A few thoughts from my balcony this morning (including all the "and"s and "um"s of an unrehearsed, unedited vlog!):
And here's the clip from a group improvisation, created about 35 minutes into the workshop session. We had prepared ourselves through a series of listening meditations, breath improvisations, body work, and open sounding exercises.
The sacred space created from these collective activities is what enabled the pure freedom of sound you witness here. I post this with so much gratitude to the seven beautiful women who participated, and to my volunteer videographer!
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One of my deeply ingrained childhood beliefs was the notion that, "In order to be able to do something, you need to go to school and learn how to do it first." In the thinking of my childhood, I was led to believe that there was a very linear, singular path toward any particular destination. That there was a prescribed sequence of things that needed to happen in a certain way if things were going to work out. I'm beginning to unlearn that lesson, among others. Part of why I am sharing all these old beliefs, as I take myself through my process of chipping at and melting them away, is to reveal that our beliefs, once we begin to observe them, are not as solid and rigid as we make them out to be.
We evolve.
So I share with you my own wide-eyed, childlike awe and wonder at learning - in my mid-30s - about whole other worlds that I never knew existed. After playing music nearly every day of my life since the age of three, I played for the first time into a microphone while wearing headphones in 2008. It was my first experience with multi-track recording. I learned a whole other way of "composing" that occurred with a mixing board and the software interface of a computer, when previously my mental picture included images of Mozart, wearing a powdered wig and stockings, sitting at a clavier and writing on parchment paper with a quill pen. The truth is I had never personally known any kind of real live musician other than the violin soloists and symphony orchestra players and conductors I was exposed to growing up.
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I had met the then child prodigy Midori when she taught me in a master class. I had played for legends like Josef Gingold and Ruggiero Ricci. These were the idols and icons of my childhood.
So I never imagined that I would one day learn a new way of playing, without ever going to school for it. I have had plenty of teachers "miraculously" show up in my life. But they came to me by my being open to doing new things, searching actively for ways to reach out, and being willing to receive what was offered.
My first supporter and encourager to do non-classical music was Erik. After producing my students' CD, he asked if I would come and record some pop music with him.
I said, "I don't play pop music."
He said, "Music is music."
That opened a little window in my mind. So I showed up and tried, not knowing what he meant by "music". I've learned over the course of our weekly sessions - which are part recording, part brainstorming, part therapy (for both of us!) - that music is music. I have played on tracks ranging from Peruvian to American country to blues to pop to homemade percussion grooves.
Erik is an amazing drummer and has a very experienced ear for acoustic detail and timing. He was the only witness to my very first attempt at improvisation ("Johnny's Blues" track) and he gave me such support that I actually came back to do it again! And again and again. I even chickened out and stopped recording for over a year, out of fear for where it might lead me. Then one day I decided to come back, when I knew that I needed to find my own music again.
I've learned that songs evolve just as we do.
Playing from the printed page, the evolution occurs in interpretation: phrasing, dynamics, choices of tempo, articulation and length of notes. The way I was trained involved learning how to produce a particular sound that matched our best guess at the composer's original intentions. Frankly, most of the work involved learning the technical skill necessary to execute what was written. In the classical repertoire, only a very few students would reach the level to be able to express something heartfelt beyond perfect execution of the notes. The narrow gate into classical music artistry was determined by an ability to develop both virtuosic technique and some level of expressive interpretation.
Creating on a recorded track from improvisation, the evolution occurs in a totally different way: choosing melodies, rhythmic patterns, when to play and when to rest, how to arrange the song. Technique is not a barrier but rather a tool. With some songs, I find myself playing performances straight through, not thinking that it will be edited in the future. I try to create a complete performance each time. In other instances, I play with different ideas and fragments, knowing that most of it won't be used. Each take is like a scratch pad of notes to make sense of later.
I never knew that music could be created this way! And I never thought I could be participating in it. I had only ever heard final products on CDs or on the radio, marveling at how they managed to sound so good. I wish more artists would reveal their creative process on their way to producing great work. It might help us all realize that there is an evolution to everything. We live in a time when it's rare to see how things are made or to appreciate how things become the way they are when we acquire or consume them.
So to shed some light on the evolution of a song I'm working on with Erik (which I first posted after our first night of recording), I am going to share the three raw versions of the song that we are playing with on our way to creating a final mix. Please leave a comment to let me know what your favorite parts are!
[audio:http://www.themusicwithinus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/01-Lisa-Chan-Chan-Take-Two-from-6.6..mp3|titles=01 Take Two from 6.6 Sultry]
[audio:http://www.themusicwithinus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/03-Lisa-Chan-Chan-Cropped-Take-One-f.mp3|titles=03 Cropped Take One from 6.6 Sultry]
[audio:http://www.themusicwithinus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/04-Lisa-Chan-Chan-Takes-Overlaid-fro.mp3|titles=04 Overlay Takes from 5.23 and 6.6 Sultry]
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You may have been lucky enough to have a teacher or parent or other mentor who made you feel that every - yes, even the ones your mind may label "ugly" or "forgettable" - step you take is a beautiful one in your own journey through life. If that's the case, I hope you hear their voices of encouragement in your head on a daily basis.
If not, I want to offer this story as a way of saying that you don't need to go back to school to learn what you need to learn right now. The lessons are all around you already. The teachers are not necessarily sitting in classrooms at the large institutions requiring entrance exams and letters of recommendation. They may be in the most unexpected places, waiting to show you who you never knew you could be. They may not even consider themselves teachers. But they could be yours.
There is beauty in every step of your life's journey, no matter how difficult or improbable a particular step seems. Surround yourself with people who will remind you of this as often as possible. You just might find yourself following unexpected paths toward indescribable feelings of joy and wonder.
I attended a wedding in Shakespeare Garden in Golden Gate Park this weekend, and one of the highlights was a custom poem written for me by Silvi Alcivar of The Poetry Store.
She sits at a cute antique typing desk with an antique typewriter, and writes "poetry on demand".
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Given just a brief description - one word is all she needs - she writes a custom poem on the spot, on any of her assorted paper designs. I told her I wanted mine to be about music. She asked what instrument I play. I told her violin, and gave her the name of my business. Here's what I got, within about 3 minutes:
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the music within us
plays like violin's
strings replacing the
voice we might use to
sing, making space for
silence inside us
to just listen.
- Silvi Alcivar, 6.6.10
I was totally floored. Isn't she amazing?? Check her out and book her for your next music or literary event, art opening, trunk show, wedding, party, or get together of any kind.
Two different days. Same scenario. I am rehearsing for an upcoming gig I've been graciously invited to play with a singer/songwriter/guitarist and a bass player/percussionist/backup vocalist. None of us has ever played together before. We met at a jam session and our lead guy summoned us together to join him for his gig.
The difference between the two days? How wild my mind was the second time around. And how it prevented me from going “full out” with my expression. Interesting to notice. I’ve talked before about the freedom of the first take, and how I’ve found that when I’m totally open, not trying to “get it right” or worried about “playing the wrong notes,” I usually create something very interesting and often artistic. The minute I start redoing, rehearsing, recreating, researching – in the sense of trying to “live up” to the quality of the previous takes or the original version of the song done by the “people who knew what they were doing” – I lose it. I start trying way too hard. I start thinking, second-guessing, and measuring. The sound becomes stiff and artificial.
I've played at six different jams in the past two weeks. I'm beginning to see that there is such a difference between playing from a place of pure listening and ownership of everything coming out in the moment, versus needing to know what you're doing. I used to play mainly from this latter place. I either "knew" a piece or didn't. I had the confidence that I could learn anything if I just practiced it enough. But this confidence didn't make "on the fly" or improvisational sessions possible for me. These weren't fun because I was attached to the idea that if I just had more time to practice, I would know enough to be able to join in. In fact, I always felt slightly underpracticed. Not quite as good as I could be. My so-called confidence was something I held in private, something that was conditional upon my having more time to prepare.
Aside from instilling an obsessive work ethic that served me well at things like getting into Harvard, getting through medical school, and impressing people who think that the more degrees you have the better person you are, I haven't found this constant feeling of slight inadequacy to be that useful.
In fact, here are some of the ways it has made my life more difficult/less enjoyable/less peaceful:
Not wanting to approach new people with my services/skills/ideas until I have developed them to perfection. By the way, when you’re creating and inventing, there is no perfection, so this is a formula for never putting your stuff out there.
Constantly questioning how I can do more, how I can measure up to “Everybody Else” who seems to know what they’re doing better than I do. I’ve talked in previous posts about the plague of believing “I am never doing enough”.
Not celebrating or acknowledging the small steps I am taking in completely new directions, because I am preoccupied by a greater vision of how things “should” be. I get so lost in an idea of what I want to be, that I totally miss what I actually am right now. There’s nothing wrong with having visions; I just need to remind myself to bring my attention back to the tiny beautiful little things happening right now, which are often drowned out by the volume and intensity of my big future vision. Funny how the mind blurs those lines, isn’t it?
Becoming a bystander versus a doer. I’m trying to find a new balance point between observing and doing. I’ve previously erred on the side of doing more than I needed to, and now I’m finding a new dynamic state of doing and observing.
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Bringing "play" back into "playing music"
I can't tell you how antithetical this is to the way I have lived for the majority of my life. It's only now in my exploration of what play means, for me as an adult, that I see how I have forgotten what it's like to play.
Remember when play used to feel like this?
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We all have that pure joy somewhere inside us.
My little musical excursions into improvisation are like baby steps for me to train a completely new way of being. I remind myself to be gentle with the child in me who is learning to walk again. I’m discovering – actually, in a way, I’m teaching myself - what it’s like to FEEL my way through musical situations – and life - without a piece of paper in front of me, and just my body to guide me.
Talk about a practice in relaxation! I often have no idea how my fingers or my vocal cords are finding notes. When I let go of needing to know, they just get there. And sometimes they don't. But my ears guide them back again, as long as I keep my mind quiet. If I spend any time in that mode of slight inadequacy, thinking I need more practice, or more time, I've lost the connection to the music. The reality is that the music is happening right now, and I don't have the option of considering "what if" I had more of this, more of that, a little better this or a little less of that. I'm either part of what's going on, or I'm lost in my own head, and not connected to the music.
Great metaphor for life, too, actually. If we spend all our time planning, wishing, wanting things that aren't there, worrying about the future, believing we can use our cleverness to outsmart this moment, we miss the opportunity to connect with the music of our lives. We are somewhere in our minds, sitting it out, dreaming about how much we would be able to do if only we had more time to practice.
And then we miss the chance to just listen and play.
Photo credits (used under a Creative Commons license):
OK, Docs. This is what I see. I’ve been reading the blogs, studying the published research papers, checking out the advice you’re giving each other for dealing with the health care system. I hear you. There are many things about the system that seem broken. You are tired. You feel overworked and underpaid, and when you look out on the horizon, all you can see is things getting worse, not better. You feel powerless and voiceless as other stakeholders make policies that have a profound impact on the way you do your job. You see your job as sacred. You went into medicine not just for the money, but for the nobility of doing something good for other people, and for society. You feel that your job is special. It's more than just a job. You think it's not so unreasonable to expect to be rewarded for your efforts and personal sacrifices. Now you’re being herded like cattle into a holding bin, while still being asked to hold yourself to the idealistic standards that you believed when you went through your white coat ceremony as a medical student.
I’m not in your shoes right now, but I offer the perspective of an observer. I did go to medical school, and saw too many of you around me who were burnt out and walking around like zombies during the most vibrant years of your life to want to be like you. So I chose to walk. Some might say I copped out. Others might say I made a wise choice, getting out early. I’m not here to debate my choice. I’m here to offer you a different way to look at your life.
I’m here to remind you that you can choose, over and over again in life, no matter what other people tell you.
No one in my life ever told me that I could choose what to believe, and that this simple (but by no means easy) choice could give me the power to change my life. Maybe it was assumed that the minute I stepped out of my parents’ house, I would adopt a whole set of independent beliefs based on being “out there” in the world.
It wasn’t like that for me.
Long after I left home, long after I left school environments, I was still unconsciously believing things that I had never stopped to question. They ranged from simple things, like, “You’ll never get a good job right out of college, even if it’s Harvard,” and “You’ll never make a living as a musician,” to more complex things like, “Life is just a series of tests. You win some, you lose some. Hopefully you win more than you lose. Then you get weak and die.”
Sure, it may look like I’ve broken down many beliefs in the process of making some bold changes in direction during my life. I said “no” to a residency, I actually did get a job out of medical school (and it paid really well), I believed in myself enough to move across the country to follow a dream.
But I'm beginning to see that it doesn’t end with just taking the big steps.
It’s the little steps that count even more. The many small decisions you make in each moment of each day add up to your experience of life. Time is simply the sum of many present moments. And if we remain unaware, these moments still go by without the benefit of our attention.
I’ve been trying to strive for “the next big step” in my life for quite some time. I’m just beginning to learn what it’s like to take the tiny ones. I’m learning what it’s like to celebrate myself, before expecting others to celebrate me. I’m learning how to listen to myself, before I run out to check if someone else will tell me I’m doing it right (usually I expect to be wrong). I'm learning that there's nothing wrong with being wrong, as long as I am open to it and keep learning. I’m learning how strong my muscles of self-care need to get, in a culture built on teaching us to face outwards and seek any sign of reinforcement, even if it’s a blinking red light on my Blackberry, or one more follower on Twitter, or an upward-sloping line on my web stats page for today.
Looking inward at yourself, asking the questions that can be answered only with the heart’s truth, and sitting with your own answers – I believe these are some of the hardest jobs on the planet right now, no matter what you happen to do to earn your paycheck.
If you asked most people if they value "creativity" in their doctor or surgeon, I'm guessing most people would say “NO.” (Tell me where I'm wrong.)
I used to think that there were certain professions – like medicine - where creativity is actually not a valuable attribute. I'm beginning to wonder if that's really true.
Are mistakes always bad?
Most of us think that medical mistakes are all bad. That the last thing we want is for our doctor to "make a mistake". Well, I'm beginning to think that by making mistakes "bad" we are limiting the creative thinking that we really need from doctors. Especially now.
One of the big walls in my mind that was completely blasted away during my year of training as a life coach and certification in sound healing was the idea that all mistakes are “bad”. First, I heard story after story from real people describing how the biggest “mistakes” in life often turn out to yield unimaginably rich treasures later on (an assertion confirmed recently by Conan O’Brien at his visit to Google). Then, when I began making improvisational music, I realized that some of the most expressive sounds come from playing the “wrong” notes. I slowly began to see how just that thought – “Mistakes are bad” – leads us to hide the things we don’t know, be afraid of asking for help, and remain closed to new ways of doing things.
Medical training doesn’t encourage creative thinking
What I never saw encouraged in the first two years of medical school was any kind of creative thinking. The selection process to get into medical school, and the evaluations throughout the process, rely heavily on multiple-choice tests and promote the belief that physicians always need to be "right".
But I always knew intuitively that clinical medicine is an art. I wondered at what point in the training this shift from "being right" to "practicing an art" would be instilled in us.
Maybe I didn't stick around long enough in medicine to see for myself, but when I looked at the residents and fellows in training around me - the ones who were supposed to be my mentors – many of them walked around like the living dead. They appeared to divide their time between trying to look good to the person just above them on the hierarchy of authority, and trying to get home from the hospital at a decent time each day. In their spare time, if their eyes were actually open, they would look pityingly at us medical students, occasionally sharing a story or two about how someday we would also have the starry-eyed hope beaten out of us.
When I think back on those days, I wonder how they might have been different if the training culture (starting in medical school) had treated the idea of "mistakes" in a different way.
What if…?
What if people, at every stage of their training and practice of medicine, were expected to make mistakes? What if the number and type of mistakes you made (and shared openly with others) were a measure of the quality of your learning? What if you had to make your mistakes publicly, and everyone in the room was invited to give feedback? What if everyone – from student to resident to fellow to attending -- had to do this?
I’m borrowing this model from a source that may surprise you – the internal practices of Pixar Animation Studio. Ed Catmull, President of Pixar, wrote a Harvard Business Review paper and recently gave a talk I attended at Stanford University on the elements of success at Pixar. How is it that the studio has managed to produce such a steady string of consistently blockbuster movies (Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up), each with an original storyline developed in-house?
The answer surprised me.
Catmull described a culture in which each of the “What if…?” questions I asked above was answered with “Yes.” Contrast these attributes of Pixar's culture with the typical training environment for a physician.
Expect to make mistakes. Everyone at Pixar is taught to expect things (using Catmull’s language) to “suck” at first. Everyone also learns early on that the path to “not sucking” (ie, being good) always starts with “sucking”. Young doctors live in perpetual fear, clinging to the notion of needing to be “right” all the time. The training environment should reassure them that the more wrong they are willing to be at first, the better chances they have at improving over time.
Fail publicly…early and often. It is an accepted part of the culture at Pixar to show your unfinished work to peers on a daily basis to receive feedback…even when it sucks. These gatherings are called “dailies”. Everyone does this, so that inhibitions about “being the only one who sucks” are let go, and trust is built. Doctors-in-training are constantly playing a game of “looking good” in front of the more senior person on the totem pole. There is little to no value placed on peer feedback, even though the daily patient rounds are a perfect setting for this to occur.
Open communication. At Pixar, the film’s director has final decision-making authority; however, everyone in the room is encouraged to give feedback during dailies. “Brain trusts” of senior members on other teams are convened when one team needs help on a particular problem. In medicine, it is rare for a student to directly address an attending physician. There is a clear hierarchy of roles, which usually mirrors access and communication.
Catmull admitted to a challenge now that certain Pixar executives have achieved “legendary” status. When it’s observed that feedback is being held back because of the presence of certain “legends in the room”, the meetings are scaled back to two or three people, in order to create a safe environment for feedback to flow….even when it sucks.
“Going to Hell in a Handbasket”
Asking what might happen if the medical training culture began to place a greater value on creativity, making mistakes, and learning through open communication, probably induces in some the kind of fear associated with the apocalypse. That’s because it would mean the end of one way of thinking. It would threaten the age-old structures that have governed our assumptions, expectations, and ways of measuring outcomes. It would surely induce some people to say, “We’re going to hell in a handbasket!” But aren’t we already saying that about our health care system?
Learning versus Performing
The “learning” environment in medical training is actually a performance environment, even though we call it the "practice" of medicine. As a medical student, real practice and learning is expected to be done in private - reading and memorizing - while the actions of “being a doctor” are presented as "show time" - when you try to impress the person above you with how much you already know.
So back to my list of “What if…?”s. The whole list can be boiled down just to this: What if doctors were trained to be more creative? I can imagine some simple steps that any clinical team could implement tomorrow on morning rounds.
Start by acknowledging that all doctors are humans. No one - not even that surgeon who acts like he owns the hospital (and maybe he does) - is going to get it "right" all the time. This is a hard one, I know, but you'll never get to the other steps without swallowing this pill, so do it now.
Mistakes are not inherently bad. It's how we handle our mistakes that develops our creativity and leadership potential. So stop fearing and start making mistakes. And then...
Talk openly about what went wrong, without blame or judgment. Show your work, explain what you see, and ask for feedback. What information was missing or misinterpreted? Who could be called in for additional help? What step in the process could have been handled better? Get everyone at every level involved in this process. No one is immune to making mistakes, and medicine desperately needs open engagement among all levels of professionals and staff.
Repeat this process daily. Someone wise once said, “If you have behaved yourself into a situation, you must behave yourself out of it!” Just as the existing culture wasn't created in one day, implementing this into the daily routine will take some time and practice. But with this small shift in attitude, every day is an opportunity to build your creativity muscles.
If medical judgment could be cultivated merely by performing "perfectly" in front of your superiors for a number of years, then how do we explain the high levels of physician burnout, patient dissatisfaction, and medical errors in our health care system today?
The culture of performance needs to be balanced by a culture of learning and creativity.
If medical training began valuing creativity from doctors, we might have more vibrant and collaborative health care teams whose focus was the patient, and whose willingness to learn would produce better health over time…one mistake at a time.