One of my favorite parts of my Rubicon Year is the group sessions. Every week I get together with 3 other women and we each have a song where we are the lead singer and band leader, and we back each other up. It’s a great way to learn new instruments, hear your song in a different way, practice working with others and gain a deeper understanding of music.
Dan is there to facilitate, support, help us out of the true stuck spots and reflect back when it’s working. The more we get to know each other and ourselves though, the more we realize that yes, if someone came up to us and said we could have $5000 for performing a song the next day as a band, and Dan was out of the country, we could totally figure out how to do it on our own and rock some faces off, even if we had to stumble our way slowly through to get there. :-)
Music is a social experience. It’s meant to be shared. I think maybe as adults, if we don’t already have a fluency of musical expression that we see in others, we revert to spoken words for their efficiency and precise refinement of meaning. The risk of hitting a wrong note feels too embarrassing, maybe similar to not being able to conjugate a verb in Spanish. But when you’re in South America all alone and no one around speaks English, you just do it. The more you speak, listen and immerse yourself in the language, the more you learn it. And you also find out that yes, for the most part you can get around just fine with your broken phrases. The communication happens in the eyes, the heart, the hands, as much as, if not more than in the words.
Having a safe space to practice and a kind and compassionate leader who can help you out of the jams, and push you to keep stretching into higher levels of mastery really accelerates the process, whether it’s Spanish, Improv Theater, or Music.
Feeling much gratitude today for my teachers past & present, and the other brave souls who have joined me in those classes where we pushed and supported each other to do things we didn’t know we could.
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heathermillermusic posted this
