2016 Goals: Be Less Robotic

When I failed to cry in response to a touching video in one of our undergrad education classes, Ashley Conway called me an "emotionless cyborg."  (No worries, Ash - I took and continue to take this comment in the jocular manner you intended!)

When asked via the first-day questionnaire what I hoped to learn from my master's conducting class, whereas my compatriots (all instrumental conductors) talked about more clarity, I talked about more expression, calling myself the "ConductingBot 4000."

When I approached a well-respected and widely-loved conductor at District 13 Honor Chorus about coming to work with my kids because she's judged our LGPE a couple of times and I have yet to execute expression in a spiritual to her satisfaction, she gleefully proclaimed that she remembered my kids and that they were "like little robots."  I conceded that this was because I am a robot myself.  (She also said some very nice and complimentary things.)

When having lunch at Jenna's school during a day of pre-concert rehearsing, the meticulous, methodical way I folded a napkin around my biscuit before rewarming it made her laugh.

In my undergraduate conducting class, I was always told I was technically excellent, but needed to work for more expression in my gestures.

In grad school classes taught by my recently-retired advisor, even though years' worth of courses with her had made me more than familiar with her methods, I persisted in being *FURIOUS* with her high-pressure Socratic style of teaching that refused to just TELL ME WHICH OF THESE SEVEN ANSWERS YOU WANT.  PICK A LANE.

Undergrad piano lessons - comfortable with styles calling for steady tempi and clear (especially terraced) dynamics, a crashing disaster at rubato.

Doctoral practicum classes - agreed when our cells were based on harmonic structures, meter changes, key changes...crinkled my nose at my teacher when his cells were based on dynamics or he had several consecutive cells of what I considered "irregular" quantities (odd numbers or even lots of 6's).

I get mad when drivers change lanes at the last minute to make a turn, believing they should have planned ahead better.

I get sanctimonious about punctuality; when that study came out a few months ago claiming that chronically late people are optimists, I thought, "These late people are HAPPY ABOUT IT???  HOW DARE THEY NOT FEEL THE SHAME."

I am a rule-follower, a categorizer, a routine enacter...most of the time.  I hate being asked when something is occurring when the answer is written on a wall calendar in the same room.  If we're on vacation and we decide that we'll leave the house at 11:00 to go down to the beach, I'll be sitting by the door at 10:45.  It doesn't apply to everything though.  I'll straighten the stacks of worksheets in my classroom but drive home in a car that contains spilled french fries from 2003.  I'll walk around in shorts without having shaved my legs and dare anybody to give me crap about it (it does cut down on gym creepers) but feel self-conscious about my frizzy ponytail.  I'll leave an unfinished coffee mug by my bed until new civilizations sprout up in it but get the vapors because there's a gatorade stain on my counter.  It's as if The Great Programmer started coding me for hyper-organization and perfectionism, but got distracted halfway through and finished with slacker dna.

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I was around grades 8 or 9 before I finally realized that always jumping for the right answer and the highest grade was not endearing me to my classmates or impressing them as I had imagined.  And now I have neared age 30 before realizing that my selective rigidity is bovine and ridiculous.  The situations in which my inclinations are beneficial (be seated and ready to go when the faculty meeting begins because professionalism) are far outnumbered by the situations in which they're stupid or detrimental (you can conduct more than one hairpin in this Brahms piece - you're not going to give anybody seasickness.)  So my resolution for 2016 is to lighten. up.  I resolve to watch more conductors who jump and wiggle around their podiums and have the guts to get out of pattern every once and again because they are FEELIN IT.  I resolve to chill the heck out when it comes to getting places on time when there aren't professional or hierarchical stakes...no one is going to die if I walk into the pool party 2 minutes after the appointed start time.  I resolve to give people space to be human and stop policing everyone else when it comes to planning and execution, remembering that I'm human too and occasionally fail to plan.  I resolve to, as I am able to recognize them, scrutinize my self-imposed "life rules" and objectively determine whether they are useful ("Shower regularly") or not ("A cluttered kitchen table means you're a classless hick.")

Happy New Year, everyone!