My student wins big!

Today is a good day, even tho we're working on our taxes. Nothing like waiting until the last minute! I would be a mess, but my husband seems to have it all under control. We had to stop at staples and get the new "Quicken" forms for filling out our taxes and that is a life saver. We tried once having them done by an accounting firm, but that was a bigger headache than it was worth, turning in every statement and slip of paper and stuff.

We took Dad on a shopping excursion today - he likes to go out in public once in a while and believe me, I understand. So we did some errands and then took him to walmart - well, I know, I know, they are very 'evil.' But with an older person in tow, Walmart has great advantages: shopping carts! These are great for old people and ms people too, because you can wander around on your own power and still have something to hold onto. I and my Dad can really move when we're pushing a shopping cart! Watch out! We make a small train, each with our own shopping cart. Where can on shop for hearing aid batteries, milk, lettuce, towels, and men's pajamas other than at Walmart or some equally evil store (that takes advantage of poor workers in third world countries or buys most of their stuff from China?) I don't feel guilty in the least. Even upscale stores like Macy's import most of their stuff from China anyway. Check the tags. Walmart also makes a point of hiring handicapped and retired people, so I say, good for them!

I even managed not to shop for myself since I'm on a definite boycott cutting out all shopping for useless stuff like clothes. I guess one gets to a certain age, and you really stop caring anymore. I even wore the same outfit the other last week for three days in a row. I'm thinking of paring way down and giving stuff away. Just keeping the basics. I was realizing the other day that in the olden days people just wore one or two work clothes and then a nice dress for special occasions. Now we get new clothes all the time. It's ridiculous and a waste of money for a woman of my age.

Anyway, then we were very rash and went to a fast food place and got whopper style burgers! Dad said it was like heaven after eating low fat all the time. So we agreed that we could do this once a month and it would be okay. Dad was also very happy because I found a book he is enjoying reading very much, and that makes us happy because there is peace in the house when he's reading. It's a book called "Roosevelt and Churchill" and all about the two past world leaders in very hard times in world history. I actually think that the two were related!

I just got a nice call from one of my students who competed in her 4-H talent contest playing her harp. She won a blue ribbon and highest honors for her instrument division (considered a percussive instrument, so she was up against about 25 pianists.) That is quite an accomplishment - since the harp never wins out when compared to the piano - mostly because piano is so much louder.

One good thing about my teaching style is that I will never give up on a student! At first, she just didn't get it, but it's funny, as soon as a student gets to be around ten years old, everything starts making sense. Before that, lessons are really a waste of time. My new teaching style is to look for the things that a student is doing right and give lots of praise for that - sort of like training a new puppy. It has worked wonders for so many. So now I can add her accomplishment to my "brag sheet" which is getting impressive if I do say so myself. I've had students who played at Carnegie Hall, in Mainland China, in Australia at the Sydney Opera House and in New Zealand. I've had two students receive college scholarships too. I guess that's not so bad for a teacher who doesn't even play anymore. I guess part of me is glad I didn't give in to discouragement and quit. My students do well, and the proof is in the pudding...

Another good thing about today was we could actually walk on the yard around our house! It used to be under a few feet of snow, but now its suddenly melted and we can get places we couldn't just last week. Spring is really here! My husband and I searched for pasquel flowers, which usually spring up around Easter. They are low pretty little lavender flowers that have cheerful yellow centers and grow like weeds. Unfortunately it's possibly too early for them, for we didn't see a one! Mostly our yard is covered in pine needles - which BTW are very acidic for the soil. Conseqently we can grow lavender and peonies and rhubarb. I also try for a couple of lilac bushes which remind me of my childhood in Wisconsin, yet they seem to stay a bush - we used to have lilac trees in Wisconsin. Or maybe they just seemed so big because I was little at the time?

Thumbs UP!

Yesterday was a very busy day, but a good day. I learned a lot about myself and this instrument I teach, also about our bodies.

The body is an important part of music - one has to have a fully functioning body to successfully accomplish one's aim in the art of music. I have taught so many people to play the harp, you'd think I'd learn something here - how one's mental climate creates bodily affects. Take, for example, thumbs!

Thumbs are not just important for humans to pick things up, hitchhike, or differentiate between us and the apes, but thumbs are very important for playing the harp, and I imagine playing other musical instruments as well. Yesterday I had a student suffering from thumb issues. Everyone knows that the thumb must be kept UP to play the harp, and I've taught this to everyone. But there is something else about thumbs that must be considered: which direction does the thumb want to go? If it's like mine, it tends to bend backwards, away from the hand. This is not good for playing, as your melody notes are not strong. Everyone knows that the right hand thumb plays the melody note in most harp music. What a revelation. This student always musically stumbled because her thumbs were so weak - and a weak thumb bends back from the hand. We worked for half an hour trying to play with her thumb pushing on the string towards her palm. I just realized, after nearly 40 years of playing the harp, that my thumbs have been all wrong!

This has been a very humbling revelation since I thought I knew everything about playing the harp! This brings to mind a master-class I attended once, given by an Austrian harpist. He spoke English but occasionally had trouble with certain words. When it came my turn to play for him, he kept mentioning how I had to work on my "tump" technique. I nodded and smiled undoubtedly in a self-satisfied way, but had no idea (until this day!) what he was talking about! "Your tump, your tump, it's all wrong," he would shout. I thought he was speaking of a special musical style or form of interpretation known perhaps only to foreign harpists! Dah. When all the time he was talking about my thumbs!!!!!

When my student got her thumbs going in the right direction, suddenly her music sounded like music! There was a melody in there with all those notes.

Furthermore, yesterday, I had three new students. This is unheard of for me. One of them was a young woman who called me to set up the first lesson. I thought then, just from the sound of her voice, that she was going to be 'difficult'. She had a tone in her voice that I interpreted as being challenging. Like, "how dare you presume to teach the harp?". I was all prepared to throw her out, and had some ready responses in my defense if she became insulting. Jeeze, do I feel dumb. Well, she came, and she was as meek as a lamb, had a very small lap harp and knew nothing about music. However her thumbs were good. Her lesson was actually enjoyable, but I realized how one can create complete fictions about situations that are purely imagined - how one's ego can get all bent out of shape over the slightest imagined provocation. This must be what is called "defensiveness". I realised that it may not even been this girl who had called me, and she was just feeling inferior herself, and had a brazen friend do the calling.

Wow -two lessons - of the personal psychological variety - in one day! Maybe people whose thumbs bend backwards are a bit dense, like me, or wildly imaginative, or both. Which way do your thumbs bend?

Identity issues

Today is my one day off from my private teaching practice i.e. no students. It is surprising how much more relaxed I feel when nobody is coming to the house. One can let things get in a mess and it doesn't matter. I can look like a mess and it doesn't matter. And yet, I do feel that having the students coming keeps my days structured, and me intellectually stimulated and socialized.

But, sometimes I think it might be nice to stop teaching the harp - this instrument that due to ms dexterity issues - I don't even play anymore! This prays upon my self-esteem. If I manage to silence my egos noisy demands for attention, by telling it that I don't have to still play to teach, then I manage to save a shred of my dignity. But is it worth it? It's as though I have so much of my identity tied to the harp (so many strings!) that it seems to have hold of me. My mother was a harpist and now, somehow, I have to carry on the tradition in whatever manner I can manage to grasp hold of. I've played since I was four ,blah, blah, blah, taught privately since I was 20. But now I feel like a canary who can not grasp hold of her perch. I guess that's what is meant by "losing your grip" huh?

These feelings of doubt are worse when a brand-new student comes for their first lesson: they just naturally expect that I would still play the harp, like I used to. I wish I had an easy explanation, cause my ego demands that I go into detail, that, even though I don't look sick or handicapped, blah, blah, playing the harp requires much more dexterity and co-ordination than I have now. Of course that can change, and yet I have tried playing again, and it didn't work. There goes the self-esteem again.

What I hate most is the disappointed look on my student's faces! It seems like they think I'm a fake or something. That certainly hurts my ego. I need to stop caring what other people think. Forgive my reference to astrology, but all this is so hard for a double Capricorn with a 12th house sun and first house moon. Maybe somebody out there knows what I mean? I'm too sensitive and care too much.

I have all these unrented harps, standing like mute sentinels in my living room, it's like a haunting. They have served a noble purpose, but now, what to do with them? Sell everything, cut the cables and run for my life? I could do it, but, as my hubby is fond of asking, so what else will you do? What? That is the question. Maybe I would discover something else if I didn't have the harp to fall back on as income and identity? Or, maybe not.

In the end I must stop running around in circles with these questions, for it is enough to drive both myself and my family crazy. They often express the opinion that I should "put up or shut up". And so it goes...