Lessons about music, learned on my holiday

Last week I enjoyed seven days of real holiday down at Sandy Point, a fairly isolated part of the Victorian coast line (though not too many hours drive from Melbourne). No internet, no mobile coverage… just lots of books, and lots of instruments to play. Tiny (boyfriend – that’s his pseudonym for this blog) and I didn’t in fact get through all the many ‘projects’ we brought away with us. But we did spend a lot of time doing not-very-much, and in the process, I amused myself drawing the following parallels between our adventures and some important lessons in music learning and music making.

1. The significance of space, stretching out in front of us, and in front of our students

I read somewhere that standing looking out across an endless vista – towards the sea or mountains, or from a high point in nature – gives our souls room to expand. I love the way I feel my breathing slow and deepen when I stand and look out to sea, or along an endless coastline. I feel small and insignificant, and yet essential and connected, all at the same time.

I think a lot about ensuring there is space in front of my students, metaphorically. Particularly emotional space, in terms of what they feel ready to take part in, or try out, in our creative music lessons. Children come to our classes with so many diverse experiences already behind them. Working with new arrivals, especially refugees, I can’t possibly know what they feel ready to take part in. Rather than guessing, or pushing them, I can make sure there is ’space’ in front of them, ready for them to step into, when they feel the time is right.

2. Some things work themselves out in their own time

We had a fireplace in the house we stayed in, and it was a temperamental, capricious beast (the fireplace, and the fire within it). Somedays the flames took hold quickly and resolvedly, and we could sit back and enjoy it. Other days, it really kept us guessing, trying to work out the best strategy to get it going. (I say ‘us’, but I should really say ‘Tiny’ – I was more of a supervisor, watching from the comfy sidelines of the couch, looking up from my novel to call out suggestions occasionally).

On our second morning, this was the case. Tiny tried all sorts of things (blowing, rearranging the wood and kindling, opening and closing the door to the fireplace, adding more newspaper). “Just leave it awhile,” I suggested eventually. The cup of tea I’d made was getting cold… and then, not five minutes later, we looked toward the fireplace, and the fire was roaring away merrily! So the lesson here is, sometimes things just need a bit more processing time than you expect. Allowing time is similar to creating space in front of students… we also need to do this for ourselves.

3. The art might already be there…

Are we sometimes so busy being ‘clever’ or ‘interesting’ or ‘original’ that we fail to notice that which is already there, and already compelling all on its own? I like the story of Michaelangelo’s approach to sculpture (that I first read in Benjamin Zander’s book The Art of Possibility), which tells of the great sculptor trusting – no, believing – that the artwork was already present and existing, just hidden within the block of marble. His job of sculptor was to simply reveal it, to gradually work away the layers, until it was there for all to see.

Sometimes we might feel the urge to add to it further, leave our own mark…

Which leads me to another fire-building story. Sometimes Tiny found that a roaring fire was just one twitch of a twig away. Adjust a single log, and suddenly the problem has gone. It can be like this when playing an instrument, or composing a piece, or writing a thesis. A single small idea (often not even new material, but a slight different perspective) can be a catalyst for big breakthroughs. Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies work along similar principals. The original set of Oblique Strategies (as described in his book A Year – With Swollen Appendices) was a set of cards that one consulted as a way of gaining a new perspective on a problem under discussion, or creative endeavour, or similar.”Honour thy error as a hidden intention” is one of them. This website generates new ones with each click. Do check it out. You might want to start to make your own deck of your favourites.

Sometimes it is out of our hands anyway. Music is ephemeral. We can’t always control how long it exists for.

4. Slow dedication and consistency creates its own beauty… and motivation grows with understanding

On one of our long beach walks I decided to create an ephemeral sculpture. Every white cuttlefish shell I found, I stuck upright in the sand, exactly where I found it. The walk lasted 2 hours. Every time I looked back I could squint and see a tiny, haphazard ‘trail of breadcrumbs’, of these white dots zig-zagged along the beach, dotting in and out of the mounds of seaweed. I started to feel very proud – I thought it looked beautiful – and my motivation grew stronger and stronger. I didn’t want to miss a single cuttlefish. I took many steps to the left or right of our path to reach a cuttlefish I had spied and place it upright in the sand. Here is a photo of one section of the sculpture:

They are hard to see, I know. As I took the photo, the sun was glaring on the back of the camera. Tiny tells me that the two white dots to the right on this image are in fact seagulls, not cuttlefish shells. This is a bit disappointing for me (my eyesight is not very good for this kind of thing). Still, I hope you get the impression.

When I first began this endeavour, I perhaps wasn’t taking it very seriously. It was just a small bit of entertainment, something to look out for as we walked and talked. But as I continued, my intention grew stronger. I think that creative efforts sometimes work like this. At first, we may not always be able to see exactly where we are heading with an idea. It reveals itself as we stick at it. Perhaps this is an argument for making things fun for our students, because if they are having fun, they will be motivated to stay with something. Then, as the intention or shape or structure of the endeavour begins to reveal itself, our motivation shifts, as we have a stronger sense of our goal, and its possibility.

Buried in books

I’m on holidays! Up in Byron Bay, where the rain is falling thick and fast in a way that leaves us Melbournians open-mouthed at the wonder of it all. It’s still warm and humid, so we can wear thong (flip-flops) so who cares about getting a little wet?

I’ve been relishing this break from thesis writing. I’ve been reading obsessively, and can happily recommend these books:

• DogBoy by Eva Hornung. This was the first book I read on this holiday. Couldn’t put it down. It’s sad though, heart-breakingly sad, and it sat heavily in my head for a long time after. I went back to re-read certain sections (hoping to make it easier on myself, to no avail). The writing is beautiful. Just thinking about this book now, a couple of days after finishing it, I am again taken back into that world.
• Things We Didn’t See Coming, by Steven Amsterdam. This one was also compelling. Lots of gaps that never quite get filled in. Such assured writing – he never lets go of you as a reader.  “It’s quite a ride,” was my first comment, when someone asked how I’d liked it. Fascinating, alarming, and compelling as you long for him to make more sense of things for you. A vision of an amoral, apocalyptic near-future that is quite imaginable. Last night at dinner those of us who have read the book wondered aloud how different it might have felt to have read it during the last months of Howard’s reign. Are we a littl more optimistic now? Or simply a bit worn down from the frustrations of the Howard era? Anyway, it was an intriguing thing to ponder. Striking cover art too.
• Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brookes. Oh, I loved this one too. I loved the heroine, and I loved the evocative, rich writing that created a whole village and community for me. Strange twist at the end took me by surprise, and the desperation and exhaustion of the community as they battle the Great Plague is palpable.

Right now, I have just got started on Linda Jaivin’s new book, A Most Immoral Woman. Jaivin has a cheeky, flirtatious, disarming way of writing, that balances out the pompousity of her main character Morrison (a man, not the most immoral woman of the title). I haven’t read any of her other books, but heard her speak about this novel (and read from it) a week or so ago on Radio National’s The Book Show.

Apart from the reading on this holiday, I have plans to go to yoga classes (have been to two already), and maybe, maybe…. do a surfing course. I’ve always thought surfing looked like the most amazing past-time. Devotees get a kind of glazed, evangelical look in their eyes, and they are so committed that I figure it must be a pretty addictive experience. I’m keen to find out for myself what joys it contains.

Next week, back to work. Four days of workshops at ArtPlay. And the thesis is coming along, coming along. I’m up to my conclusions now, so taking a bit of time this week to re-read everything I’ve written and ponder what my resulting conclusions might actually be.

Two Lists, and some photos

Dear readers, dear readers, have you missed me? I’m sorry for this long hiatus, with no warning given. I have been in a kind of self-imposed Lock-Down mode, writing my thesis, reading literature, writing Lit Reviews, trying to break the back of the thing.

I have been enjoying it, too. It’s been fantastic to be able to work in such a focused way. I am also proud of myself because let me assure you, it hasn’t been easy! It’s summer! the sun is shining, my friends call to tell me their Happy Plans for Weekends away, and I remain in Lock-Down, writing, writing.

But I’m making progress.

Still, I can’t resist offering a couple of lists as a way of reminding myself that I am still here and still present.

List No. 1 – What I am Working On and What I have Finished

• Reading up on Vygotsky – it is a revelation. I love this stuff. All the things I am trying to do in my work, he is labelling and naming and analysing. It’s great.
• Reading up on Artist Pedagogies. It’s so nice. Originally I thought I would have to include all sorts of writing on the psychology of culture shock, or language acquisition, or brain stuff… but in fact it is really important I look at things like Artist Pedagogies and student engagement (things I actually know something about). It makes the Lit Review so much friendlier, somehow.
• I have finished at least 2 chapters, with some descriptive writing as well as summaries of each of my three ‘cases’ (the student participants).
• I have finished a description of my own music teaching pedagogy. (I need to weave the Vygotsky references in there now).
• Lastly, I am working on a paper to submit to the 2009 ASME conference (Australian Society of Music Educators). I’d love to have a bit more time to get my head around this task, when I am so in the midst of thesis-writing… but the deadline is Monday and so I must do it now.

So yes. things are going well. I have also been going into work at the Orchestra each week – but that is its own story. I’ll share it very soon. Most interesting!

List No. 2 – The Things I plan to do when I finish my Masters

• Learn to tap-dance – how fun! I shall practise on my balcony and entertain my neighbours with my rapid progress.
• Buy a smaller accordian than the one I currently have, and have some lessons. See if I can get a few Italian or Bosnian folk songs going.
• Work much harder at my Italian – do more homework, chat with my Italian neighbours, listen to local Italian radio and rent more Italian DVDs.
• Learn to play cello? I’d love to do this. I don’t even own a cello! But I could get one. I just want to draw sound out. I love watching people bow.
• Play my clarinet a whole lot more. (I think that once I start learning other instruments I will miss clarinet. I will long to be able to play something well, and seeing as I already play clarinet well, I will be drawn back to it.)
• Go on a holiday. Maybe back to Byron, maybe to Far North Queensland. Learn to surf.
• Go on a Vipassana meditation retreat (you know, the ten day silence retreats you have probably heard about).

I think I will have to stagger the commencement dates of all these plans. I should add in there, find a new job. But more on that next post!

Lastly, it hasn’t been all work, cooped up in my little inner-city flat, getting hot and stuffy. I have managed to get away a bit. Most recently over the Australia Day Long Weekend. Lovely friends Victoria and Simon (who I sang carols with at Christmas time) invited me to stay with them and their friends and family. I did holiday things in the mornings, then worked hard at my reading and writing in the afternoons. I think it was good for me to have a change of scenery. Here are some photos, to close off this post.

The photo of the Mud Girls (looking like members of a long lost tribe) was taken after these two lasses had got stuck out in the marshy shallow inlet in their kayak, and had to walk it back into shore, waist-deep in mud. Half the town took photos of them. The local Anglers have apparently stuck one in their club house. The photo of the bright blue strip of sea is looking towards the inlet, across the marshes and wetlands. The photo of the broad beach is from one of our early morning walks with the dogs (accompanied by a swim).

Annual stocktake, looking forward… plus a bit of nostalgia

I saw in the New Year with friends down in Queenscliff, a pretty town situated on one of the two peninsulas that guard Port Phillip Bay. We cooked a feast, lit two sets of ornate candelabras*, and did a kind of ’stocktake’ on the year that was. Questions included:

• Film of the year
• Soundtrack of your year (either the music you listened to, or the music that best depicts or describes your year)
• Item of clothing acquired this year and worn most often (we all had something to nominate here, no hesitation)
• Favourite recipe of the year
• Happiest moment (for me this was SB returning to Rome for a further 22 romantic hours with me, back in January, after I managed to get myself on a flight leaving one day later. Oh, the joy!)
• Biggest surprise or unexpected outcome (responses here included Obama’s win – would any of us have predicted that, two years ago? – and Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generation. We wouldn’t have predicted that in the Howard years either…)
• Word/phrase/expression of the year (in the media or from your own mouth)
• Words that sum up your year (we all seemed to offer words like ‘challenging’ and ‘crap’)
• Biggest lesson learned

There were more… these are the ones I can think of now. Perhaps it is the research frame of mind that makes me enjoy looking back over things in this way and trying to put them in context. Or perhaps it is my determination to put all of the frustration and sadness that marked much of 2008 for me away once and for all. I am designating 2009 as my Year of Plenty. Plenty of what, I am not sure yet. Hopefully plenty of good things. That is the plan, anyway. Yee-ha!

But I can’t resist looking back either. This time last year… that is my current favourite phrase, because this time last year I was travelling, and having the most wonderful time. This time last year I was in Italy, in Lecce to be exact, the beautiful ornate Baroque city in Puglia in the heel of the boot that is Italia. Before that, I ‘d caught up with old friends from the European Mozart Academy in Paris, we’d given a concert in Armenia, I’d been back to Bosnia for the first time in nine years and celebrated a genuine White Christmas there. It seems longer than a year ago. It seems like another life ago. A different person almost.

But that’s the person I want to get back again. We are all at our best when we are travelling, perhaps. Nothing really troubles you.

So here are a couple of photos from this time last year. And if you visit the posts in the ‘Travel’ category you’ll find many more.

* We sang Neil Diamond songs too. It was the only CD anyone had remembered to bring. We worked out ‘Solitary Man’ on the guitar (me) and bass guitar (Nina). And sang away without shame. Sometimes I wonder if I was born in the wrong decade. At least we sang with a sense of irony.

Eat, sleep, do yoga…

I spent the last week in Byron Bay, on a yoga retreat at the Byron Yoga Centre.

It’s a great way to recharge… everything in the environment supports us to just focus on why we are there, feeding us nurturing, nourishing food, giving us lots of space to take part in as little or as much as we want…The teachers were inspiring, and after quite a number of years’ dedication to a particular style of yoga and teaching, I loved broadening my horizons to take in some new ideas. I stretched my comfort zones too, and wonder if I am a little stale in my practice at home.

Byron Bay is famous for its beautiful beaches, surfing, hippy culture, and backpacker mecca-dom. But the Yoga Centre is a little away from the town centre, just over the road from Belongil Beach. If the weather had held out it would have been a week of swimming and sun, as well as eat/sleep/yoga, however, northern New South Wales was hit by big storms last week, and Byron saw plenty of rain. It was a bit cold, a bit damp at times, but still wonderful. A few more sunny days would have just been a bonus.

Here are a couple of fellow retreaters, retreating here from the sea (water wasn’t as cold as the weather):

At the end of the retreat I felt energised, recharged, refreshed…. I then went up to Brisbane to stay a few days with my sister and her family. I continued my yoga practise on their balcony in the early morning, breathing in the frangipani scent and feeling peaceful to all the world.

Then yesterday I came back to Melbourne and went back to work, developed a crashing headache within a few hours, and am now wondering how I will hold onto all the wonderful effects of the retreat, back here in the madness of my working life?

Weekend away – with photos

I spent the weekend with friends in the north of the state, in the very dry Wimmera region, not far from Dimboola.

I was probably only away about 28 hours, but even after that short a time I felt rested and refreshed. They have the most beautiful farm house, filled with unique and beautiful pieces of furniture and keepsakes, and quite an extraordinary landscape of sand hills, native pine forests, scrublands, and pastures. It was my first visit to their place but I feel a special connection with it – by chance I was at their home for dinner the night they needed to sign the sale papers, and I witnessed their signatures.

Their property sits very close to Lake Hindmarsh – now completely dry for its seventh year. The drought has hit this part of Victoria very hard indeed. We drove to the middle of the dried-out lake, which is 20km wide. This is a view looking towards the horizon. The skies out there had me captivated – I took photo after photo and couldn’t get enough of the changing cloud formations and colours.

Beautiful ancient eucalypts. These are landmark trees – you can see them clearly on the horizon as you approach the town, as they are perched on a sand hill, higher ground than the surrounding farm land.

We decided I should plant a tree (or three) in honour of my visit. There are now three ‘memorial’ trees near the entrance to the property that are ‘mine’ (although it will be up to them to water them). This is me in planting mode – note the very glamorous fly net I borrowed from my hosts.

tree planting

Here is another view of the sky. One of my many attempts to capture it.

For Rosa, For New England

Two weekends ago I was up in Armidale, New South Wales, which is part of the New England region. Very pretty, very chilled-out place to do a project. Lucky me. I was working for AYO (Australian Youth Orchestra) leading an education project with the Bloodwood String Quartet (very impressive young quartet of players) as part of the Young Australian Concert Artists regional residency program. The Quartet and I worked with young string players from the Armidale Youth String Training Program (who have been playing on average around three years, and are aged between 9 and 14, I’d say).

Such a nice project! First of all, the quartet was great – very open to the group-composing process, and to facilitating a composition with a small group of young players, very inventive with what they came up with, and very happy to try some of my odder ideas.

Then, the host school – the New England Conservatorium – proved a peaceful, happy place to be. It is perched high on a hill at one end of the town, in a grand old building with a stately staircase at its entrance, and a circular drive. Not to mention a director who had everything organised and was completely unflappable and welcoming, in the midst of a full weekend of workshops happening in all directions, not just our grou.

Lastly, the motel room I was provided with was immensely luxurious – I think it was more spacious than the entire flat I live in in Melbourne! But I was there to work, so didn’t spend much time enjoying the perks like the flat screen TV. (I am amused to see that on their website they offer up their adjacence to McDonalds as the prime Unique Selling Point… clearly I am a little outside their target market. But still, it was very, very comfortable there. Proximity to McDonalds, or indeed Red Rooster which was over the road, didn’t both me).

So what did we do?

I am in Bologna…

…for the International Society of Music Educators (ISME) conference. It is sunny, beautiful, and filled with charm, and now that my responsibilities towards the running of last week’s Policy Commission meeting have been somewhat discharged, I am looking forward to sitting back and letting all the interesting conference events wash over me.

Last week’s Policy Commission was interesting. It isn’t the kind of Commission I would automatically expect to be part of, as so much of my work is more concerned with hands-on, practical making of music and projects, rather than big-picture policy. However, there was much to chew on. The Commission theme was on local and indigenous musics in music education policy, and it was fascinating to start to build a comparison of what takes place in different parts of the world.

I also celebrated my birthday last week, walking over an hour to get to a recommended osteria that turned out to be closed for the summer. Never mind, you can’t have a bad meal in Bologna and we chose somewhere else instead.

Then, the next day, I flew to London for a job interview. This was something that ended up coinciding with my time in Italy, quite by luck and chance. How did it go? Well, it was certainly a valuable learning experience. I’m not sure it was particularly enjoyable. It was interesting to do the second interview in person, as the first one had been on the phone. I didn’t get offered the job. So I am still looking for new directions, and hopefully this conference will offer some opportunities to pick the brains of others older and wiser than me, and maybe also build up my networks in different countries. Maybe I should be looking to the States, rather than the UK?

Lots of think about, and what an inspiring environment to do that in! Here are some photos:

A streetscape in the centre of Bologna. I keep photographing this street – its width and gradient, and the buildings that line it, give it a tremendous sense of grand scale.

This is the cafe where Pip and I had a drink to celebrate my birthday.

This is from the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna (about an hour and half by trin from Bologna). Ravenna is such a delight – its churches filled with breathtaking mosaics of the most awe-inspiring detail and artistry.

Big events

I am writing this in Bologna, where I shall be for the next two weeks. More or less.

Prior to getting here, I finished a big project for the Orchestra. It was on Wednesday, a Leadership Training workshop for senior managers from the (apparently) 3rd largest organisations in the world. Pretty big biccies. Corporate development projects have alwasy seemed to be me to be something that could utilise the skills musicians develop in the Community Outreach program well, that could also generate significant income for the program, and for the Orchestra. But this is the first time I have been given the opportunity to demonstrate this.

I shall be a bit cryptic here, for the sake of anonymity. But essentially, the project I devised involved a scaled-down version of one of the most loved orchestral classics, played by an ensemble of 16 players. 127 corporate senior manager types were involved. They each had an instrument – piece of percussion, including a lot of tuned percussion, and a big range of serious drums. This was no Toy Symphony – it needed to sound good.

The corporates divided up into break-out groups to develop a short section of music using their percussion instruments, with one of the Orchestra musicians assigned to lead and support each group. When all the break-out groups came back together, they learned that all of their small-group pieces had actually been designed to be played together, they were all to become small cogs in part of a far bigger machine. They didn’t realise this when they were composing their pieces.

Eyes and Brisbane skies

Time for a photo post….. during our recent visit to Brisbane SB and I tried to capture the Brisbane evening skies. We couldn’t resist putting ourselves in the picture too.