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October 19th, 2008 :: Ordinary Days It would be easier to keep my ducks in a row if I didn't keep losing one.
Thinking about ducks reminds me of the "Make Way for Ducklings" statues in the Boston Public Garden, whose inspiration comes from the children's book by Robert McCloskey. People were always stealing these gold-plated duck statues, which was a bit unsettling. There was nothing like dashing through the Garden on the way to the Arlington subway stop, only to discover that Jack or Mack or Ouack or Quack was missing.
 Lately, I can relate. I understand that the whole point of ducks is that they like queuing up--when it's their idea. However, they will resist falling into lines of my choosing, instead wiggling and waddling in a disorderly fashion. I get this. But what is perplexing to me at the moment is that I keep misplacing one.
Actually in the last week, I have lost like five ducks. I'm usually good at keeping track of my life, but lately I am forgetting important things right and left. I'm sure this has something to do with the busyness of the past several weeks, and all the weekends I've been working recently. It can't be avoided. There is just a lot going on at the moment: extra recitals, performance classes, workshops, lessons, and competitions. I want my students to be a part of these things, and am willing to give up a few weekends in return. But I am waking up in the middle of the night remembering that I forgot to send footnote information with my last column, or that I never returned the phone call to a student's parent. In a recent redistribution of chores, I have taken on making Matt's lunch. I have yet to remember actually to make his lunch, and the dear man is kind enough not to nag me, which means that he must be going hungry.
Yesterday I forgot how to spell the name of the street I have lived on for the last three and a half years. I am not kidding; I could not get past the third letter. Yes, I am an awful speller, but this is beyond belief. Today I forgot an appointment with my acupuncturist. She has a 24-hour cancellation policy or you pay anyway, something I totally agree with, which means this overlooked duck will cost me. Ironically, I had just laid down on the couch with a horrible headache when she called wondering where I was. I didn't pick up the phone, because I was feeling too sick. I'd like to say that the headache was so terrible that I forgot my appointment, but the truth is, it was never on my radar. I never knew I had this on my schedule, even though the entry "12:30 Acupuncture" was staring me in the face when I looked at my calendar. This indicates there are even things written down that are no longer registering or prompting my attention. I think this is a cosmic sign that my brain hasn't been allowed to wander or unfocus for weeks now.
 Last weekend topped everything: Matt was in Houston for a performance. I suffered (there really is no other word) through seven hours of a piano competition with six students on Friday. Saturday, I endured the winner's recital (four kids playing), and a two-hour rehearsal with a splitting migraine. (See above: "missed acupuncture appointment.") I was in bed and asleep by 8:45pm, only to be awakened at 10:30 because the bedroom roof was leaking. In my migraine-drug-induced state I reasoned that it never rains very long in the desert, and I threw down a towel and went back to sleep. At 2am I was jerked from a deep slumber because it was leaking in about five spots over in the corner, and it was still raining. As it happens, just last week we had the roof checked out, only to be told that it "looked great"! Apparently, not so great after 12 hours of downpour. Sunday, sleep-deprived and still fighting this headache, I taught two make-up lessons, and played two rehearsals, putting in a six-hour work day. In no alternative universe does this list of activities count as a "weekend."
 I fear it is not just the cracks in the roof that are showing up, but the cracks in my well-being. In a strange twist of fate, this is all happening just as the latest American Music Teacher hits the mailboxes around the country. In my most recent column, I brag that I am handling time just fine. Although that may have been true when I wrote the column three months ago, it's now officially a lie. I am beyond exhausted, irritable, and simply not handling even the slightest challenge being thrown my way with any grace. I find myself lashing out at the world, only to discover that the world as we have known it is cracking apart at the seams as well. It's a difficult time on all fronts.
 My problem is that the line between being quite well and being far less than so is very fine. It has been the same with my migraines: I never had the signs that a headache was coming on; I just went straight from being well to being sick. It wasn't until I figured out that there had to be a place in between being well and being sick I needed to be attentive to, before I started to turn my migraine habit around. I know this personality trait of being mostly fine until I am most certainly not must work in the same way. I have to recognize signs that might mean I am in trouble before I start cracking open, or misplacing important ducks.
 As anyone who has spent time with unruly ducks can tell you, this is easier said than done. In fact, the characteristic that makes me gifted at handling many things at once is the very one that hurts me here, because normal warnings don't register. What my migraine therapist told me again and again (until I practically had the concept tattooed on my forehead) was that I would need to learn to actively look for danger signs. I would need to learn to not overextend, even when I thought I felt OK. I would need to play it safe until I figured out what a pre-headache looked like. "The signs are there," Patti told me over and over again, "You just aren't recognizing them."
 I know its the same thing here. As much as I think I ought to be fine with working five weekends in a row, that needs to be not OK in the Amy Wellness Manual. (My father would remind me that this is just common sense, but I never had a lot of common sense. I have lots of sense, just not of the common variety. "Amen!" my husband would say to that confession.) Over Labor Day, I played a huge recital with a professional flutist. Afterward, my friend Anne greeted me backstage and asked about the rest of my weekend. "Oh, this is an easy weekend," I told her. "All I had was this recital, and now I am coasting." She looked at me in alarm. "You know there is something wrong with your life when playing a major recital is an 'easy' weekend."
 Although it is weeks too late, I get it. I can't afford to lose any more ducks, or suffer any more cracks in my facade. This weekend we are headed to Taos for our annual "escape the balloon fiesta" trip. We will stay in the Taos Inn right on the plaza in a cozy, charming room with a fireplace. We will eat well, wander through art galleries, hike along the river, read and sleep. I might even look for ducks, for some of my missing ones might be hiding in an old adobe house, waiting to be found.
 In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I stole that first photo off the Internet and I have no idea whose photo it is. I, however, took all the other, less-than-fabulous, pictures.
October 2nd, 2008 :: Teaching Days “Fred
and Ethel were the wacky neighbors in I Love Lucy,” my husband Matt explains to me for the hundredth time. “What were you
doing as a kid anyway? Playing the piano?”  Maybe because of this general ignorance regarding all things involving popular culture, I was particularly taken aback one Sunday when a New York Times headline caught my eye. As kids log 6 1/2 hours a day of screen time… Six and a half hours! I nearly gasped out loud. As someone who only uses the internet when I exhaust other options and whose knowledge of television culture would loosely be considered to be non-existent, I realize I am an anomaly. However, six and a half hours? There has to be a middle ground. But there doesn’t seem to be much of a middle ground that I can see. Even in my circle of musicians, cell phones regularly go off during concerts; conversations before and after student recitals concern what software we are employing in our studios. Everyone seems to have seen last weeks’ episode of "Desperate Housewives," but the recital of a local pianist was scantily attended. I rarely have face-to-face conversations with friends anymore: instead we e-mail to schedule phone dates. I can’t remember the last handwritten letter I received. There is no inherent problem with technology—cell phones make our lives more convenient, the internet provides us with easy access to endless information, software programs that teach theory and music history save valuable time in lessons. The problem is that as artists we are supposed to be counter-cultural and the cultural norm of technology is ruling our lives and our work. Matt, who is a choral conductor, maintains that choirs by their very definition are counter-cultural. In this world of high tech, individualized everything, where the ease of plugging in programmed music generally wins, working with groups of people to produce a specific sound using only their voices is radical. Indeed, this almost makes my work with the complicated mechanics of a grand piano look positively progressive. But even so, in our world today, the painstaking work of teaching individual students musical values and skills is inherently counter-cultural and old-fashioned, and in a world ruled by technology, scarce and precious. It seems to me that our jobs as creative teachers and artists may be to actively embrace what is counter-cultural, both in the way we teach and in how we program our lives. However, there is a raging debate in the pedagogy world about embracing technology, about not resisting the seemingly inevitable decline of traditional lessons: one teacher, one student. According to some, we should all teach group lessons, we should all incorporate the competitive sports terminology of winning and losing into our vocabulary, we should all become more understanding with students having only limited time to devote to preparing their assignments. I’m rebelling. Yes, I can be a flexible and forward-thinking, but I wonder at what price? At some point along the way, I made the decision not to let technology creep into my teaching. I have no electronic keyboard in my studio, just a six-foot grand piano. I do not program computer time to learn theory or history; if I can’t teach it in lessons, then I have to reprioritize my teaching time and goals. We use flash cards and magnetic staff boards to learn note names; we use movement, balls, scarves, and percussion instruments to internalize pulse and rhythm. My students know that their time with me is all theirs—I don’t answer the phone, I don’t check e-mail. Based on that newspaper headline, this kind of live focused human contact may be rare in my students’ lives.  There is no single answer here. My lack of technology may be too conservative for some teachers; certainly technology is here to stay, and teachers who use it creatively prepare students in ways that I do not. My high expectations scare some students away, and teachers who teach shorter lessons to students with lower levels of commitment touch lives that I do not. But as artists, I wonder if it isn't our job to resist the urge to follow blindly in the way of the rest of society. Perhaps it is our job to consciously decide how far we are willing to go in allowing technology in our music, teaching, and work. Maybe it is our job to be counter-cultural and radical and to value real experiences of music making and human contact over virtual experiences—no matter how “educational” the packaging. Is it possible that the more traditional path might be the more original one? A couple of years ago, the church where my husband works built a new pipe organ. In an age where organists are a dying breed and organs are being replaced with rock bands, this act in itself was radical. One month for performance class I took my students to the church to play the new organ. They got a mini-lesson in how the instrument worked, complete with a backstage tour of the pipes. Afterwards, they played their prepared pieces on the organ and we experimented with using different stops, different manuals, adding simple pedals. Parents who usually rushed off during performance class lingered to watch and listen. Even the littlest four-year old student was hoisted up to the bench and allowed to try out the instrument. The next week the students’ reviews of their experience were glowing. All this excitement, and yet the common assumption is that no one under the age of 50 is supposed to like pipe organs. “Can we have performance class every month on the organ?” seven year-old Jake asked. No, I responded. “Well,” he bargained, “could we at least have our recital on the organ?” We are selling our students short if we insist that they need gimmicks and technological tricks to like music and the arts and to win them over. We are lowering the value of what we do if we assume that we must teach only short, high-energy lessons that further feed the attention deficient disorder in our society in order to keep students engaged. Children and teenagers are the most open-minded among us; it is we who have become cynical and closed-minded, thinking that we can’t get them to practice unless we teach only Disney songs. It isn’t our students who need the slick and well-packaged. They aren’t looking for piano lessons to be more of what they already have too much of in their lives: screen time, technological gadgets, or recorded music. Instead, they want real live music, real live time with an interested adult, real live engagement with something and someone that responds to their attention and efforts. If I assume that I must look, act, and adopt the attitudes and behaviors of the rest of society in order to make music lessons palatable, I have sold us all out.
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Contact Amy Greer at: amy@tenthousandstars.net
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