Music Makes For An Apt Analogy To Daoism, And If It Wasn't For Joining Band In Middle School, I Doubt

Music makes for an apt analogy to Daoism, and if it wasn't for joining band in middle school, I doubt that I would even be half as enriched as I am today, and hardly likely to have even thought of such an analogy. Not only the power of music, but the power of music education and the camaraderie of playing in a group; the benefits these things have for our children are beyond words (although I will continue to do my best). The discipline, dedication, and pursuit of excellence that comes from studying an instrument teaches us that with hard work we can achieve great things by ourselves. The harmony and collaboration required to play in an orchestra, band, or ensemble teaches us that through cooperation and respect we can create beauty as a team. And the leadership skills necessary to conduct a performance or direct a section or even just teach a chord to a new student teaches us that the next generation will always be there waiting for us to pass on what we've learned.

If you're interested in doing more for school music programs, find out what schools in your area need from the community. It could be as simple as just spreading the word, or it could be raising donations for new equipment. VH1's Save the Music program is a good place to start if you need one, but a simple phone call to your nearest public school could be just as good.

Reblog if band has changed your life.

Changing the Moment to Be in the Moment

or, Stepping Off the Path to See the Path or, How Habit Doesn't Equate to Harmony

Well, today marks the beginning of another semester. Even though I've been very sleepy all day from working all night, it's good to be back at school. The professor had us go through a very interesting exercise today, one that really made me stop and think for a moment. After some general warm up figure studies, he asked us all to switch gears and draw a 15 minute pose with our non-dominant hand. As you can probably imagine, we were all pretty stunned at first, and then incredibly resistant to the idea. It was awkward, it was mind-bending, and it felt more than a little foolish. But we all wanted to be professional and see the task done.

After the pose finished, we took a break from drawing and he had everyone do a quick walk around the room to see the work of our classmates. Unbelievably, the majority of the work was fantastic, on par or even better than the drawings we had done earlier in the class with our dominant hand. The professor explained in thus: because of the strangeness, because of how sure we all were about how terrible the piece would look, we all subconsciously pay that much more attention to what we are drawing. Every line suddenly becomes of the utmost importance as we struggle to make the charcoal go where we want it to go on the paper. By putting ourselves in the most uncomfortable of situations, we are forced to exist entirely within the present moment, unable to be distracted by the day-to-day musings that we can generally handle while drawing normally.

Of course, the goal of this exercise wasn't to convince us to draw off-hand forever. The main point, as he put it, was to apply this mode of thinking every time we go back to drawing, especially when we switched back to our dominant hand in the next pose. Every stroke is important, every shape is vital. We cannot let ourselves get too habituated in our present situation, or we risk wandering off the Path without ever realizing it. Always mind the present waking moment, even when doing something we've done a thousand times before. Chop wood, carry water.

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

Robert A. Heinlein

The universe simply is, and must be accepted as such. That's what makes it so fun.

You Can't Plan It

A few days ago I posted a funny screencap that I made called “I’m Still Alive”.

Today it has almost 26,000 notes, which is bizarre for a number of reasons. The reality is that I wasn’t even going to post it. I thought it was funny, but since you can’t plan on what’s going to hit and what isn’t on the internet, then it seemed passive to me.

Similarly, every week when I arrange a song for you, I have no idea what the response will be. My Game of Thrones arrangement was perhaps one of my favorites, but it went nowhere. It took me 80 hours to complete, and it was a massive undertaking. It was also timed perfectly since I released it when Game of Thrones started its new season.

But then it failed. It got a few notes, few purchases, and although I was scared (scared as in “umm, how am going to eat this week?”), I was mostly dumbfounded.

On the contrast, some of my biggest arrangements are ones that I was doubtful about - either because I was unsure about how my arrangement turned out, or because I hadn’t heard of the band and assumed others hadn’t, too.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed companies strategize and come up with some crazy buzzword or graphic trending chart, but then they learn that nothing goes as planned. Take a look at My Little Pony - they marketed the show to young girls, but guess who their biggest audience is? 35 year old males.

It’s a bizarre concept - the idea that you can’t plan things. So every week I’m reminded more and more about the unpredictability of the internet. And while some would be frustrated about it, I’d have it no other way. It’s fascinating.

The Importance of Importance

or, Significant Figures or, The Power of Perspective

One of the truly wonderful things about life is the simple vastness of the universe in which we live. From the endless reaches of the cosmos to the infinitesimal depths of subatomic mysteries, it is easy for many of us to forget just how much other stuff (read: not immediately relating to human life) there is out there. But for some, it is frighteningly easy to drift in the other direction; to feel lost in a sea of other people and other things, to feel utterly alone or insignificant in the midst of the much bigger and scarier world out there. But as the good Doctor once said, “I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.”

In the grand scheme of things, the path of the universe will carry on regardless of what choices people make, but rather than looking at it like every choice is meaningless, we must understand that each choice still has a profound impact on the people around us and the world we live in. It’s a bit of doublethink, perhaps, that our choices both matter and don’t matter at the same time. But a good analogy would be the trillions of drops of water that make up a stream. Throw a rock in the water, and it will still continue to flow, completely unimpeded by the stone. Even if you were to create a dam and try to totally stop the water, eventually it will pool up and overflow, either going around the dam or pushing through tiny little cracks. The water will always flow onward, as is the nature of a stream.

But from that one thrown stone, you’ve disrupted and changed the path of countless tiny little drops of water. They’ve gone right when they were planning to go left, some are forced backwards up the stream from the splash, and some are even taken completely out of the stream and tossed onto the shore. And of course no drop is ever alone. The bonds between water molecules are remarkably strong, and the movement of each little H2O tugs and moves dozens more around it. This is the world we see, the world we live in. Even if we don’t recognize it, everything we do has a rippling effect on the lives of everyone around us; some on people we know, some on people we will never meet. Those familiar with the Butterfly Effect will recognize the potential consequences that even a seemingly insignificant choice can have.

I believe that it is best to take balanced perspective of both such viewpoints. We must always strive to realize that the world will continue to turn, that our movements are only one part of a much greater flow that exists far above us. Our troubles, our fears, our frustrations; these are all really not as large as we imagine them. But, lest we feel too small and lost in the river, we must also understand the impact our choices have on others. Of course, this means it is imperative that we always take care to try and see what consequences our actions might have. We must see the truth of the situation before we simply act on our first instinct (more on impulse and daoism at a later date). But it also means that we have incredible potential to improve the lives of those around us, and that others can improve ours. Just as the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, every one of us has the possibility of creating great and wonderful things from even the smallest acts of good.

Daoism and Change

I had a lovely conversation with a dear friend of mine tonight, mostly regarding our old theater group in college and how's it's changed. I honestly think that one of the most beautiful (and frustrating) things about life is that it's always changing, every day and every moment. It's one of those things in the universe that never changes, as the saying goes. But we shouldn't fear or resist this change, no more than you should try and fight the force of gravity or the rhythm of your band (remember those analogies?). Nostalgia is one of the biggest selling points of popular culture these days, and it's not that hard to understand why. People want to feel safe, they want to remember the past without all the grimy little details that made it complicated and real. People want to embrace this illusion, but that's really all that it is.

Rather than that, I try to encourage people to embrace life both as it is and as it was. If we are going to indulge in a trip down memory lane, I believe the past deserves the respect of accuracy, not the glossed-over SFW version. Real life is always messy and nuanced, and we should never ever forget that, lest we start to gloss over the present in the same way.

But even more importantly than remembering and reliving the past accurately, we should always remember to keep the focus on the current living moment. As I stated at the beginning, the world is constantly changing all around us, and there's not a thing we can really do about it. That's why the most important thing in a Daoist's toolbox is the ability to Adapt. One needs to be willing and able to flow with the changes that happen as they happen, looking at the options as they come and finding the one most in line with your best path. This means looking past all the illusions and nostalgia our experiences have been coated with, this means opening up and seeing things as they truly are (or at least as close as you can muster). By doing this, change won't be so frightening after all.