What Good is Music? (in times like these)

Though I’ve gone off social media—how incredibly peaceful—I do keep up with the news, as I believe that is a necessary part of citizenship and belonging to society.

Alas, the news has not been pretty.It’s been downright godawful.

It’s so bad, unbelievable, and terrifying that a rational person might well think: what good is music (or art, or literature, or any other creative endeavor) at a time like this?

Well, let’s dissect this question.

What we have been seeing in the news is (among other things) the manifestation of a certain paradigm—a framework around which things are ordered— that values the following , in no particular order:

— Greed

— Power

— Dominance

— Lies

— Ignorance

— Cruelty

— Indifference to others

— Greed

I could go on, but it’s too depressing.

You will ask: how is “mere” music or art going to save anyone?

And I will answer: because the arts align with a different paradigm, the opposite paradigm, in fact, valuing:

— Generosity

— Gentleness

— Cooperation

— Truth

— Knowledge

— Kindness

— Empathy

The arts express universal truths (those of this second paradigm) through an infinite variety of individually produced iterations. As we know from reading novels, a fictional tale can show us truths. A symphony by Mozart reveals to us the beauty-truth of balance and proportion. A Rembrandt self-portrait gazing at us some 350 years later exposes something true and deep about him as a man and artist, and about us all.

Studying music, we enter into history in such a way that it lives within us—listening to “O Magnum Misterium” by Tomás Luis da Vitória we connect with that world, though it is four centuries past and so much more spiritual than our own times. Listen to African drumming or Argentine tango or Elizabethan lute songs—you will be transported to another time and place. Somehow, the connection between you—you,who perhaps grew up in Southern California with your hair turning green from the swimming pool chemicals—and these far-flung people is much stronger than the distance. The distance collapses.

Or, pick up a pen and try to write a sonnet (ok, ok, a limerick!). Pluck notes on a guitar, and keep on plucking. Push a pencil across paper, leave your mark, enter into the brother/sisterhood of human creators. Gather together and sing, or chant, or recite poetry. Write and put on a play. Leave a mark—but a mark that has no cruelty, dominance, or indifference to others about it.

What the arts give the creator is then passed along to the the audience, the observer, the reader: a personal experience of the healing paradigm of generosity, truth, beauty. Consider, for instance, the immensity of the impact of Bach’s music—the product of one’s man’s life work. Few rival Bach, but on whatever scale, the creator leaves their added mark to posterity.

The paradigm of connection through the arts is the great triumph of humanity, not what we are seeing exposed in the news.

Notably, none of the prominent figures currently wreaking havoc in the world has any relation to the arts. It is hard to even conceive of them enjoying art—because you cannot be aligned with two opposite paradigms simultaneously. To be insensitive to art is to be inhuman. In the long run, that paradigm is suicidal, a death-wish, the product of profound deformity. To quote one of the kindest artists I know (kinder than me, that’s for sure):

“And still, we must feel compassion for these people”.

That, my friends, is the second paradigm in a nutshell.

Life is a string quartet: it only works if everyone listens to each other, adjusts compassionately, comes to a consensus, considers everyone’s contribution as valid, and frequently puts their individual ego aside.

Such a string quartet is a thing of beauty.

A string quartet functioning according to the first paradigm is worse than four tomcats fighting.

Right now, the world is full of screeching tomcats. But we can choose to keep sane, to keep the paradigm of humane dignity alive. Even now.

—Addendum: obviously, art, music, and writing can inspire, warn, or spread a message: African American spirituals , Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” speech, Peyton Scott Russell’s iconic George Floyd mural…Let’s get to work!

My Year of Living Magically

Can you believe 2024 is nearly over? This month I’m looking back at the word-of-the-year I chose in January: “Magic”— where I found it, where it found me, what the upshot has been of keeping an eye (and an ear) out for it during a whole year—and writing it down monthly in my newsletter (sign up here!).

Without a doubt, the act of paying attention to something boosts its presence in your life. Being rather idealistic, I easily notice what is NOT ideal. But actively seeking out “magic” each month has given me a greater appreciation for just how many magical moments occur in every month…as well as every week, day, and even hour, if you are truly tuned in.

At this particular juncture in time, with the answer to the question I posed at the end of last month’s blog (read it here) resoundingly answered with “NO!”, I find that my WOTY experiment has gifts to get me through the next year…and maybe even the next four years…

I discovered that when you are alert for the presence of “magic”, it is never far away.

Sun streaming through a winter window, sculptural trees dancing past the car window, the “afterlife” of flute notes in a resonant hall, or via techie means on your computer or mobile phone. Beautiful sentences one after the other in books we love, humorous comments online to get us through a dark patch, the soft, warm fur and contented murmurings of a beloved pet. Soft sheets, filling porridge (yes!), and of course, colors! For me, blues of the sky, of the sea, or painted blue crumbling gracefully on a wall.

When you’re on the lookout: magic is everywhere! Faithful reader: I tell you it is freely disponível.

And of course—one might be tempted to forget in the current moment of angst—it is even found in other people!

The joy of a student’s moment of inspiration or achievement, sitting across the table breaking bread with an old—or new—friend. The cheerful exchange with another “foreigner” behind the cash register at the local grocery, neither of us speaking in our first language. Making chamber music through a telepathy that surpasses age, nation, gender, or taste in anything else. An unexpectedly deep conversation with a friend, baring souls, acknowledging our fragile humanity. Reconnecting with childhood friends decades on, finding them essentially unchanged. The astute listening skills and deep compassion of a therapist, coach, or mentor, helping us learn to help ourselves. Gently holding a child’s hand: you can do this, you will be fine.

In October I visited an exposition of paintings by Megan Rooney (born in South Africa, raised in Brasil and Canada, living in London). The bright colors drew me in. The explosion of gesture, texture and rhythm held me in awe; in an ideal world I would have remained the entire day in that room, soaking it all in. (Info on the exposition here)

Looking carefully at the paintings and reading about her methods, I found in them a metaphor for my year of living magically.

On a canvas equalling the “wingspan” of her reach—nearly 3 meters high by 2 meters wide (big!) — gestural strokes of oil or acrylic have been layered over and over, together with pastel and oil stick. (Needless to say, I am dying to try this messy mix at home…) Smaller brushes leave their marks on top and between these layers. Furthermore, there are scratchings, scrapings, and some layers have been sanded down…flattened, semi-obliterated, scarred.

Yet the whole is beautiful beyond measure. Color, gesture, space, movement, but also time act upon the canvas. Things that “don’t belong together”—oil and acrylic—are forced to come to terms, wayward things happen, control is gained and lost. A painting of rich variety and interest emerges.

Is this not life itself?

It is fundamentally a mess, out of control, scraped and scarred and even slashed to smithereens. And yet, it is beautiful, especially if has an eye out for the magic.

Right now, in order to connect with the beautiful magic, I am turning off (literally) as much of the ugliness as possible. Temporarily, I am not disponível for the deluge pouring forth onto our screens. I am on a path “inward”, disponível only to my private thoughts, music, art and books. Later I will find a path “out”; for the moment, I am reaching for the oxygen mask and putting it on myself first.

Be well, too. Happy Holidays (or not) and I’ll see you in 2025.

Abracadabra!… My Word for 2024!

Once in a while, I succumb to the zeitgeist, that is, the thing that is au courant, you know, IN FASHION! Which, in this case, has nothing to do with “fashion” and everything to do with… WORDS!

It’s the “thing” of choosing a Word-of-the-Year. I’m unabashedly all for it! I can tell you already—one day into the new year—that choosing yourself a WOTY is a lotta fun, very revealing (or perhaps self-revealing), uplifting, and so so SO much more useful than a…COLOR of the year.

(For 2024, Pantone has chosen a forlornly insipid orangey-pinky color [do you remember early-1990’s interiors? Oh, gosh, you do—I’m so sorry!!], as if we are already dead from climate change and existential angst, and our Aunt Agatha’s ghost chose this peachy-nightmare color for the velvet lining of our collective coffin…. What I’m trying to say is: I’m NOT HAVING a color of the year, sorry, Pantone. I want ALL the colors—except, as it happens, the one Pantone chose. Sheesh!).

And I’ll have ALL the words, too. Can’t live without ‘em. But one of them will be my special companion and provocateur for 2024.

Yet it’s not just choosing a word—nope, I’m not telling yet—it’s the PROCESS, as usual: contemplate what you need more of, what might inspire you, what might nudge you (shaming words need not apply!) into being happier, better, more interesting, more kind, less lazy (more lazy?)…or all of these together.

I spent a day or two with several contenders: “restore” - as in, restore energy, restore the apartment (or at least tidy up a bit, sheesh). “Desire” - as in, choose the things I truly desire—to do, to be; cut to the chase. “Tranquility” - as in, wow, I love the idea so much, so…why am I always crazy running around??

And then, like magic, it came to me: a word that—if you look at it the right way—embraces aspects of all the previous contenders. As in, brings about something special, has a special power, celebrates the invisible, intangible, and/or unpredictable effect. That implies small effort for a large return. Something that suggests the power of “doing nothing”, ease, or simplicity.

And just like that, there was…

Magic.

As a musician, what we do is already, effectively, magic: we touch keys, blow or bow, make sounds, and—BAM—something (possibly everything) shifts. Can you explain to me how that works? No? That’s because it is a form of magic.

All the arts are forms of magic. Literature: someone somewhere at some time writes a story or poem, which changes the life of someone else, unknown to them, somewhere else, possibly centuries later. How does THAT work? Dunno. It’s magic.

To compose, paint, sculpt, write a play or an opera…all involve bringing SOMETHING out of nothing, pulling something out of thin air. I call that magic!

But even in our day-to-day, if we choose to see it this way, is there not an incredible amount of magic going on?

I meet on Zoom with friends and strangers from all over the world, and we create a bond. My dog greets another dog-walker on the street, hoping for biscuits, and five minutes later, I have a new friend. I make up a song with my young students’ names, and they delight in trying to keep the cross-rhythms going, amazed to hear their names turn into music. I put my dirty dishes into a box and push a button, soon they are clean again.

My goal for 2024 is not only to make as much creative magic as I can but to see the magic that is all around us. There are days (I’m not a morning person! I’m not a winter person!) when I truly don’t want to get out of bed—but this year, while I’m lounging, I’ll take note of all the magic of the moment: my cup of tea, the New York Times (tho’ I live in Portugal), the soft sheets, the warm covers, a serendipitous idea materializing, unbidden…

No matter how much of a doozy 2024 turns out to be (NYT predicts…), I’ll lean on my Word-of-the-Year to keep my spirits up. To make 2024 Magical.

Off you go, now, to find your own WOTY. Whichever word you choose, may your 2024 be magical, too!

I'm Quitting Practicing!

(Did I catch your attention?)

The more you know me, the more you know that I actually like to practice. I actually LOVE practicing. So…what gives?

I’ve come to a realization, and it has to do with the fact that the words we use are important. If I tell someone, or myself, that I’m having a “crappy” day…I’ll probably feel worse immediately. If I tell you the sky as “blue”, you’ll probably be less intrigued than if I describe it as “sapphire lit from within”. Words are important.

And this little word, “practice”, gets a whole lotta use in the music world. Most of the time it carries a dreary, heavy, grind-y weight around its neck: “I gotta practice”. “If I don’t practice, my lesson will be crap”. “I’ve practiced N hours today and have X left to do”.

So I propose that we simply DUMP the word “practice”, because when we do it properly, we are actually:

• Enjoying making sound

• Experimenting

• Playing around with different expressions, different solutions

• Listening and feeling

• Playing “for real”

And all of those things we consider fun!

So please join me in this switcheroo: Cancel the ball-and-chain word “practice”; let’s call it “PLAYING” instead. As in: I’m off to PLAY flute! Sounds a lot more fun (because it is).

I hear you saying: but what about practicing SCALES?? It must be done and surely it’s no fun!

Ha! “Even” with scales, approach them as above: experiment, listen, feel the meaning of notes climbing up or dropping down. See if your scales don’t get cleaner and more expressive faster than when you slog it out “practicing”. Dare ya! (BTW: for scales, you may substitute tone exercises, studies, finger exercises, etc.)

The very word “practice” implies you are “trying to get it right” but are NOT YET doing it right…it implies you are not yet doing THE REAL THING. Kinda negative, no?

If you always play for keeps, there will be much less of a shift to the moment of performance. Either way, you are always PLAYING MUSIC. You might be playing music slowly, you might be playing only two notes of music, you might be repeatedly playing small segments of music. But you are PLAYING MUSIC.

How do we eat an ice-cream cone? Do we practice? No! We experiment (top first, before it falls? Bottom first before it drips?), we play around, improvise, feel our way to satisfaction. Why should music-making be any less delightful?

Yup, I’m QUITTING PRACTICING -and PLAYING up a storm!

Imagine…

If you follow the news, it’s clear that the ongoing crises of the world are many: climate change, rising authoritarianism, the fragility of democratic systems, economic inequality, gun violence, racism, misogyny, WAR…a depressing and wide-ranging list. It was 47ºC somewhere in Portugal recently (116ºF+)—did I mention climate change??

A phrase that often pops up when people speak of their experience with these problems is “I never imagined it could happen here”. Never imagined the flood, the shooting, the act of terrorism, the discrimination…could happen HERE or NOW. Even when it is happening or has happened to others—elsewhere by a hundred miles or a hundred years—repeatedly.

Perhaps this is one reason why progress moves so slowly. We all need a lot more imagination! I am not exactly thinking of John Lennon’s idealization of a peaceful world “living as one” in his hit song from 1971. I am thinking of the power of our human minds (frankly, what else do we have going for us?) to imagine THINGS-WE-ARE-NOT-ACTUALLY-EXPERIENCING.

It is not JUST that without the power of imagination the entire human race might become sad Bartelbys pushing papers, sad as that would be. It is not JUST that we would lose art and music and literature and dance and theatre and…well, the splendor of human creativity—although those losses would be plenty.

It’s that unless we use our imagination, we can’t imagine the results of our inaction: our world at 3ºC warmer—animals dying, people migrating or dying, floods, drought, fires. We can’t imagine ourselves (we lucky folks living in free democracies) living under a dictatorship—being watched, constrained, and subject to arbitrary laws. We can’t (or choose not to) imagine ourselves impoverished, our children murdered at school, our rights taken away, our skin color being factored into every decision we make and every judgment made about us, or our country invaded and bombed. Without our imagination, we think these things just happen … to others.

And without imagination, the urgency to act is dulled, possibly to nothing.

But…what does this have to do with music?

Musicians live by their imagination. We try to get into the mindset and heart-set of the composer. We try to imagine the historical context—where would the music have been played? Who would have comprised the audience? How it might have been sounded on the instruments of that time?—and to the audience in that time or place? We imagine the life of the composer, the life of each phrase, and find some point of contact with ourselves. We try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. We connect.

We may get it all wrong, but the striving for empathy is what counts. If only everyone used their imagination a little more, like a musician, perhaps these crises would feel more urgent, and we would be compelled to action.

Next time you read the news, read it like a musician reads a score.

Gurus … and Guru Purnima

It so happens I received the most honoring text message recently; I shall call the message-sender AR.

AR’s message was in celebration of “Guru Purnima”, in India. On this day, students pay respects to the teacher who “shines like the Moon in one’s life to dispel the ignorance of the darkest of nights”.

On my second tour through India, AR and I briefly met and exchanged ideas in the guise of a flute lesson. We had an intense conversation and connected in a deep way, as seems to happen both in India and, counterintuitively, when under restraints of time and situation. I was returning to Europe the following day.

Whatever wisdom I might have passed along was either distilled from either my own painfully slow learnings, or from work with my own “gurus”. So in the spirit of Guru Purnima, and lamentably a week or more late, I would like to honor some of the many “Gurus” who have passed through my life:

RL, who taught me that anything worth doing was worth doing well. LP who taught me that teaching is fun. KK who taught me attention to detail. GW who taught me what kindness is. AS who taught me to use my imagination. AC who taught me to just be me. PA who showed me endless possibilities. SB who taught me to look for the essence.

These teachers, friends, and colleagues have, over the years, shown me the way forward, what’s important and what’s not. And when I forget (often), they are there to teach me again, no matter how many oceans lie between us.