"I don't know, but I have a pretty neck"

In November, 2013, I gave a two-day workshop at the Trossingen music school in Germany, thanks to an invitation from Prof. Wolfgang Guggenberger. One of the participants, the young trumpeter Fynn Müller, wrote the article below for the music school's magazine.

"I don't know, but I have a pretty neck"

An Alexander Technique Workshop with Pedro de Alcantara

A special workshop took place at the conservatory. At the invitation of the trumpet class, the internationally renowned author, Alexander teacher and cellist Pedro de Alcantara gave a seminar on the basics of the Alexander Technique.

We, the participants – in addition to the students of the trumpet class, our number included guests from the trombone and the percussion class – had little or no experience or previous knowledge. We thus brought excitement, curiosity and a small measure of skepticism to the weekend. The first day involved group and partner exercises without instruments. The objective was not only to understand the principles of the Alexander Technique but to learn and experience them with our own bodies: the connection between head, neck, shoulders, spine, pelvis and the resulting changes in our habits of movement.

For one exercise, we leaned against a wall with outstretched arms and fingers. Question: with which body part are we actually supporting ourselves? We began to sense that all body parts are connected: the finger is connected to the hand – the hand to the arm – the arm to the shoulder – the shoulder to the back – the back to the hips – the hips to the legs and the legs to the feet and the ground. All parts of this chain are connected and work together to keep us balanced and poised.

In another exercise, we were asked to apply light pressure with our hand to the lower back of our partner. The partner was instructed to resist the pressure and not to allow himself to be pushed away. His “resistance” should be neither stiff nor relaxed. The aim was to achieve a powerful yet flexible energy balance. Rather than concentrating solely on the strength in his arm, the “pusher” was able to practice executing the movement with his whole body. Exercises such as these help to develop our body awareness. And we can then use this new awareness to execute all kinds of procedures. When we move, if we focus our attention on connections throughout the whole body, the movement becomes more natural, more organic and more powerful. Through attentiveness and presence, we gain a new ease of movement.

But the Alexander Technique is about much more than “just” harmonious movements or mastering a complex sequence of motions. A human being is an inseparable alliance of body and mind; work on one cannot be separated from work on the other.

Why do we tense up when we play a difficult passage? Why do we indicate the stresses with our head when we speak a complex rhythm? Why does our body tension go awry when we feel frightened or insecure? Internal emotional states (e.g. fear, insecurity) nearly always have an external physical “echo” and vice versa. When we feel overwhelmed, we become restless, think negatively or feel paralyzed. The Alexander Technique teaches us to maintain internal and external “poise” in such situations, to observe our breathing (there were many exercises on this, too) and to stay mindful. As a result, our perception remains in the moment and we do not allow ourselves to be ruled by insecurity or fear. The disquiet, the fear are there but we are able to perceive them calmly without “losing our heads.” This helps us to cope with difficult situations and deal better with stress, such as pressure to perform and stage fright.

On the second day of the workshop, the participants had the chance to give a performance or play audition pieces or a study. Then they were able to work with Pedro de Alcantara on applying the principles of the Alexander Technique to the practical situation with their instrument. Many mental “side issues” came up that negatively affect our work irrespective of problems with playing technique: how do I deal with my mistakes? What effect do my thoughts and emotions have on my inner calm and concentration? A trumpeter misses the high “E flat” in the Haydn concerto – and curses.  The simple advice of Pedro de Alcantara is: “Don’t judge – perceive only.” Do not evaluate, do not classify with the labels “good” and “bad.” Perceive what is happening and do not deprive yourself of the power of clear thought by getting caught up in emotions. False, lacerating self-criticism, a reproachful inner judge can be damaging, too. Pedro de Alcantara’s “mantra” for such a situation is simple: “I don’t know / I can’t do – but I have a pretty neck!” This means: keep your outer and inner poise. A mistake or a failure does not make us “worse human beings” and our poised neck and head remind us of this. In this way, we gain the calmness, power and confidence to overcome our shortcomings.

Of course, experience of working on ourselves not only plays a role at the instrument. It affects our lives in general. The way we play our instrument (relaxed or tense, precise or imprecise, over-critical or superficial, etc.) reflects our personality. The Alexander Technique provides the opportunity to learn to deal with ourselves healthily – as musicians and people, in our physical movement and in our thoughts. In this respect, the course with Pedro de Alcantara was a considerable enrichment and an “integrated” course in the truest sense.               

-- Fynn Müller

Translated from the German by Annie Edwards

Photos by Pedro de Alcantara

Creativity: Roots & Twigs

Many people tend to define creativity in artistic terms—having to do with painting, music, and literature, for instance.  And many people think that creativity has “techniques and standards.” On this account, people say, “I’m not creative. I can’t draw, I can’t sing.” In truth, the flow of creativity touches every human domain: the law, mathematics, politics, business, auto repair, sexuality, and everything else. A normal life entails telling jokes, solving problems, raising kids, and cheating on your taxes—creative endeavors, one and all. If you’re alive, you’re creative.

Techniques and standards aren’t intrinsic to creativity itself. They arise after the fact, so to speak. Creativity is an unstoppable process or life force that knows no standards or judgments. You can train yourself to direct this life force toward concrete goals that require specific techniques and that will be enjoyed by other people according to shared standards. But, to begin with, all you need is to engage in the process—to ride the life force, so to speak.

I started my adult life as a cellist, playing classical music. This entailed studying and performing canonic compositions written by other people in centuries long past. In common with most classical musicians, I became so involved with goals, techniques, standards, and judgments that my music making wasn’t actually creative. Creativity is like a tree, deeply rooted and growing immensely broad and high, with numberless branches and infinite leaves. Music is a branch of creativity; classical music a sub-branch; the cello as played in classical music a smaller branch still, nothing but a twig in the huge tree; and each adult cellist playing classical music is a bud, or leaf, or flower at the tip of a twig. As long as you’re still connected to the creative roots, to blossom at the tip of a twig is wonderful. But as a cellist, I plucked myself off the creative tree and became, in a word, dead: the dry, broken-off tip of a twig.

Over the years, I worked through these issues and managed to reconnect with the creative life force. This required that I give up my identity as a “cellist” (that is, as a twig). I had to let go of my technical standards, my narrowly defined aesthetic and professional goals, my judgments, my desire to please other people, and many other things that defined me as an individual. It wasn’t easy, I can tell you. But, hey, I found my way back to the roots of creativity.

Musically, my “not being a cellist” allowed me to become an improviser, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and singer. My current music is kind of tribal, primeval and beautiful, quasi-shamanic. It takes listeners on some far-out head trips. My “not being a cellist” allowed me to become a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction, publishing a new book every two or three years and getting translated into French, German, Japanese, and Estonian. My “not being a cellist” allowed me to become a teacher, coach, and (to use a big word) healer, with a practice spanning the globe. My “not being a cellist” also allowed me to explore the visual arts, in particular drawing, photography, and video. In this article I want to touch upon photography as a creative outlet.

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You get a lot done when you connect to the roots of creativity. If you’re open-minded and grounded, small efforts yield substantial results. So far, my photography has depended on a $300 compact camera, of which I use almost exclusively the automatic settings; the Mac’s photo editing program, iPhoto; an iPad Mini; and a free editing app called Snapseed. I used my iPad Mini to take all photos illustrating this article; I edited some of them with Snapseed.

Photography is a collaboration of many players: your eyes, brain, and heart; the environment around you; equipment and software; and technical knowledge. You don’t need to move to Paris to take good photos; the whole world is infinitely and permanently photogenic, there for you to enjoy and record. People have taken meaningful, touching photos of their kitchenware. And although it’s very tempting to think that technique and equipment are important, they’re secondary to your “working on yourself,” so to speak: being willing to take risks big and small, being willing to look, think, and snap the photo, without prejudging the results of the snap or worrying about what other people think of your creative efforts.

Every photo you take is a self-portrait—that is, a portrait of your own perspective, your choices and priorities. At a street corner there are so many details, so many things happening at the same time that thousands of different images could be taken in any one moment. But you take the one photo that you alone will take. Your presence in that street corner, your eyes and brain, your life experiences up to that moment determine your photo. As I see it, this is the core of photography: the “you” behind the camera.

An iPad Mini is as good as any other piece of equipment to get you going, since the one thing that matters at first is for you to be willing to be present and to shoot the image. After you take a photo, or a dozen, or a hundred, you can go home and look some more, think some more, play some more. The Snapseed app is elegantly designed. In a minute you’ll know how to use it. And in two minutes you’ll discover that your original image can transform itself in multiple ways. It’s a bit foolish to think that a photo “must be true to reality.” Reality is so multidimensional that no photo can be true to it. Every choice you make as you take a photo—the where, the what, the when, the who, the how much—filters and alters reality in some way. Post-shoot, editing an image only continues the inevitable filtering process. Paradoxically, a good photo might capture some essential corner of reality and be true to it even as it filters and alters it in multiple ways.

Technique is partly a matter of absorbing information and practicing skills—with or without the help of a teacher—and partly a matter of learning from experience. Spend a couple of hours taking photos every week, and over two years you’ll take ten thousand photos in two hundred different settings. This gives you enough of a database to start exercising your discernment and making faster, deeper choices at the very moment of taking a photo. Ultimately, awareness is the one thing that counts the most. If you define technique as “trained awareness,” the pursuit of technique will become very enriching.

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Not Flamenco

I know close to nothing about flamenco. Like many other people, I've seen bits and bobs of it on the Internet or in the movies; I've heard flamenco-inspired guitar playing, recorded and live; and I've play-acted my ignorant version of flamenco for fun, stomping my feet and clapping as I twirl around the room. But this blog post isn't about my scant knowledge of flamenco, or even about flamenco, period. It's about a voyage we all take in our lives. It starts in innocence, passes through crippling self-consciousness, and ends (for some of us) in mastery.

As young kids we dwelled in experience and sensation, not spending much psychic energy on discernment  (anything goes into the mouth!) and only occasionally on judgment (hunger not good!). Our minds were free from constraints, preconceived ideas, "shoulds" and "musts." And we were so, so very adept at learning! We learned our "mother tongue" like we learned breathing and walking--without intellectual calculation, playfully, easily, joyfully.

The toddler below is learning his "mother dance" of flamenco through a process of observation, imitation, and improvisation. He already has the spirit of it, the energy of it, the flamenco-ness of it. He "embodies flamenco."

This baby must have an old flamenco-dancing gypsy soul! He probably came out of his mother's womb in compas. His remates, llamadas, and even cante... it's all so very flamenco. I've been dancing flamenco for 14 years and I can say that bulerias por fiesta is probably one of the hardest palos out there, yet this kid does it effortlessly.

Talented children can take this native ease very far. The young fellow in the next clip embodies his native flamenco with terrific virtuosity. He's called Juan Manuel Fernandez Montoya, better known as Farruquito. To my eyes, he's focused, centered, and "invisible," by which I mean he allows us to watch "the wonder of flamenco" without getting distracted by "the particular individual who here embodies flamenco." His dancing isn't about Farruquito; it's about flamenco--something much bigger than him. Flamenco itself seems to be about the paradox of holding energies tightly within, the better to propagate them in every direction. The young Farruquito "becomes" containment and propagation, and watching him "I contain and propagate, by proxy."

farruquito un mostro desde que era chico

Farruquito will grow up and leave his child-prodigy years behind him. Tragedy will struck--real-life tragedy, in the form of a hit-and-run accident that landed Farruquito in jail; and existential tragedy, in the form of a loss of innocence, a loss of freedom . . . in short, a deep loss. The invisible dancer who let us "watch flamenco" becomes visible, and begs us to "watch him." It's not the same kind of show, and it doesn't have the same effect. Don't get me wrong; the adult Farruquito is very accomplished, and obviously he dances the flamenco a thousand times better than I dance it myself. But the clip below leaves me uncomfortable. In earlier times, Farruquito danced with a steady core that rendered him stable despite his gyrations, and watching him "I became stable, by proxy." Now Farruquito is making the periphery (arms, clothes, hair, surface) more important than the core, and watching him "I become unstable, by proxy."

oleee ese farruquito y ese antonio oleee los maestros

Farruquito is the grandson of a masterly dancer: Antonio Montoya Flores, El Farruco. In movement and in expression, El Farruco does very, very little . . . and yet he lets us know how much he's capable of doing. It's as if his flamenco were completely internalized, "not needing to come out anymore." Containment has become "it," and propagation is now only latent. El Farruco has nothing to prove, and watching him dance "I myself have nothing to prove, by proxy." I find it very healing. Perhaps Farruquito will one day pass from self-consciousness to self-forgetting again.

There you have it: innocence, loss, mastery. As I said, it's not about flamenco.

Создано в CyberLink PowerDirector Arte flamenco Baile El Farruco (Antonio Montoya) Toque: Luis Habichuela Cante: El Chocolate (Antonio Nuñez) y Martin El Revuelo Add-on Constantin Sharoudin, St.Peterbourg, Russia

Transformations

I performed a solo recital program at a beautiful little museum in Tallinn, Estonia. I played a couple of pieces by Bach for unaccompanied cello, plus a number of my own compositions employing the cello and the piano, as well as singing, whistling, and howling.

To open the program, I decided to devise an improvisation that would make me comfortable and confident, and that also concentrated the audience’s minds. So, I chose something emphatic and declamatory, and I practiced it a few times over two or three days.

Before I went to Estonia, I had a chance to record my improvisation at a studio in Paris. My recording engineer edited and mixed the improvisation. Here it is.

Then I tweaked his mix, adding a little resonance; and I tweaked my tweak, adding an echo that created the illusion of multiple instruments. Is it the same piece, or has it become something else?

A remix of my improvisation "Passage, First."

Then I added my tweaked tweak as a soundtrack to a slideshow of mine. The slideshow, too, is a transformation: I took a small section of a painting by Anselm Kiefer and I submitted it to a series of editing decisions.

Change happens permanently. Which is your true nature, what you were originally or what you have become?

My desire to connect with the cello and with the audience materialized itself in gestures and sounds. Captured by a recording device, these sounds underwent a series of transformations. Now the sounds are a string of ones and zeros, beamed into your home from a satellite high above the Earth.

You might find it interesting to listen to my sound engineer’s version of my “thoughts and emotions,” then my tweak of it, before hearing it as a soundtrack to a slideshow. You’ll have your own thoughts and emotions about these ones and zeros. Transformation is the name of the game.