Finding Time

In a busy multi-faceted life I find I am always saying I "couldn't find time" for this or that. Too often the "this or that" is something small that might enrich my life. I subscribe to Composer's Datebook, a short daily story about a composer, that comes in my email inbox from American Public Radio. (http://composersdatebook.publicradio.org/)  I can read it then and there, go to the website where I can not only read it but hear samples of the music, or download it to listen to later. I have been subscribing to this daily post for over a year. But I find that I am just saving and saving them without ever "getting around" to listening to them or even reading them. I have also discovered a wonderful website, that allows me to click on a particular spiritual practice ("awareness" for example) and to read snippets about it, to find books and movies and music and quotations about it. (www.spiritualityandpractice.com/ ) Theoretically it would take less than 15 minutes to look through and read and listen slowly and carefully, and come away with an insight for the new day. But I don't take that time. I tell my students that even on a busy day they can find 10 minutes to play scales or play through one of their assigned pieces four or five times. Progress in so many things is achieved in small increments. But I do not always practice what I preach.

We live in a sped-up world full of more distractions than ever. We have replaced hours and hours of work with labor-saving devices. But in their stead we have given ourselves enormous amounts of information to process and produce via email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs. I know my main reason for ignoring composer's datebook and spiritual practice is that I am overwhelmed when I open my email inbox. Just reading through everything can take over an hour. In a busy day I wind up practicing what I call "email triage", opening only those messages that urgently require a response. I delete what I can without reading it and leave the rest in my inbox to await processing when I "have more time". As the un-opened messages accumulate I feel more and more ill-at-ease, worried about what I might be missing, worried that I will fail to respond to a friend in a timely way and cause hurt feelings. I feel overwhelmed by the virtual mailbox on top of the snail mailbox, the papers on my desk, the virtual photos and videos that are trapped in my camera waiting to be uploaded, named, sorted, printed and distributed. I have stacks of books waiting to be read, papers that need processing and filing. It seems that the virtual world has not saved us time but only doubled the number of things we must sort through, read and respond to. It can be exhausting.

It never feels good to leave things undone, to allow papers to accumulate. But if I am to "find" time for walks, to listen to music, to read something enlightening, to practice my spiritual traditions, to play with the dog or respond to a family member or friend with full presence then I must let other things go. The multiplicity of demands on our time challenge us to practice discernment, self-discipline and mindfulness. They are an invitation to choose wisely when we decide how to spend the next hour, to do those things we know to be beneficial especially when they require effort, to learn not to rush but to be fully focused on whatever we are doing while we are doing it. It isn't easy to let things go. But we are not omnipotent and our time on Earth is limited. Virtual reality must not replace actual reality, and life is more than crossing things off the to do list. There must be space for physical engagement with each other and with the world. It is all the praying, walking and talking, hand-holding, music-making, out-loud laughing, flower-smelling, bread baking, ball catching moments alone and together that make life worth while.

In My Own Voice

When I began writing music as a young girl I was heavily influenced by the only modern music I was familiar with: Bartok’s Hungarian Folk Songs for Children, Kabalevsky’s Little Song, Stravinksy’s Rite of Spring and Petrushka, Copland and Debussy. My early pieces were folk-song like, sometimes impressionistic, always singable. When I switched my major to composition after my senior year at Lawrence University my composition teacher told me my ears were too conservative and suggested I start listening to more modern pieces. So I got my radio operator’s license and a spot on our campus radio station. I launched a new program I called “Brave New Worlds” highlighting music by women, lesser known historical and modern composers. I came to appreciate Steve Reich and Philip Glass, Joseph Schwantner, George Crumb, Toru Takemitsu, Joan Tower, Nancy Van de Vate and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

And yes, my ears changed.

I abandoned the modes in favor of the octatonic scale or contrived scales composed of alternating minor thirds and seconds. I avoided major and minor triads and anything that sounded “too tonal.” I tried to compose like my graduate school professors, writing rhythmically pounding, driven, dissonant music that I came to associate with the masculine, penetrating force. But always in those pieces there was a yearning, achingly lyrical solo midway through by a viola or oboe or cello. I think it was my feminine aesthetic crying out, my own composer’s voice desperate to transcend, to be heard.

As I sought these last few years to return to composing again I have struggled to find my way back to “serious” music. The themes I invented which would have pleased my graduate school professors left me dry and uninspired until I let go of the ghost of their approval and, instead, wrote what I heard. And now my music flows again. It is lyrical and not so dissonant, not so self-consciously modern. I have given up the idea that I will or need to move and shake the musical world. I truly don’t care as I used to whether I influence anyone else or wind up in the history books or win a Pullitzer. It is enough that I am writing again, and that what I am writing pleases me. It is what I want to write, what I hear, my own lost voice. I obey my muse and write my music—mine and no one else’s. I am free to express myself my own way; there is no one looking over my shoulder. I cannot begin to explain the joy that brings me. When your soul has had its wings clipped you watch awestruck when it grows them back and begins to fly….

The Ideal State?

There is an ideal state between tension and relaxation that makes it possible to play the piano well. The shoulder, arm and hand must be relaxed but not limp to play smoothly and evenly without fatigue or injury. The same is true for singing. The throat must be open, but the diaphragm must be engaged and toned. Music itself is full of the balance between tension and release. As a piece progresses the listener searches for the familiar--the return of a melody or rhythm or harmony--and longs for something new. Skillful composers manipulate that need for unity and contrast so that just when you think the melody or rhythm will go one way it goes another. They introduce the element of happy surprise! Writers do the same thing as they strive to create a story that is logical and plausible but not predictable. They know readers love a cliff hanger or plot twist and they work hard to include them whenever they can.

So much of life is like that too. We need a little bit of stress, what people sometimes call "good stress", so that life is exciting and challenging and we have a reason to get up in the morning. But too much and we shut down. We get exhausted and cranky. As I go about my day I often think of this strange balancing act, the need to keep myself busy enough without overdoing it. Sometimes it seems nearly impossible. But I know that life is an art. I keep trying to add a cliffhanger or two to keep it interesting, but I'm always oh-so-glad when I arrive safely and metaphorically home.

Beauty in Diversity

My 13-year-old daughter asked me the other day whether she should pluck her eyebrows. Apparently a girl at school informed her that her eyebrows were too misshapen! She has a pretty solid sense of herself, so her first reaction was, "Why would I want to pluck my eyebrows? How ridiculous!" She thought plucking eyebrows was some weird fad that her seventh grade classmates had invented. I told her, no, women have been tweezing and bleaching and tweaking and picking on themselves for centuries. This led to a wonderful discussion of all the pressures on women to look a certain way. We talked about how commercials purposely set up women (and all of us) to feel bad or anxious about something and then try to convince us that the only cure/solution is to buy whatever product they are pushing. We talked about how women are literally chopped to pieces in print ads. How many times can you find a cropped picture of a woman's body part--a leg, a curvy hip, a hand--which does not include the rest of her body or at least her face! We talked about plastic surgery and the trend toward younger and younger recipients.

I thought about all those thousands of girls and women spending however many thousands of dollars trying to look the same--the same Pippa butt, the same Angelina Jolie plumped lip, the same Barbie figure. I thought about how sad it is that women can't see their own unique beauty. Then, as so often happens with me, I thought about music.

There have been tens of thousands of beautiful pieces of music written over the last three hundred years. Each is made up of the same elements: long and short notes, notes that step or skip, melody, harmony. Yet each is unique in its beauty, in the shape of its phrases. We are like that. Though we are created from the same template, though we each have a mouth and a nose and a chin, none of us looks exactly like anyone else. We are beautiful because we are unique. How we gaze into a child's face eagerly looking for dad's nose or mom's eyes! How we marvel at the way the child reflects both parents' faces, combining them somehow into a unique shape. How sad it is that so many women cannot see the beauty in their uniqueness and the uniqueness of their own particular beauty. It is that very diversity that makes us lovely.

Life is Too Short to Scrub

I never scrub. If there’s dried on/baked on muck on a pan I let it soak first. I wonder what else needs soaking in my life. Could I put some troublesome problems on hold? Would they get easier? What is the equivalent of soaking a set-in-stone habit? Is there any virtue in putting some things off for a more propitious time?

I have a “to do” folder—two actually—one for urgent tasks and one for things I need to “get around to” some day. It’s easy to figure out what goes in the “urgent tasks” folder: bills, insurance claim forms, letters that require a response. It’s harder to figure out what to do with other items: the college scholarship info that I will want to know about in four years when my daughter is old enough to apply for college, or the neat websites that I may want to check out some time, or the articles ripped out of magazines (how to turn my hobby into cash, American-made products I can buy to stimulate the economy, recipes I want to try but need to plug into my Weight Watchers website calculator so I know how many points they are.) My life is full of such tidbits that I can’t let go of but can’t yet deal with—hence the need for a “get around to it” folder. There are some things that are worth hanging onto just in case. Having a place to keep them makes me feel hopeful and organized.

Unfortunately, it invariably takes me so long to get around to the “get around to it” folder, that when I do, half the things in it are past date: concerts that already happened, coupons that are expired, business cards of people I met so long ago they will have no idea who I am. I always feel bad about the missed opportunities in the “get around to it” folder. But maybe it’s not such a bad thing to miss out once in a while. My life is pretty full as it is! Maybe by letting these tasks metaphorically soak I allow a natural selection process to weed out those things that really aren’t important after all. Maybe it is sometimes better to put off until tomorrow what you just can’t get to today. Life is simply to short for scrubbing anything that will get easier if you let it soak a while first.

Life's Eternal Spiral

Years ago I attended a women's spirituality conference where I had an astonishing experience during an exercise in opening ourselves up to the voice of Wisdom (however you define that.) We sat in a large circle, chairs facing inward, with our eyes closed. One by one we took turns circling along the outside and when we felt we had had a "message" for a particular woman, we would whisper it in her ear. I have no idea whether what popped in my head answered any questions for the woman I whispered it to, but it did answer questions I had at the time about what felt like a bout of failure. The message that popped into my head was "Life is a spiral. Don't be afraid to turn back along the way." It still gives me goosebumps. The image of a spiral is a very powerful one and a very feminine one as well. The power of a spiral lies in the fact that though we keep turning back we are never in the exact same place twice. Anyone who has walked a labyrinth as a spiritual practice has experienced this fact in a profound way. As we turn and head back in the direction we just left, our feet are in a new place. So there is both a sense of familiarity and a sense of something completely new.

Life is like that. Every beginning has certain characteristics--hope, fear, anticipation--that it shares with every other beginning though we might be talking about very different experiences. Reaching our thirteenth or eighteenth or fortieth or sixtieth birthday. Going away to college, or saying goodbye to children who are leaving for college. Getting married or getting divorced. Giving birth to or adopting a baby. Beginning a new career or a new phase of the same career. We think of these as very different experiences, yet they are similar too. Each time we experience a new beginning feels as though we are repeating a process we've been through before; beginnings carry an imprint or memory of every other beginning--ours and those of others who have been there before us.

It's been said that every ending is also a beginning. The reverse is true as well. In order for something to begin, something must end. When I married I was keenly aware that I was giving up a certain freedom as well as taking on a great responsibility. The moment I recognized my unborn baby's complete and total dependence on me for life and health was another epiphany. Each of these experiences was full of promise but also of loss, for I would no longer be free to do whatever I liked, someone would be depending on me.

The image of a spiral has come to me many times since that women's conference. It offers comfort when I feel like I'm in a rut. It offers the promise that a new experience I'm frightened of will have something in it I can understand, something familiar. The spiral is nothing more or less than the spiritual experience of our twisting DNA, the spiralling whirl of stars in our galaxy, the very stuff of life.

An Anachronistic Excuse

Well, February has somehow disappeared without any blog posts making it out of my head and onto this site. I have a good excuse--really. I had mono. Yes, you heard me right. I know I'm 47 years old. No, I have no idea how I caught it. The only people I kiss on the mouth are my husband and sometimes, when no one is looking, my dog. (The cat won't let me and that stopped feeling like a good way to greet my daughter once she was out of diapers.)

I am, of course, a piano teacher. A small army of puny people march through my living room several times a week, use my potty and play my piano. They represent a dozen different elementary, middle and high schools and many of them have little brothers and sisters who go to another dozen different preschools and mothers-day-outs and frequent parks and playscapes where the equipment is probably sterilized once every decade or so (if we're lucky.) So in any given week I am probably exposed to more germs than many people encounter in a life-time. I am very careful to disinfect the piano keys, doorknobs and bathroom fixtures after my piano students have left for the day. I use so much sanitizer I have to buy in bulk. One never knows where those little fingers have been. I did actually witness a student pick his nose right before playing his piece once. It happens. But apparently, in spite of my usual vigilance some happy little Epstein-Barr virus took up residence and had a party in my throat for more than a month.

I started feeling symptoms right after the Zumba dance party I threw myself for my 47th birthday. I don't know whether there was any connection. I was pretty tired after the dance party, but I'd also had a Tae Kwon Do class right before so I guess that would be a normal reaction. What I do know is that I was certainly tired for far longer than one should be and when I started to feel like a golf ball had lodged itself irretrievably in the back of my throat I finally went to the walk-in clinic where a blood test confirmed the anachronistic diagnosis.

It has not been fun. Even having an excuse to sit on my behind and knit does not compensate for that icky feeling in my throat. I am sick and tired of cough drops. I am sick and tired of sitting. I am, well, sick and tired. So much for the "I will write a blog post every week without fail" plan. Oh well. In any endeavor worth doing set-backs are inevitable. This one really kicked my butt.