Unknown in Portland, Oregon

Thank God for our physical bodies, the beauty that is travel, and the combination of both to ensure our souls hear the words they need.

That's what happened this month at World Domination Summit 2013, an event I knew nothing about when tickets were purchased months ago, and didn't fully understand even when I got there. Entrepreneurs of all ages, people acting on big dreams, people with inactive big dreams, a strong in-heavy-rotation social media component, independently-organized meet-ups, a group-organized world record throwdown, contests, crazy good speakers, an 80's dance party. What?

Allowing palpably-excited but overly-generalized online descriptions of WDS -- "awesome!" "incredible!" "life-changing! -- to influence my decision about going felt risky and halfway stupid. But WDS was in Portland, Oregon, a place where I've wanted to rectify having very few memories despite my birthplace being in its general periphery. And, this uber green-in-many-ways city is surrounded by some of the most gorgeous mountains and forests and sand and ocean ever, all within driving distance. I hadn't seen/heard/felt that type of exhilaration and wonder in a long while. Okay!

It was the second day. The theater was packed with nearly 3000 participants, .002% of whom I actually knew. The words that broke us all open, uniting us in the most unexpected way, was channeled through the unmistakeable voice of a woman on stage who appeared only-slightly nervous, decidedly polished, and definitely WOW-this-is-what-3000-people-looks-like shocked. Presentations prior to this had inspired us to go after our dreams, to never give up when the going gets tough, to make more mistakes, to hold onto Your Thing with the intent to change the world. Go! And keep going! We've got your back, cheering for you the whole Bollywood-chest-bumping-high-fiving way!

But this was different. Bated breath.

She began talking about the Unknown. Admitting that she Did Not Know.

The speaker was Tess Vigeland, a host, reporter, producer, and editor for public radio for most of her life. The gig that propelled her into fame was Marketplace / Marketplace Money, the same gig from which she semi-recently jumped ship with no net. Despite experiencing both small and large opportunities during the many-month emotional roller-coaster that followed, she still had no idea what the hell she was doing next. 

Here, in written word, is what she said. Hearing and watching this in person was undeniably powerful. Her delivery was so personal, raw and engaging that I was convinced she had made up the entire thing on the fly. She admitted it was a risk to say, in front of a few thousand entrepreneurial seemingly-confident game changers, that she didn't have any answers or advice, that she didn't feel anywhere near awesome, that a blank slate was absolutely terrifying instead of liberating. 

Backstage, right before her talk. (JD Roth)

Read it all in Tess Vigeland's voice, here.

We hung on her every word. The energy was subdued, but not heavy. She was serious, but playfully honest, even poking fun at her own despair by mock-folding into the fetal position we deny we know well. Hearing her story was painful, because it mirrors ours. Hearing her story was also intriguingly hopeful, because it mirrors ours.

Missing from this transcript are her jokes about what not to say when you recognize a celebrity, specifically a radio celebrity -- be kind and attempt to veil your dismay about how they don't look like what you imagined, okay? Missing also is her surprise around how her tub full of kittens analogy landed, and the near double-take she had about it herself. 

This transcript also doesn't explain what happened when she walked into the audience to ask what people do, if they like it, and what they would do if they quit what they were doing. In a both horrible and hilarious display of ironic coincidence, the first woman was "The Queen of Reinvention!", who helps others find their new and true path and absolutely loves her work. The second person was a financial coach who liberates and aligns others with their dreams, but based on what Tess shared onstage about the real truth of money advice, he was now going in a more fulfilling I'll-help-you-with-your-money direction.

Okay, THAT didn't go according to plan. Oh, ha ha, there it is again. Sigh.

Walking back to a rented apartment, silent and fighting back tears, I marveled at her ability to so eloquently and honestly put into words how it feels to be in That Void. To be a living mirror of what happens when we involuntarily find ourselves in an endless era of question marks, where we'd rather do anything but stay. So many people I know and work with are in this exact place. 

It's one thing to have the courage to be vulnerable and bare-bones truthful onstage. But to be able to stand in that space without apology, without needing or knowing answers, without seeking any immediate solution, to rhetorically invite us all to be in that same space, to collectively pause in the discomfort as we hold onto believing each second is one closer to the supposed resolution of our Unknown, and then finally end the entire soul-opening experience on a high note -- magical. Among other things, it was a stunning example of how accepting the truth of What Is, rather than dwelling on What Isn't, can help 3000 people (and counting) feel less alone.

Just yesterday, only a few weeks after WDS concluded, Tess signed a book deal with a Random House publisher who happened to be in the audience that day she vulnerably and courageously bared her soul. 

YES to NEXT and all its maddeningly beautiful Unknowns.

P.S. Here is a taste of her next adventure, in which you can take part.

P.P.S. She's started a blog -- this first post is about what happened after this speech.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Concrete Blonde -- Everybody Knows
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Popular posts:
Say Yes to Your YES
The Thing Behind the Thing
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Passion and Religion

I don’t subscribe to a certain religion, but as a harpist, I often play for several types of churches, especially around Christmas and Easter. 

I’m a part of the sea of white faces, or the only pale face in a darker-skinned crowd. I play music as it exists on the page, or improvise according to what moves me and others, responding musically in the moment, watching and listening.

These are emotionally charged events as those experiencing the service grapple with meaning and metaphor and guilt. 

That last part isn’t a judgement: Guilt is just... there.

(It’s more painful to deny this simple truth than to accept it).

There is push-pull tension between and around the great need to impart life-changing knowledge and wisdom from the microphoned front, and the deep desire to internalize and truly feel the message from the soft seat in one of multiple rows. 

Behind all of it is the need to share something universal, something that unifies us when we spend a good portion of the rest of our lives investigating and often drowning in divisions.

Often in these services, in varying degrees, is passion. Oh yes, if I’m not relating to the message and how it’s delivered, I can certainly relate to passion. It sets me on fire, ignites embers in my core. 

Watching others be so present and aligned that passion takes over and shines through loud and clear moves even the most stone-set. This taps deep into the universal for me. It compels me to BE from that space, too.

And while at this present moment I don’t have a specific religious conviction that anchors me as I’m wildly pulled by internal or external sources hither and yon, I know this:  Music, movement and nature are my religion. 

They have been and will always be, in sum or in part, what grounds me and gets me finally feeling after it takes too long to recognize when my ever-spinning mind has numbed me out again. I forget this over and over, which of course means I also remember.

Forget. Remember. Forget. Remember. I’m fairly sure it’s why religious holidays exist in the first place.

The crocus finally blooms and the sky speaks. The pain and tightness in my right hip hints loudly at a deeper truth. Reznor and Karen O’s cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” powers my downtown trip to the church gig.

The sonorous written and musical notes reverberate around the walls surrounding the I-want-to-believers. This is the journey into both the Known and the Unknown -- remind me, but surprise me. 

Move me. Now.

Fire ignited.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Band of Horses -- Funeral
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Popular posts:
Say Yes to Your YES
The Thing Behind the Thing
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Subscribe to Trista Hill by Email 

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Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

The Thing Behind the Thing

Swipe grime from the kitchen light and wrestle the fixture into ceiling-grip submission. Flavor the quinoa. Turn on the radio. No, not that jangly shit. Insert the dissonant strings and half diminished sevenths. I need to be met first.

Dreamt of having what is here now. Behind it, the ache for freedom. It snuck in, when? This bird-cat in an open-wire-door prison paralysis.

What is the thing behind the thing? 

The thing invented to avoid the gritty steeping stench sludge-mire thing. A toxic, exotic, hypnotic thing to cover the other thing. Thing layers. Surface tension. Implosion. 

Pain layers. Mask, cover, again. Didn’t I tell you to shut up and hide?

Where’s the mirror to see this from another angle? 

What is the thing behind the thing? Behind that it’s a man, that work with its ignored deadlines, that money not coming in. Behind feeling the only choice is to suck it up and do it the way they want and expect, Daddy Longlegs self-spread so wide there’s only energy and focus to hold upright and still while not touching or connecting anywhere it counts.

Behind the snarky Fox familial breakdown sexual orientation, the handpainted undulating feathery fallopian tube feminine-owning creation, the not-again face-searing allergic reaction beauty-age desperation, the juicy brand new tube of sensuous rouge self-identification, the dark-chocolate consumption equivalent to the percentage on the label comfort-sweetness deprivation.

Behind the I will not go.

Behind the Just a little more.

Behind the Not yet.

Behind the I forgot.

Dare you to have better? More?

Remember your heart.

The pain of avoidance is infinitely, deeply more longlasting than the

white-hot flash pain of breathtakingly clear truth, now. 

I choose a word out of my own folded-paper-filled bowl: Gratitude.

Heart, remembered.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Grizzly Bear -- Shields
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Say Yes to Your YES
Procrastination as Punishment
~~~~~~~~~

Subscribe to Trista Hill by Email

~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Say Yes to Your YES

Initial Montanaro instructions are simple:  Run in a circle. Say the word "yes." Repeat. Continue. Go.

Keep it that simple. Feel : Yes.

What will happen? We don't know. Mine won't be yours, yours won't be mine. Start, to just get there. GO.

Embody the word, the meaning. BE : YES.

Wildermann Photography

Really feel it -- deep, visceral, both the animal and the angel of it. Keep running. Say / scream / whisper the word Yes. Keep running until you feel it first here, and then there. Yes. Higher, beyond, through the core. YES. First physical, then mental, then spiritual in whatever that means for you. YES! Feel it in every part of your being, every layer, linear and vertical like a gorgeous berry cream trifle, spherical and horizontal like an ancient wider-than-arms weathered oak.

You will know when you arrive. YES. We'll watch. We are the Witness. YES! We're with you in your shoes, or your bare feet, your flailing, screaming, elevating, rousing, softening self in this white-hot red-tinged experience. YES!! We'll feel the exhilaration, the universal multi-level-layer orgasm void of doubt, concern, ambition. YES!!!

One focus.  Be -- and be in -- YES. It's deceptively simple. You might, like me, sometimes break down into a NO -- a solid pithy grey foamy bog that refuses to abate despite figurative foot speed and vocal volume. Go, again, in a day, or a month, or a year's time. YES.

It can't help but bubble up -- or geyser push -- to the surface. It's both small and BIG. Maybe not so wide anymore, but oh so deep. It's strength is rooted and also shooting straight through the earth and out the other side, no dimension, phobic-free, unshutterable, cadence-less. YES.

What is it, to what do you say it, how you do it -- not the point now.

YES feels like this... preceded, and followed by, both question + exclamation marks.

It's choosing to wear the red dress in addition to your standard black. Roaring through walnuts off the pristine park path. Whisper soft fist-clench-pull-in -- or hoarse yell spread-finger sky sprint -- when you've nailed the note or the chord, final-stroked the creation, aced the looming test, clearly answered the query, sharp-pinned the presentation, made the goal, screwballed the pitch, shot the arrow BAM to middle center black.

It's behind the life-changing decision AND behind the choice of this week's peanut butter brand. YES.  The one that fuels both the beginning -- and the end -- of painfully personal relationships and power-play professional alignments.

Run literally and metaphorically until you feel flight. YES.
Out of breath -- not beaten down, but pulled up and out. YES!
Move until every fiber of your being knows that yes, this is... YES.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Low -- Walk Into the Sea
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Popular posts:
Sense of Place
Procrastination as Punishment
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Now Hear This -- Self-discovery through music and stories
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Life Lines Up Like That

Here, arranged chronologically from right to left, are the journals I’ve written, illustrated and shelved over thirty plus years.  Over time, they have morphed from tiny cloth-covered lined-page notebooks to large blank-paged sketchbook tomes whose covers I paint myself.

She holds it for me -- a relic from a college-era nude body sculpture class tightens it up.

Over the course of my life, I’ve gone to great lengths to hide them from others, and even from myself.  After all, who wants that mirror?

Apparently, hell yes, I do.

The other day I pulled out that green one.  Because I date everything I write, I knew this particular book charted the amazingly painful waters of my music therapy internship in a large failing medical/psychiatric hospital that was poised precariously between wealthy pristine neighborhoods and the impoverished rougher part of a grey gritty city.  Day and night sirens screamed full-throttle into our unprotected 4th floor dorm cavern, and my entries waxed on about my doubt and achy longing for personal and professional connection.

I surmised that reading my own writing again, now, would help highlight how I can be fully present and open to today’s test-drive “Now Hear This!” event that I’m holding in just a few hours in my home -- a house that is stunningly similar to what I dreamily described on Super Repeat in that journal.  This gathering is all about careful music listening, storytelling, and the literal lightening of memories.  And that green journal -- among entries about brazen many-hour walks through questionable urban territory, an intense observation of a forceps (two types!) baby birth, and what I ate too much of at all hours -- included a particular entry about a very specific piece of music.  

This piece of music, when heard in a group setting among people actually listening with me, had suddenly shed light on who I was at that moment, what music truly meant to me, and the shape and color of my immediate future should I choose this or THAT (or some other) direction.

Except the entry wasn’t there.

Looking for it meant reading through the entire book -- shockingly, I could not put it down.  While that memory could still be hiding in some paperwork I have yet to resurrect from a bedroom closet, very slowly it dawned on me that the reason I pulled out that journal wasn’t for that entry after all. 

Past Trista survived and documented her path so that Present Trista, at least this week, could look back and appreciate, pull forward, share, and luxuriate in the very bits she once meticulously and tirelessly worked to hide.

You've experienced this, too?

Perhaps the experience of reviewing written periods of one’s life feels, oh, I don’t know, sickening, and invites “I’d-rather-[fill-in-the-blank]”.  Thoughts of zealous book-burning may come careening from dark corners.  

What comes up when sitting through that Hell for just one moment longer? No, the moment after that? Holding it -- the feeling, the book, the passage of time, the acknowledgement of change -- and realizing, Yes, it’s clear I am no longer that person, is nothing short of exhilarating.

Life lines up like that.  And on it goes -- a chapter shelved, another begun.

Helping others realize the rich value of those challenging moments and how they reward us NOW, especially through music and the arts, is an Amen Hallelujah Glory Be Hot Damn experience.

So today, won’t you help us hold moments for each other, casting away what is NOT,  and allowing glorious light to fall upon what we’ve been / who we are? Together we throw wide open the doors for new experiences to oh-so- gladly, good-wickedly, confidently and seductively usher themselves in.

Amen Hallelujah Glory Be Hot Damn.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Peter Gabriel -- Secret World
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Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Sense of Place
~~~~~~~~~

The Egg Project -- Self-discovery through metaphor
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Procrastination as Punishment

So, we'll just jump in -- what if your fear isn’t completely about failure or rejection? 

What if this “holding back” thing is only partially about recoiling from having to feel bad/unwanted/stupid/insane?

What if you are procrastinating because you don’t believe you actually deserve the incredibleness you’re on the precipice of experiencing? 

What if your procrastination pause is a form of systematic self-induced punishment -- a wildly creative sabotage you’ve designed especially to keep the beautiful-fantastic-happy AWAY?

What if your procrastination is protecting you from both ick AND bliss?

Withhold the good stuff from yourself? Why... would you do that? 

What if your fear is about not quite believing you are worthy of a better life, of having heaven instead of hell, of feeling good, REALLY good, no explanations nor apology necessary?

What if your fear is about being lauded, appreciated, acknowledged, respected, recognized, seen, heard? 

Holy cow what would THAT be like?!

I mean, what the hell would you do with that it would feel so foreign you’re so not used to it and what if everyone expects big everythings from you now and what if you have to constantly live up to that and sitting with the discomfort of praise is SO “blank” and what will others think of you past present and future and how would you explain this newfound whatever to your parents/significant other/church/the government/the cats?

OHMYGODJUSTDOIT.

Stop punishing yourself.  

What if picking up that pen, the phone, the paintbrush, or hitting “send” means your whole life could change? It could. It will. It is.

What if this next thing you’re about to do makes the dream that much closer to coming true? It could. It will. It is.

Isn't it fabulous we always have this choice?

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Simon and Garfunkel -- (a very specific verse of) Bridge Over Troubled Water - Live
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Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Walk Into It
~~~~~~~~~

The Egg Project -- Self-discovery through metaphor
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings.

Walk Into It

So, it's a big birthday.

Go to the desert, meet what comes up.  Walk.  Right.  In.
Surround yourself by people who get it, and come together in love.
Then venture out alone.
Pick up the lemon that rolls out to meet you, greet the mountains surrounding the sun-drenched cacti, smother the apple in leftover peanut butter, invite all of it, in.
Float in the warm water, gaze at shooting stars, let purging tears flow.
Glorious light.

This is what it looks like, this is what is, Now.

Wild Geese 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. -- Mary Oliver

It is, just right.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Led Zeppelin -- Fool In the Rain, Ramble On
Bruce Springsteen -- I'm On Fire
Fleet Foxes -- Helplessness Blues (thank you, JD)
Mumford & Sons -- Sigh No More (thank you, Ally)

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Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Dear Creative Work
Sense of Place

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Trista's newsletter -- read the current edition here
Get notified of posts to this blog

What I Do for the Super Bowl that is Not Football Related

It's Super Bowl time! But I had to look that up.

My life is measured by creative projects (including those involving the harp), and I remember the Super Bowl is around this time of year because I agreed to have a floorcloth done and delivered by my client's Super Bowl party.

My client came to me because her first floorcloth was crafted by someone else from linoleum, and it turned strange colors and curled and peeled and was an overall disaster.

Stapling down and priming a very thick raw cotton duck canvas is what it takes to make a floorcloth from scratch.  Art room paraphernalia is pushed to the walls (as you see in the tulip example below) to make space for this kind of project, and measures are taken to ensure the cat won't leave prints in the paint.

For every floorcloth that's going in a particular room, I use the motif, colors and photos the client provides.  Above is the simple drawing I submitted to her for approval, at right is the finished floorcloth.  Click here and scroll down this page to see how the 68" x 100" floorcloth complements her other decor.

Function and where the floorcloth will be installed determines the design.  The border became the focal point in the above floorcloth because it's home was under the table; the center field (ha -- a Super Bowl reference, no?) of the floorcloth below became the focal point because it was going to be installed in the main room of a contemporary loft in California.  This massive 6' x 9' floorcloth's final tulip motif offered unexpected depth.

Below is a picture of the tulip floorcloth installed in the client's home -- click here to see another view and and close-ups of those bulbous blooms.  I would also love to see it hanging on an otherwise empty wall.

My current project is a pet mat for a beautiful golden retriever, and it will probably look something like this, except not quite, and incorporate an awesome shimmering iridescent lime green, the pet's name, and a black and white checkerboard border.  The mat is water resistant and can be wiped clean with mild soap and water so pet bowls can be placed right on top.

Once I figured out my own method of priming, hemming, acrylic painting, non-toxic varnishing, and (sometimes) waxing floorcloths, the door opened to a variety of home decor options.

At left is an advent calendar, measuring 10" x 38".  I fashioned this after a wool felt version from my childhood that has long since disintegrated.

Two sets of felt and velcro-backed Joseph and Mary are included; one travels from left to right, the other right to left.  Day 1 is the first house on the lower right, and Day 23 is the last house on the upper left; Day 24 is the stable, Day 25 is the mirrored star of Bethlehem.

Each house has a velcro piece on the path where Joseph and Mary stop to rest.  A pocket on the back of the painting stores the travelers not in use.

On the art table now -- a four panel project for my mother of fruits / vegetables that she and I have yet to figure out how we'll hang in her sage green kitchen -- I'm loving the idea of suspending them by shimmering sheer white ribbon.  So far, one panel is of carrots, and another is of lemons, each highlighted with metallic and glitter paint to accentuate curves and undulations.




This method creates the perfect floorcloths, advent calendars, personalized wall hangings (at right), highchair mats, and more...

Click here to read more about floorcloths.

Click here to see the Floorcloth Design Gallery on my website.


Though all images here reflect a very color-blocked graphic style, I do have a softer side.

And now off to enjoy a Super Bowl of spaghetti, ice cream, or chocolate something, on a placemat like this little girl's.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Very halftime-worthy, can't-help-but-get-off-the-couch Pa' Bailar (Bajofondo Mar Dulce)

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Popular posts:

Breaking Through: Philip Glass and Maybe Minimalsim

What Do You Believe?

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Trista's newsletter -- read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog

Coaching Opportunities

Breaking Through: Philip Glass and Maybe Minimalism

This week Philip Glass celebrates his 75th birthday.  In a most interesting interview with his second cousin Ira, he explains, "It's not how you find your voice, but how you get rid of the damn thing... "

I first experienced Glass in a college music class that offered an uncreative listening format of brief lectures followed by corresponding music samples.  Sitting through Minimalism, 12-tone theory, and the like had zero appeal to my frazzled spirit.

I had barely survived creating my composition for this module in another class, shutting myself inside a piano practice room for the weekend to get it done.  Now I know the immense value of composing and performing "live" your own piece for each style we studied, an element I embrace and employ in my own teaching / coaching today.  But at the time it was an exercise in insanity -- I had very limited time then to appreciate the assignment as a way to learn the music from the inside out, truly absorb it, through an intensely personalized process.

Fortunately this time, we were able to play a pre-recorded version of our piece instead of perform it live.  My aggravation shone through in the title I selected.  "This is called S.O.S," I told the class simply, enjoying that it could be interpreted whatever way the listener chose.

A classmate who knew my angst slowly smiled and asked what that stood for.  I stared at him, stood a little straighter, and delivered.  "S.O.S. stands for Same Old Shit."  Snickers ran around the room as I pressed "Play" to share the angry solo piano recording I had probably made only 12 to 48 hours before.  That class included written critiques.  My classmate's: "Well, it didn't sound like shit to me."  My professor's: "I hope 'S.O.S.' isn't the way you really feel -- you do good work as I've said before and I've really enjoyed having you in class."

But back to Philip Glass.

Armed with all my baggage and preconceptions, I braced myself for our listening session.  And then, there it was -- loud and clear and jarring, the frenetically perfect musical example of my life as I knew it.

I have no idea how the professor introduced or explained this musical sample -- I could only feel the class recoil at the maddeningly repetitive nature and the sheer volume and never-ending layers that cascaded over us.  "Can you hear when one element is shifting, an instrument, a rhythm, one note in the melody?" he offered.  "NO!" The class screamed.  "What IS this?!? Make it stop!"

And then there I was, maybe wearing yellow, staring hard at the wall, dead silent and solid, mentally pushing everyone and their noise away, Shut Up! Yes I can hear it! FEEL it! Let me listen! Do NOT stop!

I was riveted.
I couldn't wait to get inside it.

listen listen LISTEN don't you hear?!?? - this is life, this pulsating hypnotic incessant NOISE, this pounding pulsing driving insistent forcing of rhythm and melody - this pattern, over and over and over again, sustained tones that do not go away - what bravery to capture the human condition like this, to be with it, over and over and over - how as a listener or performer do you not go deep within it and yourself to find the nuggets, the seeds, the place from where all this expanded and grew?

Yes! Let me IN!

I remember the album cover as pulsing light emanating from a bright white center that both pulled you in and pushed you out.  I can't find that image anywhere now, perhaps I made it up, saw it as it felt.  In my single dorm room I huddled next to the cassette player, closing off everything around me, pushing everything to the side, get and go AWAY, I'm going in.

Overlapping patterns, shifting ever so slightly, in any direction, required my dedicated attention.  Wavering even slightly from an inner focal point rendered it chaos.  Brilliant.  Devastating.

My own life then was exactly like this.  I had created so many layers of existence, and it was a constant fight to not drown -- my journals from then document my mind-bending frustration, isolation, and a strange dependency on the glutinous anchor of schoolwork and a schedule not my own.  Overloaded with credit hours each semester to graduate early with two degrees, in the throes of a full-blown eating disorder, grappling with imploding issues at home, attracting attention from all the wrong places in all the worst ways, I retreated to campus hiding places where I locked myself overnight to hammer out papers and projects, and walked for miles and hours off campus longingly gazing at warm-lit windows of houses where life appeared to be far removed from my daily careening chaos. I had a zillion eyes watching me but none that really saw.

In all the chaos, Glass' music assured, there is a subtle shifting.  The shifting is inevitable -- nothing stays static.  Direction is unknown, but headed somewhere.  Linear doesn't apply, there's no room for it.  Paying attention to what is happening along the way, hyper-aware and sensitive of the pulsing shifts, is the only way through.

That album cover and that music was a musical illustration of hope in a world where I felt I had little to no control.  It was a vivid portrayal of what didn't make sense, and the meta-vision of what did.  In a morass of confusion and overwhelm, choosing one pathway or anchor -- an instrument, a motif, a rhythm -- and following it all the way through, suddenly lifted the veil and revealed a brilliant landscape of incomparable intensity and magnitude that, in a powerfully parental way, demanded focus and reverence.

This is how transformation happens -- to be pulled, by your own volition or not, out of one place and into another, of newness, openness, and expansiveness.  Glass seeks for himself -- and offers to us -- a way "to break out of your own training."  Time and time again I've seen my own students at the harp or piano, all faculties ablaze, hit that white center.  With a little coaching, they usher in small and large transformations and breakthroughs that shape the course of life from that day forward.

The "noise" is begging for you to notice its layers, what lies beneath.  Demand the space and time to grab that glittering end and hold on tight.  You're in for a ride.  Open your eyes.  Get IN this place that is anything but Minimalism -- inside the chaos is immense beauty and light, illuminating both the path you're on and the one you've been searching for.

Happy Birthday, and Thank You, Philip Glass.

What is your transformative "Philip Glass" moment?

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Philip Glass excerpts, all recordings listed on his website

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Popular posts:

Maybe You're  a Harpist All Over the Beastie Boys

Dear Creative Work

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Coaching Opportunities

What Do You Believe?

"Do you believe what they say about 2012?" she asked suddenly, in not quite a whisper.  She had just finished playing through a familiar tune on the piano we had learned together only minutes before.

"What do they say?" I ask.  I can halfway sense what's in her head and heart.

"That... it's the end of the world?"

I search her small face -- no trace of fear there, only tiny glittering ghost-wisp question marks.  "Hmm, I've heard of that," I say.  "What do you think?"

"Well, I don't think so.  I saw a movie..." and she describes all the natural disasters the film so vividly paints.  The scenes etched in her memory are poignant and meaningful given what I know she's already endured in her young life.  "But no," she concludes, "I don't think it's the end."

I believe her decision to not believe.

Extra flexibility is required to fully pivot for a good view of all the ways my own beliefs have been challenged, my stories tested, this past year.

Across the sea of retrospect, I spy:  The various literal and figurative dimly lit stages that threw my thoughts and feelings about celebrity and self-worth directly into spotlight glare.  My multicolored-snake-rope thoughts about creativity and relationship and their ability to intertwine without strangling each other.  How much bigger movement, more nourishing fuel, and increasingly voluminous light my aging body, mind and spirit need to thrive.

My re-drawing boundaries when they are again unwittingly crossed and building them out of a different medium or neatly packing them up to take with me when I exit.  Walking the crunchy undulating sandy path of truth alongside heavy discomfort and volatility, and seeing what small air-starved naked creature toddles out from between.

How I've brilliantly re-colored the magnetic energy of money and funneled it both toward and away.  Questioning why I questioned whether I really need a vibrant, beautiful calendar / house in which to hold all my crucial appointments and to birth-chart my life work.

And in what direction my heart pulls hard and how it matters less if that trajectory is logical, practical, and sustainable.  What and where my wild childhood abandon was, when it left, and my semi-shock at it's insistent return.  What is spewed and what is left unsaid.  How continual digging only leaves scars.

What expectations I've dramatically thrown into artificial and pure-true light, and how they've either grown into both high-arching beyond-control jungles or lay dormant in desiccated white picket plots.

I actually celebrate the human capacity to fabricate, in the name of both growth and resistance of, a thoroughly complex and elaborate everyday life around a simple but fully-believed story.

The extent to which we manipulate our surroundings, the lengths we go to convince ourselves and others of our reality, and the way we invent patterns of thought and behavior that support this story scream of our immense and innate creative potential.  

What do we choose to do with what we believe? An amazing amount of time, energy, and power goes into building the world (s)he / you / I live in -- just look at this incredible system, this intricate protective framework all spindly and giant and spread-eagled over the itty buried sleeping treasure whose name, color, texture, and makeup we forgot long ago!

"I don't know how..."
"I can't..."
"It's impossible to..."
"It doesn't work..."
"I've already tried..."
"I could never..."  

Such powerful building blocks, clobbery concrete foundation squares upon which we build a precariously leaning tower that we're incessantly scrambling to prop up.

How rich the deconstruction can be, how powerful to step aside as it topples, how sudden and frantic the manic digging to uncover the small kernel of truth singing out for a bit of warmth and light.

She leaned in a little closer to hear me say, "I believe that you and I have a lot of important and special things to do, and be, in the coming year."  She nods.  I briefly mention my affection for even-numbered years.  "I was born in 2000," she beams.

Later, at the door, I exclaim in my sincerely exuberant way, "I'm SO excited to see you again -- next year!"

"And it's even-numbered," she smiles.

I believe in a Happy Healthy Blooming Unfurling 2012, for you.
And in the words of Maurice Sendak:  "... live your life, live your life, live your life."

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
The exploding-bubble Surgeon and the scissor-soaring Cruel (St. Vincent)

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The year's popular posts (wait, do you have one that's not listed below? Post it in the comments!):
Maybe You're  a Harpist All Over the Beastie Boys
Dear Creative Work
Sense of Place
A Night in the Life
What IS Performance?

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Trista's newsletter -- read the current edition here
Get notified of posts to this blog
Coaching Opportunities

What IS Performance?

**For an entire month this Fall (2011), Deborah Henson-Conant and I threw ourselves into a joint traveling adventure of performances, workshops, and the ongoing development / implementation of fantastical ideas and dreams.**

And so, what IS performance, really? We'll peer into the window of my own experience, conveniently captured in this hardly-vampy video.

Here's the setup:  It's the last performance of the DHC Fall Tour 2011.  For an entire month (or more) we had been talking about playing on stage together and disagreeing about the reasons why it wasn't happening.  In classic uncomfortable 180-degree style, rebelling against our own resistance, we threw this not-quite-duet together just minutes before the show was scheduled to start.  DHC showed me the form, the parts she wanted me to play, and areas open for improvisation.

We are wearing outfits that I don't normally choose for myself and that DHC chooses for herself all the time -- about which she commented a few weeks earlier, "Good thing we don't get tired of seeing each other in the same thing every night..."

We are tired and had just finished building our own sound system out of equipment we had in the over-packed van, due to miscommunication about what the venue could provide.  I had spent many tens of minutes behind the video camera documenting this process and wondering whether it was for learning purposes or because we were gathering evidence for a Just-in-Case we might file down the road.  I had yet to slam together / sacrilegiously transform a sacred platform into our product table in all its glittery well-organized glory.  In short, in many ways I was completely unprepared to do this.  This is my least favorite way to perform, or really, do anything.

In high boots and tights that I now see aren't true black, I'm crouching at the harp stand because I frankly had never officially played an electric harp before, and playing it at an uncomfortable height was less of a liability than my actually wearing it.  Both string tension and the "voice" of the electric harp are unlike that of a pedal harp -- this requires in-the-moment readjustment of technique and reevaluation of engagement with the instrument (think of an acoustic vs. an electric guitar).  All this is to say, I had no idea what I was doing, feeling very vulnerable, on an instrument foreign to me, playing music that just barely made sense, as the closing piece for someone else's show.

Explaining the setup is not to sell you on why you should see this as a remarkable performance.  Because in many ways it's not, and while I treasure honesty -- Exhibit A, the last post -- whether it is or isn't is beside the point.

The point is that it happened, because we grabbed at and stepped into the opportunity to try a Big Something.  We could either let that slip by, or seize it in a myriad of semi-reluctant ways.  The mere act of doing it became more important than how.  That's not to say the "how" didn't in some way matter -- witness the video edit punches where both DHC and I cut out parts we declared were uninteresting or unacceptable and didn't want the rest of the world to have access to indefinitely.

This was imperfect action.  Messy, uncomfortable, and also oddly enlightening, liberating.  Two tired harpists unsure of an outcome and going for it anyway.

This was living out exactly what we were presenting in workshops during the tour:  Navigating the treacherous and oft-visited waters of Perfection and recognizing the futility of expecting, waiting, and striving for it.  Exploring how structure frees rather than limits you, musically and beyond.  Letting your life experiences show up on stage and disabling the old and out-of-date stories that can otherwise sabotage your experience.  Living in the moment and having that be enough.  Committing to your authentic self when you feel anything but -- "don't do more, hide less" (Karen Montanaro quote, from the Barn experience).

Would we have done that performance differently? Yes! And! No! The point is we do not even know what Yes and No are until we step into the experience.  Live it, in the moment, imperfectly.

And what happened after? We splayed all the travel food on the table we had thus far hoarded to replicate a massive congratulatory feast, then quickly tired of that and went on a slow search for frozen Snickers bars.  DHC edited out parts of the video we didn't like as we randomly commented and cursed about what was and wasn't happening in it.  We sat through late night tension about whose computer housed what and the proper way to affix receipts to larger pieces of paper.  We wrestled with illogically designed alarm clocks.  Real life.  The stuff that happens before, after, and during a performance.

Performance is not about editing life / reality OUT.  It's about letting it IN.

DHC will be in Atlanta on Sunday, December 4 to share with you both the broader and more detailed elements of what we experienced above, using the Blues.  I will be there a day later, but that's fodder for another post.  Will you step up and into the unknown, to learn about parts of yourself you didn't know were there, and other parts you know damn well you are both aching for, and hiding from? Click here to learn more and register for the Atlanta workshop.

Congratulations for the brave yes-and-no way you will choose to hide less today.
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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Joy to the World  (Pink Martini)
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Trista's newsletter
Get notified of posts to this blog

Calendar of December 2011 performances
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Other tour posts (in non-chronological order):
Prepared or Paranoid?
Firsts -- How the Tour Began
Sense of Place

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Opportunities to explore who you are, with your music, unconventionally, using principles above, with me -- visit the website / email.