Have fun.
Learn stuff.
Grow.

Joy

(from the May-June 2003 issue of Home Education Magazine)

I just returned from my first (ever!) orchestra rehearsal. A friend of mine (a bass clarinet player, speaking of oddities) invited me, assuring me that the music wouldn’t be too hard, the conductor was a middle-school band teacher, and the community orchestra was desperate for violins (and those with pretensions of playing them.)

“Do I have to get the music in advance,” I inquired, probably with a little edge to my voice.

“No,” she said, “Just show up.”

I did. Having just past my 53rd birthday, I took the invitation as one of those now-or-never opportunities.

I found a perch way up in the back of the room, forming my own last row of violins. There was Purcell! and Weber!! and Brahms!!! and Massenet!!!! and Tschaikovsky!!!!! Woo-hoo!!!!!!

“So, how’d it go,” asked my daughter Aliyah on my return home.

“Well,” I replied, in a rather neutral tone of voice, “I couldn’t follow the conductor. I had trouble counting. I could barely play the music, and some of it I couldn’t play at all. I had difficulties reading the music. I couldn’t get my bow to go in the same direction as the section leader’s. I couldn’t hear myself playing, and I couldn’t hear anyone else playing either.”

“Oh,” she said, with a look of commiseration on her face, she having played in orchestras since she was eight.

“But, actually,” I added, smiling, “I did just fine.”

* * * * *

Did, too. Oh, I know. There were “problems”. But they’ll get fixed, one at a time. And some of them, well, maybe they won’t. Those are the breaks. There are no Yehudi Menuhins in this small-town community orchestra, and I’m not about to break the pattern. And, though I am a little sheepish to admit it, I was relieved to discover there is a cellist who is far more out to lunch musically than I am.

People who know me often comment on my somewhat expansive list of avocations, and the fact that they are rather disparate in nature. I fiddle, and I sing opera (had my operatic debut, together with my daughter, last summer in The Magic Flute, and will be singing in Carmen this spring (though they wouldn’t let me try out for the part of the bull.) I write and tell stories (and just published two books on the uses of storytelling), and have been threatening to rewrite the Old Testament so that it is more to my liking (I’ve actually started – you can e-mail me for samples.) I read voraciously in social and, especially, Quaker history. I have a passion for things Asian Indian – art, music, philosophy, culture, food, and play a south Indian musical instrument, the veena. I like to cook. I’ve become a bit of a stargazer (saw Saturn for the first time on October 31, 1996, at the age of 46!) Oil painting, sculpture, stained glass window-making are somewhere over future horizons.

I have some “natural” affinity in a few of these areas (my opera singing really is pretty good!), and some, like violin-playing, ah-hem, I try reasonably hard, and among the second violins, I can fake it pretty well. But they all give me joy!

What do these all have in common? I’m sitting here, scratching my head. And then it became obvious. I didn’t study and didn’t even have “exposure” to any of these activities in public school!

Isn’t that strange? Now I wasn’t a particularly unhappy camper in school. I got all “A”s, in absolutely everything. An honor student! Teachers and school administrators liked having me around. I was a “success” story and added to their reputations. Why, I’m not quite sure.

But, somehow, virtually everything I studied in school had the joy leached out of it, and sooner rather than later became toxic. I seemed to have some natural talents in math and science, or so I was told. And, at the time, I thought I loved mathematics, because I was taught that I was good at it.

My teachers – good or bad, I’m not even sure I know now which were which – seemed determined to make sure I always got the “right” answers. And I did, which pleased them greatly. The point wasn’t to enable me or even allow me to ask interesting questions. In fact, I never, at that point of my life, imagined that there even were such things as interesting questions when it came to mathematics. I simply received rewards for right answers. The environment was well policed to ensure all was accomplished in the required manner. “You need to be able to explain how you got the answer,” they insisted, and a non-response or the suggestion that it had been whispered in my ear by the Jolly Green Giant would have been grounds for “corrective action”. There were good cops and bad cops, those I liked and those I didn’t, but looking back, it doesn’t seem to me that the type of math cop made much difference. When the compulsory ordeal was over, I had no reason why I would want to look at a math problem ever again (after all, there were no more rewards), and all it would remind me of was the nature of my past incarceration. I met many a math teacher, but I never met a mathematician until I was 25, and the idea that one could actually take delight in a mathematical journey seemed like heresy in a world obsessed with “right” answers. As for its potential utility in my life, spending six weeks in learning how to use a sliderule pretty much sums it up.

Science was no better. I was a star! I was quick with facts, and careful with beakers. We all did our “experiments”, making sure to come out with the predetermined result. If the results differed from that which was expected, it must have been a mistake, rather like baking a cake that didn’t rise. The only “experiment” was to find out whether we could make the results conform. Otherwise, we would dispose of the various materials as best we could, pour the chemicals down the sink, and start again. Conformity, I quickly learned, was the cornerstone of the scientific method. Compulsory canned experiments, compulsory canned results, and woe to the student who wanted to start with a different hypothesis! So much for scientific inquiry, although maybe the experiment had to do with me -- “How high a grade can we give him in science, without him ever asking a single, meaningful scientific question?”

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Nowhere in any of this was there even the hint of recognition that this was my education.

I’ve spent a good part of the past 30 years in recovery. Learning to take pleasure in doing things at which I may or may not be particularly adept is part of the required discipline, and it’s working. You’ll notice that all those visual arts activities are still in the offing. I grew up with the double whammy of being told rather explicitly that I wasn’t any good with crayons, coupled with the sense that drawing or painting or playing with clay wasn’t of much value anyway. “Works of art” were simply objects that existed in museums, and never mind how they were created. The whole idea that I might choose to engage in such activities because they might provide some inner satisfaction never seems to have crossed anyone’s mind, or at least it wasn’t conveyed to me. I promise to post the results when I get to that part of my journey.

In the meantime, there are my kids. Dad is now a source of great amusement, even if he is, occasionally, well, embarrassing. I hope I am modeling for how they will be around my grandkids. And, let me inform them now: sooner or later, they are going to inherit the paintings. (I think that means I have just made a commitment.)