This is a little different “Behind the scenes” than what I posted last week. If you didn’t know, I live and teach in one of the northern suburbs of Houston, Texas called Spring. Early Monday morning, hurricane Beryl barreled through Houston with 80-90 mile per hour winds in my area. Many people had downed tress, some had them land on houses, garages and vehicles. Thankfully, we had no such damage. But over 2.7 million people were without power. As was….and am I. Yes, it’s Thursday morning, and I’m over 72 hours without power. Our power went out Monday morning at 6:45 AM. When will it come back on? No one seems to know. The numbers are down to around a million people without power. So without power, internet and text access for a few days, I had time to spend with my wife and girls, read, and have time to think.
When we talk about improvising in music, it seems to be this magical, mysterious, sometimes scary word. I explain it to students as, “you make it up”. And this week for me has been all about improvising in my life. Thankfully, I’ve been on vacation from teaching the past 2 weeks. And I had grand plans to get projects done in the garage, our master bathroom and in my garden and flowerbeds. Guess how much of that I’ve been able to accomplish? You guessed right if you guessed absolutely nothing. And it’s OK. Those projects will still be there. Spending time with my family and working on cleaning up our property was more important.
But on top of that, yesterday was my wife and I’s 20th wedding anniversary. We had planned (because I signed up for a local 5K on Saturday) to get a hotel in town, my mother in law was going to come stay with the girls and the dogs, and all was going to work out. Well, we’ve improvised there. My wife, girls and dogs are already at my in-laws, we’ve cancelled our hotel, and after I pick up my 5K stuff tomorrow (I’m skipping the race, but want the shirt I paid for!), I’ll head up to my in-laws and we’ll have our weekend away up there. In the end, it all works out.
Now, I could be totally mad and frustrated that none of my plans worked out. But what good is that going to do me? In thinking about this from a music perspective, there’s a lot we can learn from this. Flexibility is essential in everything we do, but especially as a musician. Not just in terms of creativity and improvising, but music choices, performance options and many other things. We sent my oldest daughter week to a camp to learn the Texas All-State choir music. She was on a college campus, knew no one, and ended up having a great time. We pushed her out of her comfort zone….probably ours a bit too as parents, but that is how we grow. We’re faced with challenges as musicians and our creative limits can be tested. But in the end, is that truly a bad thing? Not at all! It depends on our attitude. Back to my challenge of this past week. I could be upset that my plans have had to be altered, but I can look around my neighborhood and be thankful that I’m not dealing with cleaning up a tree falling on my house, my garage or one of my vehicles. And to me, this has been one of the biggest thoughts that has gone through my head this week as a musician. My attitude toward things. Whether that’s a challenging student, or lack of progress or whatever the case may be, internally, I’m not happy. But my challenge in my head is thinking about how I can better myself as a teacher. How I can internally (and externally) have a better attitude toward students or situations. And then, as a musician, how I can do the same when opportunities and circumstances arise.
I don’t wish a hurricane on anyone. This is the 2nd hurricane I’ve gone through in my life (Harvey in 2017 being the other), and while I grew up in the Midwest, I wouldn’t want to go back to months of cold and snow. But it definitely can give time to pause and ponder, and for that I’m grateful.