My friends there is a very thin line, sometimes with a pale shadow attached, between what happens on the bandstand,in the shed,writing your thoughts in your blogs, and in the classroom. All involve the now, listening being in the moment.
Instruments, reeds,paper,laptop, pencil, the mind as messenger for the mind and heart are our tools for being in this life.
Whether it's playing with a cool band,or some friends playing Monk tunes, writing a really good line of poetics,learning some new ideas or tunes, or connecting with and enjoying your students.All are gifts that I continue to be thankful for, and always will be.We now have to believe in our true selves and realize that what we do is a gift!
Every day is Thanksgiving !
Let me also add, to me , communication is most important . So, it there is no direct communication with the audience for which you are playing, there goes your job. Play music for people- and watch the result! John Coltrane used to talk about imagining his music reaching out and embracing his audiences.Remember before Trane was Trane he was a player who could rock the house on the blues, and play any standard song.
When you speak of touching someone and reaching out- There's Charles Lloyd. His contribution since he hit the scene is a music of huge evocativeness, brilliantly conceived and played. Charles always is always coming up with music of immense power and authority. As great as any jazz master as well- and someone who has the wisdom to move forward as himself.His message is a supreme joy-and just watch the audience react as he plays. Communication!
We are thrust into life having to make decisions of all sorts. Most likely the one who doesn’t have a good understanding of certain things in a particular area will not make the best decisions there. When it comes to making progress in your life, you have to know what you actually want and don’t want. Of course there’s going to be times when you sometimes don’t know what you want, at that time you need to research and/or explore some things to find out what it is that you actually are looking for. But even before you start the process; it would be very beneficial to you if you have your goals in mind clearly noted before you go forward. A lot of times what happens is, we get lost in the middle of exploring and researching and forget why we started the pursuits in the first place. Of course we are going to get new ideas, get inspired, and increase our understanding as we go, but we just have to make sure we organize our thoughts so we’ll be able to make the next logical step to stay on course. New options will even come about as we go but we have to make sure we don’t get lost in the shuffle and get deterred in other directions that are not consistent with our original goals. Maybe our original goals do need to change a little bit, and that’s cool too. We all project things based on our knowledge and understanding at the time anyway but we can see the heart of what we were doing if we clearly documented what our goals were at the time they came to us. Action Steps 1. Think of one goal you want to accomplish in a particular category in your life, your career, family. 2. Think about what it will take to reach that goal. 3. Spell out the steps it will take to get there 4. Underneath each step put what type of questions that need to be asked in order to make that step happen. 5. As you get your questions together, make sure you research and ask others who are experts in the particular area so you’ll even know what questions to ask to get answers you really need. 6. Converse with people about your goals and your steps towards those goals. People always have resources that you’d never discover unless you talk to them. 7. As you get your questions and answers, start implementing what you receive and move accordingly to walk out every step towards your goals. You can follow these 7 steps and apply it to anything you want to accomplish no matter what category.
I hope these words help motivate you to explore your music even more.
Keep the channel open. Everyday...is Thanksgiving. Enjoy the holiday and the moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment