Comments to Ken Greene
Original Post
The use of the symphony as a metaphor for life is an easy one for me to grasp. We’ve been discussing this metaphor as a school-wide thematic unit for our creative and performing arts school, considering how a symphony is similar to a living organism, a sports team, or a small business. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard (or used) the sports team analogy while attempting to motivate a middle school choir or band to rise to the challenge, contributing their individual efforts to the greater goal: the team’s success on the field on game day (or a great performance on the day of the concert). The sports analogy is often preached in an effort to justify to student musicians the importance of practicing and playing the same passages over and over to get them right. I can hear it now… “Why do you think football players run the same drills over and over in practice, or a baseball player spends so much time at the batting cages? Because the repetition of these actions sharpens their skills and makes them better at what they do. It also makes them better contributors to their teams!” Sometimes this sermon is effective, and sometimes it isn’t.
After reading Benjamin Zander’s realization that the orchestra conductor’s ”true power derives form his ability to make other people powerful”, I realized that the most successful I’ve been at motivating and engaging my choir students has been when I’ve “passed the baton” to them. Empowering my students to lead a warm-up routine or conduct a song in a concert made tremendous differences in both the lives of those individual students and the choir. Once students were removed from the security (and, at times, obscurity) of the group and placed in front of the ensemble, they realized that they were suddenly responsible for eliciting specific responses from this group of chatty middle school singers. Talk about daunting tasks! By placing my faith in them and removing myself from the equation (or seemingly so) I had begun to create an environment of trust and respect, an opportunity for the students to rise to the challenge and demonstrate their capability and realize success.
I just finished reading a book by Dave Weber titled Sticks and Stones Exposed that reminded me so much of the information in The Art or Possibility that the more I couldn’t help but think that the authors had exchanged notes while writing their respective works. Weber discusses the Seven Me’s that exist in each of us, constantly vying for control and ultimately determining who we are. The similarities between the two books first revealed themselves while reading chapter 5 in The Art or Possibility, discovering that we can lead from the back of the orchestra just as effectively as we can from the conductor’s podium. Weber describes scenarios in which our choice of words, or decision to remain silent, can have a profound and often lifelong impact on others. Similarly, Zander and Zander describe instances where a simple blank sheet of white paper placed on a music stand made the different in how orchestra members perceived and responded to their conductor. A kind word or compliment, much like a simple gesture, can bring out greatness in others.
Another eerie similarity involves our reaction to what Weber refers to as the missteps that can scrape and bruise our Ego, such as whether we loudly curse the sidewalk or collapse in embarrassment when we stumble in public, hoping that no one witnessed the tragic event that just occurred. Our other option, as Weber points out, is to simply laugh it off. in other words, don’t take ourselves so goddamn seriously!
My Vacation and Chapter 7
I am writing this post from a coffee shop located one block from the Bethany Beach boardwalk in Delaware. It’s a beautiful day today and, luckily, it’s still early enough for me to enjoy most of it. But the weather hasn’t been beautiful the entire time my family and I have been here. We had two straight days of heavy rain. in the past I may have launched into downward spiral talk and spent two miserable days complaining to my family about our poor luck. However, I chose to accept how things really are (or were) and embraced the fact that we were still at the beach and on vacation. It’s raining – So what?! We went out to dinner, saw “Man Of Steel”, and spent some quality time together in spite of the less-than-ideal conditions. What a difference it makes to everyone involved when you avoid the calculating self and allow the central self to dominate!
My Comments
Ken, I really loved your post. There were two main parts I am going to comment on.
First, talking about the perspective on your vacation. I appreciated it tremendously. My wife and I spent our honeymoon on the Oregon coast and it rained every day until we left. It is easy to focus on the obstacle, but if we focus on making “lemonade out of lemons” then our perspective changes.
Next, your comments about the other book, “Sticks and Stones Exposed” especially the part where you talk about our own ego getting in the way. I tripped and fell one time, and when I immediately jumped up looking around to see if anyone saw my words were pretty telling. “Didn’t hurt!” Nobody saw anything, but I had to make that statement.
Thanks for your post.
Dave Gibson 2.0 