? What you really mean is, When will she be what I want her to be? Maybe never.  So what?  Your job as a parent isn’t to force her into a mold.  It’s to guide, advise, teach.  If none of that works, then either accept her for what she is, or bow out, if it bothers you that much.

That stoner brother of yours is not going to wake up one day, throw on a suit and tie, get a job with a law firm and quit asking you for rent money.  People don’t have drastic personality changes like that unless a perspective-changing event occurs, like a near-death experience or losing a loved one.   Would you really wish that on your brother?

Why are we such ego-centric beings?  Why do we always think that different= wrong?

I began this rant about 8 months ago, but it began to take on a life of its own and grew to nearly five paragraphs.  Here, I have cut off its legs and I don’t foresee any more trouble from this one.

Attending college as an adult, rather than an overgrown teen, has been quite the different experience. I so enjoy the boys in the back of the class, making fun of the professor and joking about the pictures of naked statues in the textbook.  It transports me right back to junior high.  Only, with more cussing.  Like being in junior high with Jay and Silent Bob.

Guess what, I fucking hate Jay and Silent Bob!  I conjecture that these kids are in this class for one simple reason:  they don’t know where else to be.  Shut the hell up so that the people who are attempting to better themselves to eventually support their families so their own loser kids can go to college and waste the professors’ time can hear the damn lesson!  And get off my lawn!

Please be witness to this new resolution:  I will no longer read the comments on Youtube or any of the other sites I visit, save my own.  Nor will I leave any comments on said sites.

I have regrettably been forced to remove some websites, like Skepchick.org, from my tabs. This is necessary because, although the articles are informative, and for the most part, well written, the temptation to read more… is too great.   I will inevitably click here and subsequently waste hours at the computer shaking my head, muttering insults, and typing fruitless arguments to users who have not actually been proven to be sentient beings.  The more opinions I read the less faith I have in humanity.  I will heretofore turn my back against ignorance and dwell solely in the universe of my making, where everyone is well-read and rational.

“Well, so what?” was my reaction to this news story.

As reported on CNN, “Oprah Winfrey once dubbed it the “greatest love story” she had ever heard: a boy held at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II and a girl on the outside who tossed him apples to keep him alive. They eventually married and grew old together.”  Well, the “greatest love story” turned out to be just that, a story.  He made the whole thing up.  Book and movie deals are being terminated as we speak.

Granted, Oprah is not one of my favorite people (she is one of the worst psuedo-science promoters of our time), but I feel a little bit sorry for her in this matter.  I felt the same about the debacle that happened with James Frey several years ago.  It is hardly Oprah’s fault that she was as fooled by these con artists as everyone else.  We are all lied to or conned from time to time.  We all feel stupid about it when it happens.  Why should Oprah be any different?   Why are people blaming her for being vulnerable?  Isn’t Oprah human?   Is she omnipotent?

I pity her, but at the same time to find it ironic.   According to Oprah’s own beliefs about the universe and the so-called “laws of attraction,” she brought this on herself.  Snicker, snicker.

That’s neither here nor there.   The part that confuses me is the dissolution of the book and movie deals.  I don’t understand why all it has to be canceled just because it isn’t true.  Can’t they just relabel it all as fiction and sell it anyway?  I mean, history is riddled with stories of exaggeration and outright imagination.  The thing is, those tales are inspirational, no matter what their origins.  Life would be pretty drab without stories like Anna and the King.

What’s the harm in publishing a memoir that isn’t actually fact-based?  Someone, please, enlighten me.

To My Darling Wil Wheaton,

Just when I think I couldn’t possibly love you more, you do something like this .  *Sigh.*  We are soulmates- I could always see it. Why couldn’t you?

After all we’ve been through together!   Don’t you know my heart strings still feel a tug at the sound of little Martin’s voice?  Have you forgotten the countless hours I spent trying to help Gordie find Ray Brower’s corpse?  Were you completely oblivious to my weekly dedication to your adventures through space and time?  How my pre-teen heart pounding every time that thin, pre-pubescent, slightly effeminate frame filled the screen!  I wouldn’t leave the couch- not even to pee during commercials- for fear of missing a single utterance of Enterprise techno-babble.  Wesley Crusher- the geek of a geek-girl’s dreams.  And how did you repay my hopeless devotion?  By kissing that hussy, Ensign Lefler! The vision of you in the arms of that so-obviously-not-a-geek, probably-never-read-a-sci-fi-in-her-life bimbo haunted my sleep for months!

Then, with so little warning, you disappeared.  Gone, off the face of… the TV.  Leaving me wondering,  “Was any of it real?  Didn’t you feel anything?”

Years later, I finally caught up with you.  Stumbled on your blog, so happy to see that familiar countenance, (which surprising bore facial hair), only to find, *gasp*, you were married!  With children!  Why, Wil, why?  I’m right here!   We were so MFEO.  (Cue sappy love song by either Jewel or Dido.)  Anyway, I’ll be here, waiting, and following your tweets.

Love,

Your Biggest Fan

Your Soulmate

Your True Be’nal

P.S.  Don’t worry, my husband totally gets it:)

So they say.  I really don’t understand how this works, but who hasn’t had this kind of experience at one time or another?  I’m feeling very sorry for myself. I start whining to someone who, as it turns out, is in the same situation as I. We complain to each other ad infinitum. We decide that we are both pathetic, that there is no end in sight to our shared misery, and that we are forever doomed to walk the earth as only shells of people.   Then we walk away feeling ever so much better! Mind-boggling.

So, thanks, Pumpkin.  Let’s do it again, soon.

I’m not.  Superstitious, that is.  However, as I posted on Facebook, I came to a realization last night: purely by accident, we seem to have acquired everything in threes:  three daughters, three dogs, three cats, and even three fish.  Speaking of witch which, this is a great reference for all those kooky things your friends told you at sleepovers in elementary school.

Are you the parent of a teenager?  Does your life feel empty now that your child no longer needs you to feed, dress, and hold her?  Do you feel lonely, useless and depressed?   Relax, for we have the answers to all your prayers!  Send your teen to our abstinence only programs and within the year,  presto!  You will have a little grandson/daughter to love and raise as your very own!  But that’s not all!  Call now and we’ll throw in HIV, Hepatitis, or any STD of your choosing, guaranteed to make you as a parent feel needed again   Call today!