COVIDiaries 4 - Stay Positive! ...!!

Napoleon's Grave, my favourite patience. Helps me stay sane.

This is the time for self-discovery. We all have this amazing opportunity to take a step back, evaluate our lives and truly see what's important. What have you always wanted to do but never had the time for? Running a marathon, creating cutting-edge sculpture, writing a collection of short stories, baking artisan bread? Now's the time to make those dreams come true! Fulfill your inner longings.

This society is way too focused on consumerism - now we can all change those toxic thought patterns and start living a more meaningful life. Go outside, go to the forest, breathe in the fresh air. Look at the spring happening around you and feel the mother nature wrap you in it's primeval embrace. Or walk to the sea shore and feel the sand under your feet. Listen to the singing of the waves. Who really needs those shops anyway? You can live without new shoes. Aren't you much happier here, in nature's own museum, than in Louvre? And the movies are streamed in Netflix - much cheaper than in the cinema. Enjoy this opportunity to rebuild your relationship with nature, and start your consumerism detox right here, right now.

Connect with your home. Your home is your haven. Make sure it's zen, so your energies can flow free and undisturbed by the underlying fear of, but never mind that now, take your yoga mat out and start breathing conscious, full deep breaths as you move through a vinyasa or two. Then eat a well-balanced meal you cooked with mindful love, because you have all this time for yourself now.

All of this tries so very desperately to hide the fact that we're all really scared. At least I am, and if you're not you're probably fooling yourself. We're trapped in this time of not-knowing - When will the vaccine be discovered, how many people will die before that, will I lose someone I love, when will we work again as normal, will there be work to return to, what will the economy look like in a year's time, what is going to happen? What about my work, my family, my friends, my hobbies, my life? And when can we go to the libraries again???????????? It's also a problem of choices. How to live through the days so that I don't unnecessarily put anyone in danger, but on the other hand, won't go mad myself? Can I go to the store? Can I meet this person? Is it okay, is it responsible? Should I delay cutting my hair, having a massage? Can I go to other people's houses? Visit my parents? Should I wear a mask? What's the right thing to do?

There are days when I have the energy to make bread, not artisanal, but very normal bread, and I have the energy to tidy something that has needed tidying for quite some time. There are days when I sit on the sofa and stare at nothing and think that it is not possible to live like this. There are days when me and the person I live with spend meaningful time together now that there's plenty of it available, and then there are days when we think this virus will bring our cohabitation to an end. Some days the online teaching gives sudden nuggets of joy and elation, and then there are many days when after teaching it feels like it's drained all my will to live, I feel so exhausted after. Sometimes it feels like I can breathe, and sometimes it feels like I can't. 

These are weird, stressful, unknown times. I'm not saying you shouldn't think positive - on the contrary, I definitely think you should, if you possibly can. But if your vinyasa flow isn't quite working and you still haven't made any bread, if you go cry in the shower so as not to worry people living with you and you play computer games for hours on end to obliterate thoughts for a while, well, that's okay too. Someone somewhere said that this too shall pass, and that sounds very clever. While we're waiting for that to happen, though, remember that fear makes people behave in strange ways. (I knit socks, hate them, unravel them, and start all over again. Also I play patience and scream at people I love.) As odd or stupid as someone's behaviour might seem, have compassion. They might be annoyingly positive, evasive, depressed - but they're just coping as well as they can in a shitty situation, just like you. 

COVIDiaries 2 - Teaching

The perfect reason to Netflix.

I've never used so much whatsapp in my life. Finland has been shut down, and all music schools have moved their teaching into Internet World. The past week has been a crash course on online teaching, and the biggest surprise for me has been just how much time it takes. "Normal" teaching doesn't actually require that much planning - of course you have to have a plan, find material etc, but it also very often happens that you just improvise on the lesson based on your gut instincts. For me, most of the ideas for a particular student come from being in the same space with them, talking, noticing what's going on. You might sense that the student is not really into a particular piece and you change it, you might notice that now we need something that is lighter, something that challenges the left hand, now we really should compose something, or maybe we need to sit down and draw some notes today. You're alive at the moment and try to sense how the student is reacting to what you throw at them. Figuratively. You should never throw objects at students, just so you know.

Online you Really Have To Have A Plan. You have to have all the material, so many videos, recordings, work sheets, ideas, and you have to explain everything without touching the student or guiding their movement in any way - often the connection is a bit late, so that's an extra concern - and the student should be getting something out of all this. Also, if you teach via whatsapp like me, you have to hold your damn phone in your hand All The Time, and look at the stupid little picture of your own face in the corner. One embarrassing detail I realised was that I don't have the books the students play from. I've just always looked at their books, so I never really had the need to buy them for myself - and now I found myself mumbling something about the song with the picture of the person with the thing on page something at the kind of end of the book, or maybe halfway, it was called cat something or maybe it was a mouse? Somehow I remember all the songs, but not their names or the pages they're on. Not great. Also I'm very used to writing instructions down to the students' notebooks, and stopping them while they play and showing something from the score. Now all the stopping amounts to is "what? what did you say? oh this bar? no that? what note? what?" - so helpful and productive.

I've discovered that I can't faultlessly play everything my students play, at least on the first attempt of recording, and I decided to embrace that. Let the students hear the Unedited Truth of "whoops, what was that". I'm very proud of myself for not swearing, not even once. And now I have an extensive collection of practicing tapes for all kinds of hands, with or without accompaniments, to completely random songs. My poor neighbours.

What's been fun to see is all the pianos of all the students. Most of them I've never seen before, and many were proud to introduce me to their home companions. Also a great opportunity to check how they sit - most of them too low. All in all it's weird, staring at the phone and the laptop, hoping your good intentions travel through bits and pixels.

Other things I've done apart from online teaching:

• Cooked food from an actual cookbook and expected praise from others living in the house. What they really said was "well, I'd never make this again".
• Tried to explain to a neighbour why they would have to protest play their electric guitar a bit less loud while I'm recording Itzy bitsy spider and Mary had a little lamb.
• Bought a long and complicated boardgame to take this relationship stress test to a whole new level.
• Looked at the intellectual books I borrowed from the library before it closed. Couldn't be bothered to openany of them.
• Almost finished knitting a sock.