practice coach

Having my little 13-year-old cousin Linda here visiting this week has been a wonderful thing. She's such a charming little girl, so full of love and vitality that you wouldn't even think it possible. She talks a mile and minute, constantly wanting to know everything. And she's very generous, always willing to share, to spend quality time with you, to be interested in what matters to you. My aunt and uncle adopted her from Guatemala when she was four years old. Since then, she's had to overcome setbacks in her development, but she has such well-organized and realistic plans for how to achieve her dreams for the future that I am sure she will perservere and succeed on whatever she sets her mind to.

I've learned some surprising things from her during her time here.
The first day, having just gotten back from Michigan, I really wanted to spend time practicing my harp, especially to work on the new technique exercises I had been assigned. Linda so desperately wished to spend time with me, though, that when she proposed that she sit by me and listen I could hardly say no. The idea was for her to knit quietly while I practiced, but the poor thing could hardly contain all the words that come flowing through her mind, and there was much talking. Patiently, I decided I would direct her attentions more productively by having her "help" me practice. I told her, "For this exercise, I'm supposed to think about closing my thumbs without rolling my wrist over, but I also have to keep my elbow up, and I'm having trouble remembering to do both at once, so it would help if you would sit there and remind me to keep my elbow up."

To my surprise, she took to this task with all the concentration and dedication she had. She watched my elbow like a hawk, not letting it drop for a second. I decided that I might as well give her a couple other things to look out for about my technique, and on top of those, she thought of other things off the top of her head that I hadn't even told her. Before long, she was standing in front of me conducting along with the metronome, reminding me about my elbow, reminding me to relax, even coaxing me to smile (which I hadn't told her to do). Smiling is something that Ann has mentioned before, but not something that musicians generally think about a whole lot, but Linda was insistent that I look like I was enjoying every second of my playing or else people wouldn't want to watch me and I would just end up depressing them instead. This may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but I think she has a very valid point, and smiling helps you relax anyway! She would routinely make me put down the harp and come over and give me a massage or make me stand up and stretch--all of which is very good for you, none of which I told her to do, and all of which is stuff that I forget to think about when I'm focused on drilling something. Best of all, this correcting and coaching she did with nothing but love. It was not a gleeful exercise of the power I had given her to instruct me, but instead only positive reinforcement, and it made such a difference to my mind-set. I was really having fun.

It got so much better from there. When I moved on to practicing my piece--Danse des lutins--she hit the ground running, already on top of exactly how to go about practicing a piece. First, she reminded me to keep the big picture in mind. I was all set to focus in on drilling my left hand, but she had already figured out that music has character to it. Before I started, she had me play once through the section I was going to work on so that she would know what the character of it was. Then, as I practiced it, she would act out the parts of various little creatures running around and responding to the piece. Watching her act this out helped me to envision what my fingers themselves were acting out through the mischievous sixteenth notes of the piece. If I had to play a sF, she would jump in surprise. If I wasn't smiling enough for her, the creatures would get sad. Every so often, she would peek over my stand, her eyes twinkling, and remind me to relax. Instantly, my shoulders would let go. Then she would be right back to improvising, spinning tales, making up names for the creatures. In fact, she even named my metronome ("Mimi")! She dubbed me the "matriarch" (a word she recently learned in a book that we had been reading together) of all these creatures. They all looked up to me with love and admiration, and I had a great deal of power over their happiness and well-being. Sometimes they would creep right up to my ear and wisper how much I meant to them. My fingers danced lightly over the strings, and my imagination followed her right into the magical world she was creating. I used to have vivid imaginations like that all the time, and for a moment, some of that came back to me. What a gift!

It amazes me that a child with little musical experience, watching me practice in my living room, can automatically know so much about music. These are all things that I know, theoretically, are important--breathing, relaxing, smiling, taking breaks, taking time, telling a story with your music--but that are so easy to lose track of when concentrating on other things. Even if it felt like it was slowing me down to have to stop and do whatever breathing exercise she devised on the spot or if it felt like it was distracting me to have her acting out stories in front of me, it really wasn't at all. It may have actually been better for me than anything I could have done alone!

Thank you, Linda, for your fresh perspective, for your loving support, and your childlike creativity.