The Cobwebs

I have had various stabs at playing the piano. Today is the start of another. When I purged most of what I owned and headed down under for a couple of months, I handed my piano over to a friend. This morning it has returned home. I can definitely not just sit down and play. I am still very much a beginner. When time and other things get in the way, you take a few steps back and cobwebs build.

What I am interested in as I jump back in is how long it will take to get close to where I was after a shorter gap. I bought the keyboard in about October last year. The gap then had been about 13 years. I had only been a beginner pre-gap, having done lessons while teaching at a school in Chichester, England. I tried to push on teaching myself, but put it aside when my studies got overwhelming. Priorities and all that jazz. I really enjoyed getting back into it. There is something quite magical when your fingers seem to detach with a life of their own and the sound starts to have feeling.

We often put aside things we love because of 'more important priorities'. Some call it the Protestant Work Ethic, but it is not just protestants who work hard. There are things that are seen as indulgent and things that are seen as realistic and contributing to the greater good. We can be seduced by success and sucked up into only the things we are good at. When you dive into the indulgence, the guilt soon kicks in. Should I be do something else? Often it isn't even indulgence. Simply sitting still for a bit can be seen as an unproductive use of time. Laziness. 

I don't see time spent on things that don't make anything explicit as indulgence. I am a big believer in looking after your energy levels. It is not about balance. It is about filling your self up with creativity and passion to be able to solve some of the more vexing problems in the world. The idea that we need to 'put aside our childish ways' in order to achieve more important things than play is just plain silly. 

If you brush aside the cobwebs, which of your childish ways would you breathe life back into? 

Intimate Reward

Some things take time. Kids learn slowly. The little emperors are notoriously fussy eaters and take time even to fall in love with the tastes of their mother tongue. Unless we want to live a monotongue life, we need to venture out. We need to train our buds to love the taste of learning.

I am pushing on with my piano learning. I have managed about an hour a day for the last 4 or 5 months. I can now almost play two popular songs so that they sound reasonably musical. I am loving it. Getting passed that first 100 hours so you can taste the juice is a start. That doesn't change the need to put in a proper commitment if you want to keep enjoying it. Flow is a wonderful thing. Flow is something we experience when we are pushing ourselves just outside our comfort zone. Not too far, but just enough so that we are not too stressed to learn. You can over complicate the idea of meditation. Meditation is just the practise of focus and concentration. When you are doing something you love and in that exciting phase of discovery, it is almost impossible for you to think about anything else. The great thing is that flow comes at different stages and in different things for different people. This variety of flow is the engine that drives the world forward.

It isn't all pretty. Flow is paired neatly with purposeful practise. Purposeful practise is the deliberate, regular, conscious attempt to learn. It can be draining. You may need to break it down into small chunks. Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea of putting in 10,000 hours in order to become world class at something. He was not arguing that these hours could be on automatic pilot. Matthew Syed wrote a book that was a little more explicit about the importance of practise, and what that means. Practise isn't just mindless repetition of the same mistakes. If you can work in a little time every day to edge yourself forward, in a considered fashion, with a purpose in mind - flow will be your reward. Like the handicap system in golf, flow doesn't require you to be world class. Instead it adjusts to your level and incentivizes progress more than any bonus cheque ever could. It is a deeply personal reward system that knows you intimately.

It doesn't need to be hours and hours either. Ask yourself the same thing kids get asked when they get home. 'What did you learn today?'. One thing every day can be enough. Little things add up.

From The Beginning

What do Reservoir Dogs and a Piano Concert for 6 year olds have in common?

Well, this Mr Black, once had to play at a concert. I was a Teaching Assistant for 18 months in between school and university and the school I was at was very musical with a very supportive teacher. When he found out I had always wanted to play piano, he showed me middle C and arranged for lessons. A few months later there was a parents concert for the students at my level, i.e. the 6 and 7 year olds. Now I presume this was an opportunity for the older, more mature, experienced 19 year old to show the youngsters that there was nothing to be worried about. Let's just say, I felt... Conspicuous.

When my turn came it started ok. I could play the pieces. I had practiced a lot. But I had practiced in the quiet of the music school after hours. Mid way through my first piece I froze. I looked down and all I saw was white and black. I had no idea where to put my fingers. I started again. Then froze somewhere else. Again, I couldn't push through as I was completely lost. Surely I couldn't start again... just push through. The embarrassment swelled and if my tear ducts weren't welded shut by toughness (and they weren't), my eyes would have welled up. I moved on to the next song which went a bit better.

Now being consoled when you are 6 is one thing. Being consoled by someone who is 6 is quite another. The whole next day I had very compassionate little people coming up to me and saying, 'Don't worry Mr Black, I thought you tried very hard.'

'Can I start again?' is something I have heard often. In public speaking, acting or any performance piece. We seldom learn things starting from a variety of places. Preparing for interruption. Preparing for things to go wrong. Forgetting the first line can basically mean forgetting the whole thing. Here lies the connection to Reservoir Dogs. Mr Orange has to come up with a story to convince the bad dudes that he is for real. An amusing anecdote.  He gets given some advice about how to make it his own. How to internalise it. When it comes to the performance, there were plenty of interruptions but he could not afford to look down and see just (Mr) Black and (Mr) White. He was not surrounded by compassionate 6 year olds. He did a great job.

So this time round as I relearn the piano, I am making a concerted effort to learn to deal with interruption and play on through. To be able to start from anywhere. To internalise the songs rather than just learn to play them from the beginning. One day, I hope to be able to play well enough to genuinely impress the little people.

(P.S. Don't watch the Reservoir Dogs clips if you aren't a Tarantino fan, or if you are 6)

Till Things Flow Together

David D'Souza had suggested that one of the things I try learn is playing golf left-handed. He said this after I had mentioned that I wanted to research and write about the emotional barriers/obstacles to learning new things. Considering how badly I play golf, I doubt adding a left-handed challenge would be required to spice up my frustration. Well, he will be pleased to know left-right coordination is one thing I am fighting with right now. Starting with the basics with the piano and learning Grade 1 pieces, it is amazing how you can comfortably get the tune going with the left hand, and then with the right - but the mission is putting them together. Apparently drumming is even 'worse' and it takes years for drummers to train the limbs to 'think independently'. Independently, but in tune. Sounds a little to me like the dilemma we face in relationships and in the work place. Also sounds similar to our issues with decision making. When we can isolate things and make them simple, they are easy to control. But the world is more complex than that, and that requires slowing things right down. Slower than the individual parts want to move. Then gradually increasing the pace, till things flow together.

Two things that are clearly false about my experiment though:
1) I am under no time pressure, so I can stop and shift attention to other things when frustration builds and concentration falters.
2) I am the boss of my left hand and my right hand, so they don't get to argue or moan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_coordination