My cello is currently in the shop for repair and without it, my mind is buzzing with thoughts on my music practice. So here's another post for those interested in such things...For the rest of you, there will be more on the exciting activities I have been up to soon!
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There is no achievement only an endless unfolding. Ambition leads us astray. What is important in any skill we are developing is the process, not just of refining our technique, but of the person we are becoming.
This poem, shared by a friend, says it more succinctly and gently than I can.
...don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
- excerpt from "Advice to Myself" by Louise Erdrich
In my practice recently I have been focusing on trying to remain loose and relaxed. Not just remembering to take a breath every once and a while, but of letting go of every effort to control the sound and instead remaining heavy and feeling the cello guide the bow. It has been extremely liberating and extremely challenging. The experience is one that each person has to find on their own terms - I had certainly heard and read of it before but that didn't allow me to internalize it enough for it to affect my playing.
My best attempt to describe it would be to liken it to learning how to ice skate. At first we are very unstable because we are scared and uncomfortable - we can't grip the ground anymore and don't trust the slickness of the ice or the thinness of the blade holding our weight. Because we have ideas in our mind of what stability feels like and how we normally find balance we try to force those same actions, often resulting in getting tense and not moving or losing control and falling. As we persevere we learn that when we focus on relaxing our weight and balancing instead of gripping and tensing, our feet can glide easily over the ice. In my cello practice right now, when I let go of the notions I have of how to form sound by pulling and applying pressure, I am able to glide easily over the string and produce a beautiful tone with ease (or at least the beginnings of a beautiful tone).
It takes me a lot of concentration to remain relaxed and not to try to take over control from the cello. And what has been most significant in this particular challenge is realizing how these physical tendencies are in line with the quality of my thoughts. I want to improve and produce a good sound - the sound I hear my teacher play in lessons, that I hear from Asha during her practice. But practicing the music is not worth carrying around frustration and self-deprecation when I can't make the sound I want happen right now. I don't want to be dedicating my life to music if it means ingraining a sense of dissatisfaction and anxiety in how I deal with myself.
Conversely, If every time I sit to practice I have to listen to hardly any sound come out of the cello for 15 minutes or an hour or three hours while I figure out how to drop the weight of my arm without trying to control the sound with pressure and tension but am feeling peaceful and relaxed in every note, I am completely satisfied with dedicating to the music. For in this state of mind I am practicing how to face, accept, and enjoy where I am, and practicing how to be patient with myself. It means I am constantly working towards a positive relationship with the music, and thus striving to develop integrity between myself and the music, staying aware of how much I love what I am doing. And this is the only way I can one day truly communicate the music and move people with something authentic.
Indian classical music is improvisational and contains so much to learn structurally, and so it demands this integration between mind and spirit to be able to immediately call up appropriate and effective performance. I never discussed these issues in Western music. Perhaps just because I never went as deeply in it. But I never sat down and said to myself, look at all that tension! Don't worry about this piece. Focus on the process, on who you are becoming. This perspective is what Indian music allows me to see, and perhaps what it has to offer to the world; self-realization and integrity. I know that all great musicians of any tradition find this, but I wonder if perhaps that integrity is more inherent in the pedagogy and the tradition. Perhaps I am just extremely lucky to have the gurus I do who have such integrity and such kindness and generosity from which I learn and grow everyday. Of that I am certain and so on that I will end.
.***
There is no achievement only an endless unfolding. Ambition leads us astray. What is important in any skill we are developing is the process, not just of refining our technique, but of the person we are becoming.
This poem, shared by a friend, says it more succinctly and gently than I can.
...don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
- excerpt from "Advice to Myself" by Louise Erdrich
In my practice recently I have been focusing on trying to remain loose and relaxed. Not just remembering to take a breath every once and a while, but of letting go of every effort to control the sound and instead remaining heavy and feeling the cello guide the bow. It has been extremely liberating and extremely challenging. The experience is one that each person has to find on their own terms - I had certainly heard and read of it before but that didn't allow me to internalize it enough for it to affect my playing.
My best attempt to describe it would be to liken it to learning how to ice skate. At first we are very unstable because we are scared and uncomfortable - we can't grip the ground anymore and don't trust the slickness of the ice or the thinness of the blade holding our weight. Because we have ideas in our mind of what stability feels like and how we normally find balance we try to force those same actions, often resulting in getting tense and not moving or losing control and falling. As we persevere we learn that when we focus on relaxing our weight and balancing instead of gripping and tensing, our feet can glide easily over the ice. In my cello practice right now, when I let go of the notions I have of how to form sound by pulling and applying pressure, I am able to glide easily over the string and produce a beautiful tone with ease (or at least the beginnings of a beautiful tone).
It takes me a lot of concentration to remain relaxed and not to try to take over control from the cello. And what has been most significant in this particular challenge is realizing how these physical tendencies are in line with the quality of my thoughts. I want to improve and produce a good sound - the sound I hear my teacher play in lessons, that I hear from Asha during her practice. But practicing the music is not worth carrying around frustration and self-deprecation when I can't make the sound I want happen right now. I don't want to be dedicating my life to music if it means ingraining a sense of dissatisfaction and anxiety in how I deal with myself.
Conversely, If every time I sit to practice I have to listen to hardly any sound come out of the cello for 15 minutes or an hour or three hours while I figure out how to drop the weight of my arm without trying to control the sound with pressure and tension but am feeling peaceful and relaxed in every note, I am completely satisfied with dedicating to the music. For in this state of mind I am practicing how to face, accept, and enjoy where I am, and practicing how to be patient with myself. It means I am constantly working towards a positive relationship with the music, and thus striving to develop integrity between myself and the music, staying aware of how much I love what I am doing. And this is the only way I can one day truly communicate the music and move people with something authentic.
Indian classical music is improvisational and contains so much to learn structurally, and so it demands this integration between mind and spirit to be able to immediately call up appropriate and effective performance. I never discussed these issues in Western music. Perhaps just because I never went as deeply in it. But I never sat down and said to myself, look at all that tension! Don't worry about this piece. Focus on the process, on who you are becoming. This perspective is what Indian music allows me to see, and perhaps what it has to offer to the world; self-realization and integrity. I know that all great musicians of any tradition find this, but I wonder if perhaps that integrity is more inherent in the pedagogy and the tradition. Perhaps I am just extremely lucky to have the gurus I do who have such integrity and such kindness and generosity from which I learn and grow everyday. Of that I am certain and so on that I will end.
If you play how you feel then it'll always be authentic and exactly what it should be.
ReplyDeleteI spend a lot of time thinking about how I should sing a part or play a line but I realized if you "hear" the song and the way it speaks to you, it'll give you the answer. If it's different today than it was yesterday, let it be different.
Hear yourself. Hear your music.