Brené Brown said a lot of things that I’ve always thought were important, but never had the knowledge to explain or the words to articulate. I’ve always tried to monitor and consider my words when working with kids and when interacting with others, but didn’t really know how deeply the wrong choice of words could impact someone, myself included. One of my main takeaways from watching this video was the difference between shame, guilt, humiliation and embarrassment and how they all work differently. I worry that because I didn’t know the difference, I might have hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. Hearing that shame could cause trauma in young kids was terrifying! I started going through my memories of my students, trying to see if I’d ever said or done something that would have shamed them. I would hate to have accidentally shamed a student because I didn’t know any better! I also worry that this kind of situation could be worse in one-on-one teaching because of the different kind of bond that gets formed between the teacher and student. Being able to avoid shaming language and being able to tell which emotion is active (in myself or others) seems like a daunting task, but it’s important work and I’m willing to take it on.
It surprised me that vulnerability is tied to so many important things. I can see why people are so reluctant to talk about it but learning more about vulnerability and shame and our reactions to it could influence not only our relationship with ourselves but our relationships with others. The language we use with each other holds a lot of power and I’m grateful I now have a better idea of which language to use.
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At the beginning of the year, my focus was on getting good grades but not at the expense of my health or my sleep. I knew that getting enough sleep and eating enough would be the best way to get good grades because I would be healthy, alert, able to attend all my classes, and balance my time. However, at some point, out of a perceived necessity, I started to sacrifice sleep for grades, and this made going to class and keeping on top of everything progressively more difficult. Now that I’m at the end of the semester, I think I should re-evaluate my priorities and try to make sure my actions align with my priorities. One of the things that has a big impact on my overall wellness is food. If I don’t eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks in between, I oftentimes don’t have enough energy to follow through on everything I need to accomplish on any given day. I know this isn’t uncommon, but I have a gluten allergy, which significantly limits my options for picking up a quick meal on campus. This means that I have to have a lunch and snacks prepared every day if I want to feel my best. I had trouble figuring out how to go about my meal prep at first, because I wasn’t sure how much to make or how long it would take. I would run out of prepared lunches halfway through the week and have to hastily throw something together while eating breakfast. I’ve now designated 3-4 hours on Sunday evening for cooking, but even getting to that point was a whole trial and error process. I’ve found that balancing my time has been the most difficult thing to get a handle on this semester, so figuring out my limits, making a schedule, and sticking to it is my best shot at handling things better next semester. Balance is Key
Regarding the first article, “Posture: The Great Big Rump”, I must say that I’m a little skeptical. Part of me wants to believe it. It’s appealing to think that you can change your posture by changing your awareness and focus. But I feel the need to ask – does attention even work like that? Are there psychological studies backing this up? How did the author develop this theory? What about people with attention-related disorders? Does this method work for them too? I don’t mean to be rude about it, but I feel like I need some more concrete evidence before following what the author is saying.
As skeptical as I am of the first article, the second one, “By Intention Alone”, makes more sense to me. It might be because my studio teacher brought up something similar a couple of weeks ago. I was having trouble getting a melody to shape the way I heard it in my head, so my teacher asked me to play it the way I would if I were demonstrating it to my students. To my surprise, it worked out just like I wanted it to. She told me the difference was in my intention – when I was practicing, I was getting too caught up in the details, but when I was demonstrating, I was thinking “I want it to sound like this”, so my body just did it. I’d love to know about exactly why that happens, but for now I’ll just accept that it works regardless of my understanding. Tuesday, November 12th
Today in choir, I experimented with releasing tension and how that affects my range. I’ve been having trouble reaching an F in one of the pieces. I can feel my throat tighten and I feel like the note is very breathy. At a choir rehearsal I recently attended, one of the sopranos said something similar and the advice she received was to try to release any tension in her throat and jaw. When I tried to relax, I felt the note was a little more manageable. I couldn’t get it consistently, but I think with practice I could get it. Releasing tension helped a little with the tone, but it’s not as clear as I’d like it, so I need to find out what else can affect tone. Thursday, November 14th Today during practice, I experimented with my wrist placement and noted how it affected my tone. In my lesson this week, my teacher asked me to pay attention to what my wrist is doing during scalar passages. Was my wrist following my hand? Was it properly aligned? How did it feel? During practice, I moved my wrist in and out of alignment and tried to see what happened and how I felt. When everything was aligned, I actually enjoyed the scalar passages more and it felt like less work. The scale also felt a little more connected, which is how I want it to sound. Friday, November 15th Today during practice, I experimented with pedal. There’s a legato part in my Beethoven piece that I’m having trouble with. My teacher said I could use a little bit of pedal to help, but I’m not sure how much is enough. I had fun seeing what it sounded like completely dry and what it sounded like with way too much pedal, and then I tried to zero in on what was the right amount. I had a few run throughs that sounded pretty good, so I’m headed in the right direction, but I’m not consistent yet. I’d like to try on different pianos so I can practice quickly adjusting to how much pedal I hear. The physical activity I picked was rolling a coin between my knuckles. I watched a quick YouTube video to get the basics and then started trying. I had some successes, but as I kept trying, I found that the coin would consistently fall off my hand as I tried to flip it between my ring and pinky finger. I started to get frustrated but looking at the activity as play helped with the frustration because it allowed for me to play heads or tails with myself whenever I started to get mad. Following a system with an allowance for doing something you already know how to do instead of focusing on what you’re trying to learn the whole time felt less stressful and more enjoyable than my usual approach.
I realized I had stopped assessing my action and my intention had dissipated, so I focused and thought about what exactly I wanted my fingers to do when the coin flipped over my ring finger. Visualizing and specifying definitely helped me achieve a few more successful cycles. I enjoyed this approach to learning because it feels very forgiving, though I also feel it requires more attention and self-awareness than what I’m used to. Practicing with a clear intention feels more efficient but also requires a clear head space whenever you’re practicing, which can depend on a variety of factors. Last year, I was the accompanist for a community choir that was focused on Latin-American music. I loved this choir – the people were nice, the music was fun, and it was the first time I’d done something musical in a while. There was no written piano accompaniment for any of the pieces, just the vocal parts, so I had to come up with all the accompaniment. I fused melody lines with chord patterns for most of the songs, but there were a couple that I fully arranged a piano part for. One of those was a song called Melodia de Arrabal (Suburban Melody), a catchy tango by Carlos Gardel. It was my first time arranging an accompaniment, and I put a lot of effort into it. I spent two or three weeks on it, looking for previous arrangements and piano solos, researching the stylistic characteristics of tango, and tailoring it to the vocal arrangement we were using and the needs of the choir. In the end, I had something I was pretty proud of. The trickiest part was the introduction – the vocal arrangement had a little introduction to the rest of the song, but the choir needed a piano introduction so they could get their notes. I didn’t want to change it too much, so I mostly copied the vocal harmonies, but added some chord inversions and a different bass line. It ended up a little awkward to play, but I liked it, so I didn’t change it. However, a week before the choir’s first concert, the singers requested a slightly different chord pattern so they could get their starting notes a little easier. I came up with something that worked, but it was a little more difficult than the original, and I practiced it over and over again so I wouldn’t mess it up on the day of the concert.
The big day arrived, and Melodia de Arrabal was our second last song on the program. I was reasonably nervous about playing the introduction, but I reminded myself that I’d successfully played it many times before, and that I knew the score inside and out. I began to play – and slipped on a note I wasn’t expecting. I panicked a little and messed up the chord pattern I’d worked so hard on. If I remember correctly, I hit a bunch of wrong notes that sounded awfully discordant, might have stopped playing for half a beat, and managed to recover enough to hit the bass note on the downbeat the singers were supposed to come in on, but I think it took me a full bar to recover entirely. It was a painfully obvious mistake. I was terribly embarrassed to have messed up in front of an audience like that, especially considering it was in an exposed section of a score that I’d arranged, and in a part that the singers were relying on. The choir handled it wonderfully, though, and came in right when they were supposed to. I apologized to the director afterwards, and she was very kind and told me not to worry about it. I was frustrated about it for a while and kept thinking “how could I have made such a foolish mistake”, but in the end the negativity got swept away by the rest of the choir’s joy at having pulled off their first concert and I filed the experience away as a reminder to be prepared for nerves. In the interest of honesty, the content of the readings wasn’t anything new to me. I’ve been to therapy before and the steps that you follow to change negative thought patterns are fairly similar to what was outlined in the articles. It used to be very easy for me to get stuck on a thought, like Ghislane in the first article. In this situation, the thought would probably have been something like “I made a very obvious mistake in an important place, so I’m a failure.” Therapy taught me how to break down those kinds of thoughts and see where they are coming from, like Lightner did when deconstructing the responses to rain. By trying to “finish the sentence”, I would have thought of “failure at playing the piano”, “failure at performing”, “failure at arranging”, and landed on “failure at being an accompanist” as the thought that bothered me the most. At the time of the concert, I’d already been using therapy skills for a while, so I managed to avoid getting stuck in the thought to begin with, but I still needed to address my frustration and embarrassment. After the concert, I examined my thoughts and recognized that I was feeling as though I’d let the choir down with my mistake and was afraid that they would think less of me for having made it. So I looked around to see if my interpretation of the situation was backed up by any concrete evidence, and no, the choir wasn’t judging me harshly for messing up. They were completely focused on enjoying the feelings of a successful concert and many people thanked me for playing with them. I was still a little embarrassed, but it was at a manageable level, and I was able to enjoy the rest of the evening. By applying these mindful techniques, the whole experience became something to learn from instead of a horror story that would negatively impact future performances. I am grateful for knowing how to handle emotions a little better than I used to, especially now that I’m facing down a constant stream of assignments, essays, and performances, and I appreciate the reminder of how these techniques can make a positive impact on our lives. The song I’ve chosen is called “Immutaa” by Beatrice Deer. Personally, I really like this song – I find it really fun and catchy- and I had a lot of fun researching other Indigenous artists before settling on this song. This assignment made me think about cultural differences, but also about cross-cultural similarities.
Beatrice Deer is half-Inuk and half-Mohawk and sings in French, Engligh and Inuktitut. She and her band are currently based in Montreal, but she grew up in the arctic town of Quaqtaq, Quebec, which is where this music video was filmed. The song is an old, traditional Inuk song, and according to an interview with Deer, “no one knows the date of origin or the songwriter”, but it has been passed down through generations. Surprisingly, the lyrics don’t actually mean anything! “It’s a bunch of words without a real story line,” explained Deer. “Random – when I say random, like extremely random – words like “Harvesting walruses, fish spears, milk, his mittens, five” among other things.” Her version also features throat singing, a traditionally Inuit form of music. I found two other recordings of the same song, the first by the group Nukariik: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiOS688PoUY and the second made by Kelly Fraser, an Inuk pop artist, and her bandmate Charlie Kudluarok: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7jFyu8XNNU What I found while searching for more information about this song has led me to believe that “Immutaa” is the kind of song you learn as a child. Deer learned it when she was in grade one, and some of the mentions of the song I found center around people having learned the song when they were kids. I’d love to have more concrete information on it, but there isn’t much readily available. It feels like the kind of children’s song your parents or teachers would sing to you, or the kind of song that everyone somehow grows up knowing. It reminded me of nursery rhymes or game songs you would learn from your friends, the kind of songs you would sing on the playground or on long car rides. When I was a kid, those kinds of songs carried a social significance with them – it was a way of showing that you were part of a group. With only 60,000 Inuit in Canada, preserving and passing down these songs is a way of keeping the culture alive. So even though the words don’t actually mean anything, the song itself carries cultural importance. Keeping Inuit culture alive is something that’s important to Deer, and also why she filmed the music video with the kids of her hometown. You can actually see them singing the song in a couple of shots in the video. “I wanted them to have fun and experience something different,” said Deer. “I want them to see themselves on a music video and realize that fun projects like that are possible to do, even for a small town girl like me.” Representation is an issue when it comes to Indigenous cultures, since popular media rarely portrays them accurately or respectfully, so I really liked the energy and vibrancy in Deer’s video. Its showing outsiders that Inuit culture is very much alive and not a thing of the past, and its also providing positive Inuit representation for the kids who might not see themselves reflected anywhere else. Here is the link to Deer's full interview, where she talks more about representation and her background: https://www.audiofemme.com/premiere-beatrice-deer-returns-to-her-inuit-home-for-immutaa/ And here are the lyrics for the song, just for fun: Immutaa aajijaa Nalirannii aajijaa Aivvaavugut, kakivaavugut Aippait nalippait, kakivait, nalippait, immuq Imutallu tallimallu, kiikitsialu Kiikiuna, kiikiuna Aivariaju tukumi taijaa Ijingillu taikkua Pualunnguangit sugalunnguangit Pualunnguangit sugalunnguangit Immutau tau tau tarqamuunaa Itikkut pikiakaillainarpuq Anakallainarpuq, immuq My exercise idea is based off a choir exercise I did last year that was meant to build listening and tuning skills. To begin, I would play a triad going up and down (do-mi-so-mi-so) on the keyboard in the room. Everyone would need to sing along on a syllable, and on the way down the triad, they would pick a note and stay on it. Then we would do the same thing with another triad, but with the added twist of having to move around the room and find the other people singing your note. Then I would do the same but with a dominant 7th chord. The last iteration would have the added step of balancing the chord, which would mean moving around and adjusting your note so that every group has the same amount of people. Everyone has to pick a different note each time. It’s all done without talking so it means everyone has to really listen to each other in order to communicate and achieve each step.
My two focuses for the week have been my breathing and my wrists. I’m a piano player, so breathing isn’t the main focus for me when I play, but taking deep breaths is something that helps me concentrate, focus, and calm down. I often take a deep breath before beginning to practice or play. Correctly mapping the size and depth of my lungs has helped me feel more grounded every time I sit before the piano, and it feels like I’m breathing a little more deeply than before. I never realized my lungs extended towards my back, and somehow knowing that makes the breaths I take feel a little fuller.
My studio teacher coincidentally brought my attention to my wrists and their alignment during my lesson this week, so I’ve been trying to be aware of that as well. I’d never noticed how many unnecessary movements I made, and how that often put my wrist at an odd angle. Making sure my wrists are aligned with the rest of my arm is only the beginning. The awareness moves up my forearm to my elbows, and then my shoulders. Since freedom of movement is associated with freedom of expression, I’ve been trying to make especially sure I’m not holding any tension in my shoulders that might extend down through my arms. I’ve never moved my arms much when I’m playing, but apparently that’s something that’s encouraged. Keeping everything aligned and free is supposed to make a difference in my tone, and as I was practicing on Wednesday night, I thought I could hear a little bit of change. So, I’ll try to be more aware of my arms and how they move and see how it goes. |
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