May is a month for pure enjoyment. This week we have set time aside to listen in chronological order to the complete works of Radiohead. Q and I see eye to eye on a number of points and differ on a number of impressions and perceptions about this outfit from England. I have an ambivalent position on Radiohead and I enjoy the balance of that.
Q is aiming at learning the theremin. This will be Q's summer project. Also, he recognizes the time is right to learn to play the piano. He's encouraging me to pick up and learn the violin but my plate seems so piled high with dilettantism I don't know if I could. Not so much dilettantism, perhaps, but failure. Failure isn't a problem for me because I find all the textures of learning really exciting and beautiful and there's concerted energy going into it. I don't fail because I don't try, I fail even though I try - so how is that failing? Q said he won't criticize me if I make awful noises on the thing. So I'm thinkin about it. Occupant has to bone up (isn't that a gross expression!) on melody. Most of the songs are melodic but the vocal lines are often spoken, and we need to get Q reaching for those intervals.
Have you had any successful failures?
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2 comments:
I think it's a good word to come to terms with because it's used as a threat by some irrelevant forces in society. I think victory in competitive situations places a demand on the body to maintain the high and so it becomes addictive and gives failure such potency.
It wasn't well written, was it.
OK here's another tack, Pix.
I'm dancing around something by speaking in generalities...The failure topic was something that sprung from my yoga teacher training in 2001. The resident psycholgist gave a talk on his failures in life and in yoga and it struck me what a loaded weighty word it is.
Now, speaking from the point of view of someone who practices yoga with people, (not Stella Abdul, Pop Satyr) it's always sad when people get discouraged with some body movement and say they can't 'do' it - when in fact their variation is the posture. It is just a seat for the Atman - the Self, that's all. It's a chair, or a bench, or a spot on the ground. People tell me, "I thought about going to a class but I decided it's too hard."
I guess I was lucky because when I started practicing yoga everyone thought it was too easy to bother with! The challenge was to take it seriously.
My teachers invite many different people to take teacher training to show the variables of yoga practice so that more and more people can develop a personal use of the techniques. My deepest experiences in yoga have come from teachers who "can't do yoga" because of physical limitations (disease).One practices mantra, one teaches children the art of novel writing, one practices breath control, one who died last year still comes into my mind vividly with her animated descriptions of the benefits of daily practice. My first teacher taught a gentle style for 20 years and then, when there was an influx of fitness yoga teachers in the city, she was released from her duties so that people expecting a workout could be satisfied by gymnasts who "knew the moves." There should be a better word than "failure" or maybe a broader definition of the word so that it points up, too.
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