My friend tends to prefer summaries over original content, so I made a summary of what I would like to tell him.
Not everything can be read on mobile, Not everything can be said in one sentence; There are topics that require many words, long time to be processed, long time to be understood.
When you complain that an article is too long
read it anyway and then make a shorter version that suits yourself.
When you skip a long article just because it’s too long
you are missing the message altogether.
Do you think you can discard the message, before knowing what it is about,
and be satisfied with the summary of your guesses?
Today is my birthday! I wish to share three funny birthday songs I am fond of, one in Italian, one in French and one in Berlinese. First, Elio’s “Al mercato di Bonn”, about the unlikely discovery of “Happy Birthday”‘s verses, written no less than by Beethoven:
The second is “l’Anniversaire”, from a group of musicians from Toulouse, the Fabulous Trobadors:
and last, “Jeburtstach”, in Berlin dialect, from Rotz’n’roll Radio:
Like every Friday in these last two months, I have been wondering whether to come back to my orchestra. I have been taking a break since last Christmas.
Rehearsals in the school’s theatre
They are a lovely bunch of people who have fun when playing music together. When I joined, they accepted me with open arms, and they were my first group of friends I made in Berlin. The conductor instead seemed (at least in particular moments, near important concerts) more focused on results and concerts. Most musicians managed to ignore or absorb his prompts and the atmosphere remained usually calm and pleasant.
However, as I sometimes play the drums (mostly replacing the first drummer, rarely on my own initiative), I felt more exposed, because the conductor only recently (realised?) told me how he needs the drummer’s role to be: he/she should be his closest musician, because most of the orchestra tends to listen to the drummer instead of paying attention to him directly. I find this a clever idea; but I don’t feel able to fill that position. My dearest memories with the orchestra are the ones when I am in a pleasant harmony with my fellow players, like a jazz ensemble, mumbling music together, listening to each other – and these moments were invariably interrupted by the conductor, who desperately wanted my focus back on him, in order to regain control over the speed and dynamics of the whole orchestra. I felt woken up from a dream, sometimes too rudely (well, anyone woken up from a dream would see it as rude, I suppose).
I thought about that a lot and finally realised that the role he needs is not the role I have in mind for myself, and my attempts to walk in his direction both exhausted me and were objectively unsuccesful. Therefore I said I needed a break and left for now six months.
What I love is to play music in the present. That means to play music with attention and concentration, becoming aware of notes, of details, of my fellow musicians. The time for the future is before and after the playing session – not during it! – it is the selection of pieces for an upcoming concert, and the careful comments after the repetitions. But without playing in the present, there is no music, there is only a lot of stress when you realise how uncertain is the piece – and after playing, you can’t see the things who went well, because they are initially hard to spot, so few in the middle of a lot of mistakes and uncertainty. Everyone could say that the piece is not ready; but it takes a careful ear to spot the little improvements, that are the minimal, crucial building foundations for further work.
If I were a more skilled drummer, or a cooler-headed horse, I wouldn’t have suffered that much under the strain. But repetitions were my time for drums practice, not for judgment. I felt sometimes that a repetition was in fact as stressful as a concert. I still fear that, therefore I think I’ll skip rehearsals one more time tonight.
I just listened to BBC Four Thought “Sensitive Souls” (and I have recently read Auf die leise Weise, i.e. the quiet way) and my mind wandered in several directions, like a wild animal walking around a part of forest and exploring it attentively, one corner after the other, following scents and interesting plants.
It seemed to me that the most common behavioural model is a line, with “tough” and “sensitive” at the extremes. That would be OK for me, in theory – but not when these words actually mean “bully” and “bullied”. I therefore tested the following translation, from:
“Toughen up! Don’t be so sensitive! You’ll never reach any goal while being sensitive!”
into
“Be the bully sometimes! Don’t always be the bullied one! You’ll never reach your goals if you keep letting others bully you!”
… and I realised that this translation awakened the horror I felt anytime someone urged me to toughen up. I didn’t want to swap sides. I didn’t want to be rude to others, just because these are (or appear to be) the rules of The Game. If these were the rules, I couldn’t force myself to play – even if that meant that I would automatically lose.
I don’t know what people telling me those words actually meant. What I know for myself is that I have been very close to shut down my sensitive side, because it made me hurt a lot and the only choice seemed to move along the line, away from the sensitive corner and right into toughness. I am thankful to my closest friends, that offered me (and still do!) a safe space where I could be as sensitive as I needed, and investigated with me new ways to protect myself without hurting others. They took me away from that line, showed me other paths, that we walk as a group.
I hope that readers who find themselves sensitive can count on such friendships and safe spaces, and can see a way for growth that doesn’t sacrifice any of their skills.
I was reading another chapter from Montessori vom Anfang an, and was impressed by the authors’ observation that children need to learn independence very early on, but parents often find it hard to let them go – with unhappy results for both parts.
I stopped reading for a while and searched backwards in the text for how many times this concept was brought up. My impression was that children grow up so fast that parents have little time to get used to a given relationship with them. Children are born so helpless and dependent from their parents, then they learn to speak, move around, use objects, take decisions, interact with others: they change so fast! My heart understand parents who remember vividly their kids as babies and miss dearly those months. It must be so difficult to accept that your children will walk progressively away of your protecting arms, and there is no way to completely save them from suffering.
I must say that this is one big reason why I don’t feel ready to have children. I am afraid that I won’t let them grow as fast as they need; or worse, that I won’t see my bias. With children in kindergarten I have hope to become a good teacher, because I can treat them as people, like I try to do with everyone, but with that extra responsibility of my role. I am afraid to become a mum and become over-protective: “my children come first, no matter what”. Or, on the opposite, I am afraid to treat my child in a way that I find fair, but that others (that child included) don’t find affectionate enough.
Big thoughts… they make me worry quite a bit, but I am also glad that I think about these topics. I would love to hear your opinions in the comments!
I loved the idea of giving value to time and activities done alone: in fact, there are many things on that list that are done outdoors, and/or involve physical activity, or let you improve the state of your home, and so on. For the shy personality of mine, it is a gentler invitation to get out and move my body, without the implication that I must interact with people or exhaust myself – and most importantly, that time alone can be spent in many ways (more than those 50, for sure!), which include my current indoor favourites: decluttering my room and reading.
Long story short, today the sun was shining, so I picked up two items from that list:
42: Go to the park with some sandwiches, a picnic blanket and a good book
49: Take a photo to depict each hour of your day (I actually read it as: take a picture of the same place at one-hour intervals)
Out I went to the park nearby with my packed lunch (I had leftovers from yesterday’s pasta, and fresh fruits and vegs, so it was really quick to put together) and a book that I have to read for my Montessori diploma.
I ate, read, dozed, smiled to passers-by, and took three picture at one hour interval:
11:42
12:42
13:42
Then I left because it had become too warm and sunny, but it was a great time outside, relaxing and interesting š
I was discussing with a friend of mine over this post from Beautiful Mustang’s blog.We both understood that:
this horse reacts badly to pressure: putting even more pressure creates dangerous situations
lowering the communication down to whispers allows an efficient information flow
This makes me think of some non-Newtonian fluids, that react to pressure in a similar way: they are liquid and flowing at low pressures, but become solid when pressure rises. If you need them to flow, you have no alternative other than keep pressure low.
The parallel stops here, because fluids are inanimate and lack decision making processes – it is clear that the person that is using them for a given task has complete control over the situation. With a living creature there can be a divergence of goals and opinions, that create pressure from both sides. I absolutely refuse to increase the pressure until the other side surrenders; it’s a strategy that breaks objects, and scars animals and people for a very long time. I embrace the idea of perceiving when my pressure is creating resistance on the other side, and I aim to make the conscious decision to lower the pressure in order to let the other side come back to a flowing, more relaxed state.
We further reflected on the fact that this one can be a case of respecting an introverted being. I think it is even more: it is a case of respecting another opinion. Not just introverts deserve less pressure than others; everyone would benefit from being treated in a non-coercive way.
To finish with a picture, here is Leah, the whispering horse:
Last weekend I visited my family and took some time to doodle.
I made a landscapeito of the lake we went to for the afternoon: I decided to limit the time to 5 minutes, so that I focused on getting the framing, shading and details right. In this drawing, I tried to make the background lighter than the foreground, a way of suggesting distance. I am not super happy with the water, but I think that I captured the essence of the scene.
My mum is currently practising guitar together with her colleague Biagio, so they invited me to their rehearsal. It was a perfect occasion to draw! I took around half an hour to make the drawing below. It was easier to draw the parts of the body that didn’t move much (right arm, shoulders), but hard to draw the head and the left hand, that moved a lot. For these parts I chose a particular position and waited for them to show it, drew a couple lines or hatching, and wait for next occasion. I learned about this technique from a workshop about wildlife sketches, where you choose several postures of an animal and work in parallel, adding details to each doodle every time the animal falls into that position. It is indeed a valid technique for any moving subject.
I have been thinking about the differences between good and ok teachers, and I came to the conclusion that two things are important: showing passion for the topic, and being able to build bridges between known and unknown, for the students to cross. I would like to explain more about this latter point in this post.
When I explain something, I need to be aware of what the other person knows, because otherwise I would build a bridge between two unknown topics, that are not connected to anything else. That bridge will therefore be unuseful and will likely deteriorate before any other bridge will be built nearby. A big chunk of information I learned from school stayed, sadly, like cathedrals in the desert, away from my everyday life, precious in theory, but disconnected and quickly forgotten.
It happens that other people find a bridge by themselves, and are enlightened and proud of that new connection. I have learned to avoid judgment on how far-fetched is that connection for me – for example when I introduce a classical composer to some friends, and they connect it to medieval movies they have seen. I could correct them, because the composer has no relation whatsoever with the time and location of those movies; but the main effect is that the bridge is lost. That long bridge is a connection, nevertheless; when a new composer will be presented to these people, they will already know one of that time: so one new bridge could be added to the network, or as an intermediate point on the existing bridge. Condemning bridges is usually a bad move, rarely something positive. Of course if a bridge is misleadingly connecting two things, I point it out; but I try to offer an alternate connection.
That’s why I take extra care in asking other people what they know already, so that I can present the new topic to them, by walking with them on bridges they find meaningful.
aghisla draws 