PA Shorts: Ignition – Blast Off!
Since I have been convalescing and forbidden to do anything particularly physical, I have had a lot of time to read. Two tidbits struck my fancy this week. The first concerns the ignition of talent and the second the fact that we never know where or when our influence will actually come to bear.
Ignition
In his new book, The Little Book of Talent (really, it just came out today) Daniel Coyle starts off the first section with a working definition of talent ignition.
“…it consists of a tiny, world-shifting thought lighting up your unconscious mind: I could be like them.”
He goes on to give examples of the “windshields of people” we all have in front of us, which ignite our energy and motivation by providing images of our future selves. He suggests using pictures and videos of top performers. Those who become the best at what they do spend much time staring at those who are better, trying to figure out how and why they do what they do. Those who are lucky, get to observe first hand.
Trouble is, we pianists often spend long hours alone in the practice room. Perhaps we have pictures, recordings, and videos from our teachers. Perhaps we have only a to do list from which to practice. Perhaps we erroneously think that the time spent sitting while listening and watching is a waste of precious minutes which could be spent at the keyboard actually doing.
Ignition is actually one of the reasons I started this blog. I noticed that so many of my students (and their parents) had no idea of the actual world of the pianist and suffered because of it. I could demonstrate until my fingers bled but these students couldn’t connect it into the real world. They had no way to imagine what they could accomplish because it was literally out of their experience. Consequently, they were satisfied with a much smaller piece of the musical pie.
Going on field trips to concerts, holding mixed level studio classes, viewing videos at studio class, sitting in at masterclasses, and encouraging exploration of the world of music online go a long way toward finding and continuing the spark of ignition, no matter the musical genre. In this world, where commercial culture is so prevalent, we must dig deeply to find sparks of ignition for ourselves and our students. Once we know what is motivational, then we can keep it constantly before us.
Blast Off!
NPR’s Weekend Edition ran a story on 60s – 70s singer Sixto Rodriguez, Rodriguez: Forgotten in America Exalted in Africa. His first album, Cold Fact, never caught on in the U.S., so he quietly got out of the music business and into home renovation.
What he never knew was that bootlegged copies of the album made it into South Africa and he became an apartheid legend. Malik Bendjelloul has directed a new documentary, Searching for Sugarman, about the mystery surrounding the singer and the album. “In South Africa, it’s more famous than Abbey Road.”
This is a pretty extreme illustration of the fact that you never know how a listener, or student, or anybody will take what you give. Never ever. Keep giving and don’t worry about it. The universe will work it out—eventually.
Wow! A very inspirational story. Thanks so much for sharing.
This is interesting — Gabriela Montero was like that for me. I listened to her, marveled, and then ruminated endlessly on how she was able to do what she did. It was like a puzzle I couldn’t crack, until I did — when I realized that she had learned music natively as a language. That’s when I could relate writing music to something I could do better than anyone I knew: learn languages. Once I had that realization in hand — and it wasn’t something that came from outside me, I had to chew on and chase after — I could approach writing music the same way I approached learning languages. WHAM! Instant connection. I felt like a door had been locked shut in my head, and for four decades, I had assumed I didn’t have the key. Turns out that the key I had used since I was a child to unlock the Language door also unlocked the Music door. All I needed was someone to illustrate that to me, and boom. I’m writing music.
And the fact that I could relate it to something I had a great deal of experience at (language learning) meant that I could hit the ground running. The thousands of hours (not 10,000 but a couple grand at least) I had put into languages could transfer in a way. Not at 1-to-1. I lost on the exchange. But still, it enabled me to not have to start from zero.