It was 3 am New Year’s Day, and I was in a rental car, threading my way to the airport through party hoppers and fireworks that flared up on either side of the otherwise dark highway. I was leaving the States for Colombia, to live abroad for an indeterminate amount of time, with two checked bags, my instruments, a computer bag—all other worldly possessions either donated or packed away in a 10x10 storage unit in the city I was leaving. It had been my dream to travel fully nomadic like this since forming my online music lessons studio four years earlier, but this was my first to give it a go abroad to see what I could see…
Andy’s was the first request, 4 and a half years ago now. He wanted voice lessons, and while I’d never taught voice, I was almost positive I didn’t want to. I’d taken vocal lessons in high school and, of course, been in choir throughout college while working on my music degree but I’d found the process of vocal lessons to often be too “one-size-fits-all” with a lot of dusty Broadway tunes that rarely fit the range of the student in question with some pretty scathing critiques scattered throughout until the student was further from their authentic voice and more confused and discouraged than when they began lessons. None of that appealed to me an educator.
What intrigued me about Andy’s request was that he identified as being “completely tone-deaf.”
…The Colombian woman had brought her baritone uke to the fire. As she tuned, she told the story of how, a few years ago, she’d been in a coma for over a month—upon waking up, she’d heard beautiful music, and it had changed everything that had come before. It became her sacred work to sing medicine music and share the peace she’d found in her out-of-body wanderings. She began to sing in a voice of pure crystal that resonated around the circle and into our souls, and nothing else existed. It was the kind of voice that can only be gained when your spirit has traveled to the edge of death and back again. These songs told of oneness with the Source of all life, the adoration of the Universe, and our gratitude for Her care and love for us. My whole body felt calm as our voices lifted with hers, and it felt like nothing had ever been wrong in the world or could be wrong again…
This past weekend, The Magic Flute in San Rafael threw an event to connect teachers and students and the community with a celebration of live music and workshops, and I was flying from my quarantine hideaway in the mountains to give in-person clinics and have my students perform. It would be a whirlwind of a weekend and the first time I would get to see the fullness of my studio manifested.
First off, this past year in the studio there was a marked increase in pets—I’ve met a guinea pig named Clementine, an entire basket of kittens, Allison’s snow-white puppy, and a Great Pyrenees that seems to grow 20 pounds each week plus an additional handful of pending puppy “maybe’s” from worn-out parents who we all expected to cave any day now. My dreams for my own quarantine pet (a hedgehog named Sharps) have also recently been approved by the most vocal 8-year-olds in the studio…
I was twelve when I composed my first full-length piece on the piano—it was moody, and emotional, in a minor key that modulated suddenly to another key and back and ended in a storm of arpeggios. The whole process had been thrilling, but when I played it for my teacher, he raised his eyebrow and sighed heavily, taking off his glasses to rub his forehead. When he finally spoke, it was to ask me if there was something dark in my soul that inspired me to write such an emotional piece. I had no idea what to say. He never asked me to compose a piece again, and I felt effectively like the gatekeeper to the world of the creators had closed the portal in front of me. I was crushed, and I put it out of my mind, returning to the world of classical music to play the compositions of the masters and earn my BA in piano. It was a stunning world, with transcendent music, but rigid, with little room to stray into creativity or personal interpretations without leaning into heresy—like a closed canon.
It wasn’t until I lived in Portland that the portal opened again; this time I opened it for myself.
She was nervous, and it showed from her raised shoulders to her rigid posture. Getting her to loosen up would be essential if this collaboration was to go well. Christmas lights reflected against the black windows, and stars began to backlight the high ridge of hills outside the window. Laura had been a music student of mine when she was young—she’d gone on from our early piano lessons to study violin and become a virtuoso on the instrument in the classical world. That was her background, and as highly skilled as she was, asking her to play away from the notes and jump into the pool of her own creativity to collaborate was giving her intense anxiety. Her energy was becoming more rigid and contained by the minute.
I was unsure if she would jump in or not. It would be brilliant, no doubt of it, if only I could coax her to jump.
“Whenever you’re ready,” I said softly, “Just sing and see what verses come.”
And she began to sing in the freeform way that was so unique to her creative flow, melodies and verses nearly intact, full of beauty and innocence and childlike hope…
Michael was small for his age—a five which he displayed proudly on one tiny raised hand the first time we met. He had dark hair, large expressive eyes, and an endearing lisp. His mind was open and creative, and unable to decide effectively how much information to allow in. The world would often get too big without warning, and grief and joy would swell to tempest-like proportions—sometimes something from the day would catch up to him, and fat tears would start running down his cheeks mid-song and the lesson would devolve into sobs until they had run their course; and sometimes, he would laugh so hard at his own jokes that he would fall off the “pah-nah-no” bench….
We both lost our spouses in October, while the leaves were still decaying in brilliant hues—colors that felt personal this time, neon signs pointing at our losses. I had left him just the week before, and was numbly packing and making plans, when I got the call from Sara, telling me that her dear friend’s wife had suddenly passed. She asked if I would play piano for the funeral.
I set aside the boxes and began working on the setlist that afternoon.
When I first met Kim, her husband had just passed away. In the midst of her grief, she suffered a massive stroke that affected the muscles on the left side of her body and scrambled some of her mental faculties. She sought me out in the hopes that I could teach her ukulele as a form of music therapy.
In my early twenties, I found myself in a painful season that could not be circumvented. All around me was falling away, and I wavered between depression and anger, and finally decided that I wanted to sing about my experiences. At that point in my life, songwriting wasn’t something I had any experience with, and singing was only something I'd done in a choir. Still, I couldn't shake the desire…
The theater was dark and comfortable. The quartet had just lulled us into a state of relaxed bliss with a Mendelssohn medley and was now shuffling through pages to begin their next piece by a modern composer whose name I didn’t recognize. The youngest member of the group, the violinist, rose to address us. “When we first began to learn this next piece, I wasn’t sure that I would ever like it,” he confessed. “It was dissonant and disjointed, and the silences were jarring. I couldn’t make sense of it until I realized that the silences and the tension were the keys to the whole piece.”
Randy was a character—a lawyer, but the kind of lawyer who helped people and never seemed to get any richer from doing it. He was broad-shouldered and quirky; a man with simple tastes, who always wore a blue denim jacket and a floppy-brimmed hat to keep off the Portland drizzle, and walked with a slight lean to the left. I met him a few months before my divorce, and he looked over my papers for free because I was just north of broke at the time and he wasn’t about to let anyone take advantage of me.
