Our Collective Wisdom

Lately, I have been rereading things.

I have been rereading old blog posts. I have been rereading favorite books. I have been revisiting old teaching journals and notebooks. Here’s my takeaway:

I have learned so many things. I have forgotten most of them.

There is a fancy word for this concept lifted from another context: Monitrice. A monitrice is a person who guides a mother through the birthing process, reminding her what she intuitively knows and has learned.

Sometimes I think that’s really my role as a teacher, to be a sort of monitrice for students, nudging them into remembering all the things they do in fact know about playing the piano and being a musical and creative being in the world: Oh yeah, I need to do more hands separate on the Bach..Yep, Metronome Mountain would be a really good idea here…Ok, you’re right, I forgot to ghost the different hands to check my memory work…Certainly, this is what I have needed these days, a sort of chiropractic adjustment as to what good practices look like in my daily life. During these last few whirlwind months, I’ve needed someone whispering my ear, gently pushing and prodding me in the right direction. Amy, you know you won’t regret putting in the laps in the pool…Remember the kitchen timer? You can do 5 minutes of weeding…Yes, you do actually need to (check that tempo with the recording…eat that salad…go for a walk…spend 20 minutes on the meditation cushion)…It’s both humbling and empowering to return to what we already know about how we should live and practice.

In the studio, monthly performance classes are divided up by age. There’s the Beethoven class of elementary kids. The Joplin group of mid-high students and then the high school Chopin class. Kids always have the option of attending a different class if they have a scheduling conflict, which means that I could have a Little One in the Chopin group or a senior sitting in with the youngest class. In a society where we are often too segregated by age groups, this is all good, I think. I love seeing the older kids helping the Little Ones, and watching the youngest students try to mimic the language and gestures of the more experienced pianists in the studio.

Case in point:

Last week the Joplin mid-high class was a mishmash of ages. I had a whole family of Little Ones and several high school kids attending as well. Our practice is that before they play their performance piece, kids are expected to talk a bit about their music and their preparation and what they might need in terms of feedback about from the other students. I then call on a couple of kids to be ready to give comments after each performance.

It was Sage’s turn to play. Sage is 14-year-old, an intermediate pianist with good work habits and a decent assessment of her skills. But the piece she was assigned to play that evening had not been going particularly well. I knew this. She knew this.

It was late in the class and we were running out of time. Knowing that Sage was pretty clear about her problems (“My fingering is a mess,” she told the group, “and I’m having trouble fixing it, but I think I know what to do.”), I decided to assign Eddie to give Sage feedback. Eddie is a freckled-faced squirmy eight-year-old with no real pianistic insights. This would save time, I thought, and not distract Sage with well-intentioned but unhelpful comments.

Sage played her piece. “Eddie,” I asked, “Do you have any thoughts for Sage?”

“Well, Sage,” Eddie sighed deeply and shook his head. “It was just like you said: Your fingering is a MESS.”

Sometimes I wonder if we have monitrices all around us all the time, we just need to learn to listen to them. To that end, I keep rereading, digging into my past ideas and thoughts to mine out long-forgotten truths. It was just like you said, Amy…your (garden, diet, writing habits, meditation commitment, triangle pose, desk, morning routine….) is a mess.

But here’s the thing: you know what to do.