Why Music? Why indeed...
As this is my first blog entry since the Covid-19 virus began, I was going to write something about coping with quarantine or social distancing or distance learning - but I realized that nearly everyone is stating their opinions about subjects related to Covid-19, and though I may still add my voice to the discussion, today as the school year begins I have decided to write about how I approach teaching, as a way of imparting musical skills and information, and as a spiritual practice that keeps me engaged in the world.
Imparting skills and information is the nuts and bolts of the teaching profession, but I always get the sense when I am with a student that the most important thing I can offer them is the chance to learn how to think, how to link what they hear to what their hands do and what their eyes see. Music is made up of patterns that repeat and evolve, much like patterns in nature, flowers that bloom, the nautilus that spirals its shape outward in a beautiful symmetry, or the stars that circle our planet in repeating, seasonal order every minute, every night, every year.
Music is a way of understanding time, of seasons, of the poetry of life, and to be a musician, even to play just one song, is to join in the musical conversation of our planet.
Sharing music with friends, playing and singing together or for each other is a wonderful way of communicating together. Practicing scales, patterns, arpeggios…learning chord progressions and structures of rhythm… listening to the tone of a note and adjusting one’s hands to play it more beautifully …all please our deep minds and nourish our lives on earth and our imaginations.
My ultimate purpose in teaching is to bring to my students the same sense of order, powers of expression, and love of the act of creating something out of thin air that made me love to play music in the first place. I am teaching for the long haul, hoping to impart to my students a sure sense of joy that comes from the power to connect body, mind and heart to a simple act of making music on a summer day…as people have done from the beginning of time.