Interruptions

Sometimes all it takes is a small idea to turn a wide corner.

Or maybe it’s that ideas are like onions, layers one after another that lead to the next obvious thing.

At any rate, it probably started over 20 years ago with Jean Stackhouse’s question: Do you interrupt students when they are playing?

I was in a workshop Jean was leading, as part of her work teaching pedagogy at New England Conservatory. At the time, she was near the end of her career. I had been teaching for a number of years, but in comparison to Jean, I was still a beginning. Possessing a similar skepticism for convention, Jean and I quickly become kindred spirits and fast friends and have stayed connected through the years. Several times, Matt and I visited Jean and her husband Max at their home in the Berkshires. Last fall when Matt and I were in Boston, I spent a precious couple of hours with Jean, who had moved into the city during Covid to be close to her daughter.

Jean always asked the tough questions, like the one about interrupting students. That question, two decades ago, prompted a lively debate among the seasoned teachers attending the workshop. Some defiantly defended their choice to interrupt, saying that there was no reason to “waste lesson time.” Others claimed not to interrupt the first play-through of a piece of music, but then felt free to interrupt any time after that. No one, as I remember it, suggested that interruptions should be always avoided, that there might be something sacred about giving a piece of music, or the pianist playing that piece of music, absolute attention.

Historically, I have been an interrupter.

This is not on principle. I am just horribly impatient. I interrupt all the time. I interrupt the final notes of pieces. I interrupt a student telling a long-winded story. I interrupt myself working through a difficult passage at the piano to jump up and scribble down some item on a grocery list. I interrupt myself writing a practice instruction in the middle of a word to start another idea. My life is littered with half-formed ideas, sentences, thoughts.

There is another layer here, of course.

Besides being a life-long interrupter, I am a committed multi-tasker. At the computer, I juggle between emails and blog posts and answering texts. During lessons I write practice notes while students are playing (and I talk out loud and interrupt at the same time! Win-Win.). I make phone calls while taking walks. I read while doing long-duration yoga poses. I literally typed that last sentence while waiting on hold with a doctor’s office. Yep, I’m that good.

But I am hardly alone in my bad habits. Interruptions are everywhere. Yesterday a kid suddenly stopped playing his etude during his lesson to respond to an alert about a text message on his smart watch. The child was TWELVE. I kid you not. But even with notifications silenced, our default gear is high speed and full of disruptions.

These are not profound or new thoughts. But last month Jean died. She had been in failing health for a while and I knew when I said goodbye to her last September that I would probably never see her again. After her death, I find myself thinking about the lessons Jeans taught, the probing questions she used to ask and the ways in which she has influenced my work on so many levels. And it has made me ponder, once again, that question of interruptions. Specifically, in the piano lesson.

One night recently I was reading a book by May Sarton, who was also a New Englander.  May Sarton was a poet, novelist, journalist. Her most famous book, Journal of Solitude, is one of my favorites. Last fall a former student texted me out of the blue. “Amy! I am reading a book and I keep thinking of you. It’s called Journal of Solitude. Have you ever read it?” “Only about a dozen times,” I wrote back, thrilled that this young woman had discovered May Sarton on her own.

But lately I have been reading (or re-reading) Sarton’s A World of Light. This is a collection of prose portraits she did about various influential people in her life, and one night I quite literally fell into this passage about one of Sarton’s mentors: “Casual and open as that house was to friends of all ages who came and went at any hour of day or night—the door was never locked—there was one taboo: you listened and did not talk while music was being played. Had a person unaware of this taboo opened his mouth, he would have closed it again when he became conscious of Edith, sitting in the wing chair, a tiny elegant presence, herself so concentrated.”

I stopped. Read the passage again. And then again. And right there a nugget of an idea was born. Perhaps the person, the music, the moment in the piano lesson was so important, so worthy, that it deserved my complete and total attention? No interruptions. No multitasking. No reaching for a colored pen to jot down my suggestions for “fixing” things. No cutting off the repeat or jumping to the coda and skipping the last section. Yes, time is sometimes an issue. Actually, time is always an issue. But what gave me pause when I read this section was the idea that this woman’s absorption and attention was so profound that it was memorable to Sarton decades later. And she was writing this profile in 1976, in a world with many fewer distractions and interruptions. Since then I can’t stop thinking about this, or wondering how the act of complete presence might be almost counter-cultural and revolutionary today. Or at the very least, might shift the tempo and mood and space of a piano lesson.

Several years ago, I started keeping a teaching notebook with a page for each student. This came out of the necessity for recording practice notes for every student while teaching online lessons during the pandemic. But I quickly realized that in spite of my high opinion of how well I remembered things, I remembered nothing. Every week I would look at my notes on say Little Susie—Do more skips and steps drills—and I would have two simultaneous thoughts: Oh that’s a good idea and I would have never done that without this reminder.

And so the teaching notebook was born. On an individual student’s page I might make notes (yes, probably writing while students are playing…sigh) about what technique exercises should come next, or an idea for repertoire. I keep track of keys for ear tunes and make lists of rote pieces. There are Post-it notes to remind me to ask them about their new puppy or to review half-steps and whole steps. The teaching notebook, I must say, is a thing of beauty. And it is a daily humble reminder of how many things I would otherwise miss.

I suspect adopting the practice of mindful, full attentive listening and not multi-tasking during lessons might prove to be equally humbling. I suspect that, in my quest for efficiency and productivity, I miss a lot in every single lesson. But even more importantly, I wonder about how such a subtle shift of concentration might change both the teacher and the student on the bench. I wonder about how my perspectives on keeping time and holding space might evolve. I am reminded of the Zen instruction about practicing Zazen: Just sit there. It is hard to just sit there. We are wired to be busy, to seek entertainment and yes, distractions from our own stillness and inner selves.

Such a small practice is not going to change the world, I know. But in the last couple of months, I have seen scattered, frazzled parents come into the studio and take a deep breath, visibly relaxing. I have witnessed people in audiences moved to tears when a small harmonic change tweaked their heart strings. I have attended yoga classes packed with folks needing some space and a change of pace. In big and little ways, we are—each one of us—seeking sanctuary these days. We are looking for refuge from the chaos and the turmoil that is being thrust upon us on a daily basis. We need a place safe from the constant interruptions. We all want to know that someone is listening to us. Perhaps the piano lesson is a place to start.

Honestly, I have no idea how Jean would have answered the question about interruptions. But I have a distinct memory of being with Jean in the Berkshires one night and her wanting to play me a recording of something. I was scattered and in chatty  conversation mode, but I remember how utterly focused she was on the music. When I read that passage by May Sarton about her friend and mentor, I thought of Jean.

Just sit there. Listen. Breathe. Hold space and time. Don’t interrupt. My dear Jean: for you, for me, for all of us, I’m trying. Turns out, it’s just another holy and sacred place to practice.