Tag: creative process

Sing Back Into the Places You Love

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I was listening to Ada Limon, our nation’s former poet laureate, being interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air. My ear caught a phrase she said, “sing back into the places you love.” By chance, I have been reading her book, You Are Here, which is a culmination of a larger project, a collection of poems on picnic tables around the America’s treasured national parks. Limon said that she thinks these times we are living in could define humanity forever. She collected some 50 poet’s responses to that idea in, You Are Here, inviting readers to take a closer look at the present moment.

I love this phrase! Singing into the things that bring us most joy, that we find most beautiful, will get us through these turbulent times.  When the DMV, passport office, SNAP benefit, and air traffic control are not working as they once reliably did, remembering to hold space in the day for what we love can get us through. The word “back,” singing back to, is not backwards. But rather, I think of remembering back to who we truly are, remembering what we love to do with our lives. I have been working hard at this, especially this year. It is a challenge borne not out of nostalgia, but one out of remembering.

The great Sufi poet, Rumi wrote: all beings stream at night / or during the day / into some absorptive work / into the loving nowhere.

I have long been a fan of this verse because it’s the original streaming platform! What he is saying is that we can connect to the Divine flow anytime we sleep, love, or work on the things we lose ourselves into with joy. (Getting into this streaming zone is a brain wave pattern.) When we get there, time does not exist. It becomes expansive. After this experience, we feel happier and renewed. And the most beautiful thing of it all – is free! And its right inside of us!

This season, I sing back into the places I love by walking in the forest, listening to one of my children read to me, and improvising / playing music. I feel both renewed and relaxed (or as my son pronounced it when he was 4 years old, rah-wax), which makes me think of waxing like the moon, ebbing and flowing. Either way, so at peace, it hardly matters to speak.

Sing Back Into the Places You Love

If we were to all practice that which we most love, I think the world would feel more renewal than heartbreak. If we all could just tap into that which sings our heart awake just a little bit more, then I think we as a collective would be more untouchable by that which does not awaken us. And let’s be honest: there’s a lot of activity in the outer world of what can harm us.

By singing into the places we love, there isn’t anyone or anything that can take that experience away from us. Its non-material. It doesn’t require a transaction. It is something that each individual and only each of us can create ourselves. It is not given. It is within.

Being given the idea to sing into a place you love unlocks the human spirit more than a news headline, more than what government legislature says it is or is not accomplishing. Or, in the words of William Carols Williams:

it is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there

As for me, one of the things that lights me up is poetry. What places would you like to sing into?

How To Let Go of Your Judgmental Inner Music Critic

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We are not learning music to be perfect. We are learning music to enjoy the process of playing. We are learning music to develop a skill. Let go of judgement! If you are hearing an inner musical critic and it feels like negative judgement, drop it. Let it go. You don’t want to be holding unto so much baggage.

If that seems too easily said, imagine that your fingers are actually holding onto little bags of judgment (from past/current teachers, conductors, peers, recording engineers, yourself, reviewers, parents, friends, neighbors, etc.). Imagine that these little critiques, each in a bag on your fingers, are weighing you down. They are slowing down your playing. That negativity is taking up physical space and you need to free it up!

Question: What if you got rid of that inner music critic? Answer: Your hands would feel the freedom to put your fingers on the actual notes you need to play.

Drop the mental comment section. Close down the critiques that don’t make you a better player. You can throw them away in the trash bin over there. Now, locate the comments that do help – the ones that say “don’t give up,” or “there now – that wasn’t so hard!”

cherry blossoms, Alice Walker quote, miners gold

You can keep the helpful comments, but put them in a safe place at a distance, like picture in a frame. Remember, you want to feel lighter. You want to free up your fingers to do the playing that you were called to do in the first place.

You have work to do. Your work is playful and exploratory.

You are practicing the process of showing up and being ready to play music. Playing music is not about perfection, so much as the journey you take to a place where the playing feels good! This is the work you love to do. By freeing your fingers, you are already doing what you need to do. Now, you are ready to practice!