Self, other, task, materials, processes. Good luck!

Did you know that Taylor Swift wrote a song about me? It goes like this: “The explainers gonna explain, explain, explain, explain, explain.” Good luck!

The self is you: your person, your indivisible body and mind and soul, your thoughts and feelings (and you might not be fully aware of all your thoughts and all your feelings), your history and your stories. If you and I sit across each other at the café, chatting and sharing a chocolate mousse, we’ll be “sitting across each other’s stories.” Good luck!

The other is anything that isn’t that self of yours. It can be another person, it can be an animal, it can be an entity that resides outside yourself although, technically speaking, your imagination and your heart might have a relationship with the entity or person or cat, and then the “other” kind of resides “in the self.” Good luck!

In other words, the separation between yourself and the rest of the universe is relative. According to some philosophers and mystics, also some quantum physicists and some poets, also some sources that wish to remain anonymous (including Alfred N. Whitehead, not to be confused with Alfred E. Newman), the universe is defined by the relationships that exist between yourself and the places, events, ideas, objects, and people with whom you interact—that is, the universe is a set of relationships. Good luck!

Should I carry on with my explanation? Yes, thank you. The task can be minuscule (wash a lettuce leaf) or enormous (write a book), but the main thing is that your life is made of a series of never-ending tasks—all day long, day after day. When you’re sitting across from me sharing a chocolate mousse, “your bundle of tasks” is sitting across “my bundle of tasks.” Good luck!

Every task comes with its materials, both physical and psychic. If my task is to learn a new piece at the piano, there’ll be the piano itself (which is “pregnant with my stories”), the score (also “pregnant”), the physical setting of my home or the rental studio where I’m “making myself pregnant with the piano and the score.” It takes two to tango and three to get pregnant. If my task is to help a student understand time signatures, syncopations, offbeats, and hemiolas (good luck!), the materials include a printed method, the entire edifice of the musical language, traditions and conventions, mathematics, prosody, infographics, and contraception. Good luck!

You want to achieve the task, to fulfill it, to accomplish it: to learn the new piano piece, for instance, or to make the salad. Then you’ll have no choice but to engage in multiple processes, including slicing a lemon but not slicing your fingers. You and I, chocolate mousse: it’s “your bundle of processes” sitting across “my bundle of processes.” Good luck!

Self, other, task, materials, processes. To accomplish a task is to work on yourself, to work on your relationship with the other, to handle the materials and processes demanded by the task. One Alfred said that that everything exists “in relation,” and nothing exists “in isolation.” Another Alfred said, “What, me worry?” Good luck!