[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It’s the New Year. A time to reflect on what I did last year (good grief! Was it really that much?), and to have a think about what 2017 might be like. For those of you that know me, I love a good list. I’ll make a list about anything – jobs to do on a particular day, things I’d like to teach, movies I want to watch, as many famous Finnish people as I can think of….

So I thought I’d make a list of things I’d like to make happen in 2017. In no particular order. Who knows if they will happen….

1. Learn Bach’s sixth cello suite. I haven’t really done this properly. Ever. It’s really hard.
2. Garden more. I love being able to stick my hands in the dirt. I don’t do it enough.
3. Stop getting angry about the state of music education in this country to the point that it makes me cry.
4. Be able to do urdhva dhanurasana in a yoga class. (It’s ‘wheel’ pose for those of you who don’t know your sanskrit.) Also I need to stop shirking backbends…
5. Fly in a helicopter. Just once.
6. Laugh more and worry less.
7. Go to England to see old friends and my family over there and eat lots of Lion Bars, Topic Bars and Revels that haven’t spent ages in shipping containers.
8. Be able to stop a bit more. I am terrible at this. As in NOT work, or practise, or send emails.

And that’s it, I think. There’s probably other things. I could hope for world peace, I guess, but I think it’s going to need more that me working on that to fix things. I’ll just stick to music teaching. And I’d like the government to be a bit more responsible, honest and human-like – but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’ll just stick to my 8 things….

Here goes….[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It’s the end of the year. And like most teachers at the end of the year, I got sick. After three-and-a-half days in bed, I went to the doctor, and I was diagnosed with bronchitis. This made me feel a bit less like a malingerer, and more like a genuinely sick person. I’m now on fairly strong antibiotics – I can’t go out in the sun (so I am now a coughing vampire), can’t lie down after I’ve taken them for a few hours and feel slightly stoned. I keep talking rubbish (well, more rubbish than normal) – forgetting words, mixing up sentences. But I’m getting better.

I was back in a school on Monday where the kids are a bit tricky. I maybe shouldn’t have gone back to teach that day, but I was getting bored at home (I’m a terrible patient). My voice was a bit croaky, and I was still coughing enough to give myself a headache. But I went. In comes year 6. They haven’t been very well-behaved at the moment. I feel sorry for most year 6 kids at this point in the year. They are going off to high school, so everything will be changing. There’s lots of hormones racing around their bodies…. Not a place I’d like to be. So a lot of them are teary, or nervous, or angry. Nearly all of them are worn out, so they are slightly hysterical.

The conversation I had went like this…. “So, year 6. I am sick. I’m pretty worn out, and I don’t want to be cranky with you. I’ve loved teaching you, especially this year, and I don’t want to finish by having to be grumpy. If you don’t want to be here, you can go to kindergarten. You won’t get into trouble – I just don’t want to battle with you.”

Pause.

No-one moves.

So I continue with the lesson. It’s one of the nicest lessons I’ve had with them for a while.

At the end a number of them come up to me “Feel better soon, Rachel!” “See you next week!” “Have a good rest!”

These are kids who are naughty. They get into trouble. Right-wing radio shock-jocks would call them scum. And yet, when they are treated like grown-ups, they are lovely. They are kind. They are considerate. They do their best.

Everybody lives up to the expectations that are placed on them, don’t you think?

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Last weekend was a time of great highs, and a few lows. It’s getting to the time of year when I am tired and drained. Practising is hard in the morning – although it’s light, it’s hard to drag my sorry arse out of bed in the morning. I am tired of fighting within the education system to prove to the people who make decisions how important music education is to children – especially to children who are exposed to trauma. And, just like you, when I’m tired, everything is felt more keenly.

So when I get a review that completely misses the point of what I do in a magazine it makes me sad. It seems that the reviewer totally missed the point about what I was trying to do in my last CD with David. For a start, he called it ‘a mismatched patchwork’. Since it was really just a recording of how I’d present a concert, I know not to invite him to a live concert. When I talk to audience members after concerts, they like the patchwork. In fact, they love it. (Maybe I’m talking to the wrong people?) ‘Questions of style seem beside the point’ he wrote. Hmm… is this a compliment? An insult? I still can’t tell…. He finished by smothering me with condescension and calling the disc ‘a labour of love’. It really is what I expected from the establishment, but a little part of me was hoping I would be wrong. That they would see what I tried to do. But they didn’t. Sigh…

And while I was descending into the murky gloom of a bad review, I was performing at MONA. Which was incredible. I was playing with one of my favourite performers, in an amazing space (a room full of barrels of wine) with beautiful acoustics. And people flocked to see us play. When we weren’t playing, we went for a wander in this amazing place. Full of fabulous art. Full of people wanting to be in this place consuming fabulous art. Musicians playing in all sorts of places. David Walsh wandering around welcoming people. It was one of the most wonderful weekends – and so ‘non-establishment’. I loved it. It was a privilege to be there. And it inspired and nourished me. 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming home, very tired, on the plane, I realised I like being outside the establishment. I’ve written about this before. Because if people like David Walsh and Brian Ritchie are there, that’s where I’d like to be. With Judith, my artist friend, and David, Vero and Anthony. All of my musician friends who will push boundaries. We’re certainly not going to be rich. But we will remain true to ourselves.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I’ve just come back from a week in a town in NSW. It was a huge week – I had two days to get three groups of children ready for a big performance at the town’s entertainment centre. I was also coming at it from a set of chamber music performances (four concerts in four days), so I was pretty raw. Did it make for better teaching? I’m not sure. It certainly made me very aware of all the things that go on in a classroom that weren’t the actual delivery of the lesson though….

So here, in no particular order, were things I experienced.

I love teaching kids music. It doesn’t matter how tired I am, or if I know them well or not, I love it. I love watching little people experience the joy of the thing that I love the most. I love watching them listen and cotton on to things – a joke in a song, a rhythm they love, a tune that is singable.

It really does matter to me how good a performance is. People will often say to me ‘But don’t worry Rachel. Just the fact they are getting up and having a go… that’s what it’s all about.’ Actually it’s not. Don’t say that to music teachers. It does matter. It actually matters a lot. Kids know if what they’ve done is good or not. And if you demand that they do something really well, 99 times out of 100 they’ll give it to you. Most children will be able to achieve more than we grown-ups think they can.

I went into some really tough schools. I was really working hard – and I’ve been doing this for a long time. And yet the children who are seen as ‘difficult’ in classrooms weren’t. So is this a way to engage kids? Is our education system, geared towards reading and writing, and sitting and learning from books wrong? Do you know, I’m beginning to think it is. Really wrong. It’s fine to do that for privileged kids. Kids who don’t have to deal with trauma on a day-to-day basis. Kids who get enough fibre, and don’t have nits, and who are wormed regularly. But the other ones? It’s not the way forward for them. And yet we keep trying to force them to learn that way. And so what do they do? They cut school. They play up in the classrooms. They are branded difficult. Maybe the system is wrong – not these kids.

I got stared on the street. Really stared at. The last time I got started at like that was in Timor. I know I’m a bit not-normal-looking, but this was like I was from another planet. And I got stared at most of all by older white men with no teeth. Not in a leery way. But like I was an alien. It was exhausting.

The difference between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is getting bigger. And this is not good. This will lead to things like more crime. More hatred.

And kids love drumming. Really love it. Actually, so do I.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It seems I ruffled a few feathers with my last blog post. (I guess that means that there’s people reading what I write – which made me smile!) I don’t write this blog to provoke, you know. Some of you might find that strange to believe – I provoke so much, but this is not one of those times. I write it to reflect, mostly. Sometimes to rant, sometimes to yarn. But a good thing came out of this horribleness. I got a chance to reflect on what I write, and why I write – all good things to do, I think. I talked about this to a few friends, and someone I trust summed it up really succinctly…. He said something like “Well, you’ve written something like you would put in a letter, but it’s where everyone can see it. And then someone has written their reaction to it, and then let you know. And it’s all instantaneous. And it’s just the way things are these days.” Actually, he said it in a much better way than that, but it made me do some more thinking again.

So before I go on, I want to clarify a few things.

1. What I write here are my opinions. Not facts. Not judgements. Just opinions. And they belong to me.
2.  I understand that you mightn’t have the same opinions as me.
3.  Number 2 is ok by me.
4.  If the world was full of Rachels it would be noisy and exhausting. And there would be too much hair.

There are various things that make me uncomfortable in life, and I will probably write about them. Inequality of education is one of them. I try to do something about this – but that is my choice. It doesn’t make my life any better or worse than others. I do not look for your approval. I will try to challenge you if I think you are wrong, but I do not judge you. If you judge me, that is your problem. Does my choice make you uncomfortable? It isn’t meant to. I am doing what I do in the education system because I love it, and am good at it, and I got that opportunity.

The way artists are undervalued is another thing that makes me uncomfortable. All artists – not just musicians. Sometimes I feel like I live in a subset of the community. Due to the choice I have made to be an artist I have given things up. Lots of money is one of them. ‘Normal’ working hours is another. Job security. Superannuation. Excellent mental health (I do not write that last little sentence lightly.) But I have got lots of other good things from my choice. I meet excellent people. I am creative in my decision making. And I am very happy in what I do. Given my time again, I would choose what I have done again. I do not regret this (well, sometimes when the car rego is due I do….) decision. And I do not look at others and judge them if they are a doctor, or an accountant, or a hairdresser, or a lawyer (maybe that last one. But it depends what sort of lawyer they are….). Really? I don’t really care what you do with your life, as long as you are a decent human being.

I do feel uncomfortable about the ‘excess’ in our communities. Big cars, big houses, lots of unnecessary packaging around vegetables, huge amounts of ‘stuff’. But if you choose to have this, then that is your business. It’s just I don’t. I have come to this discomfort by looking at the people who don’t have this stuff – and this difference is one I don’t like much. But it is not an attack on the people who do have lots of stuff. (I remind you of point one I wrote earlier…)

I am not angry as I write this, and I hope that my words don’t come across that way. I am not sad either, or rueful. I am proud of what I do, and who I am. I do not expect anyone else to be measured by the standards by which I measure myself. And I am too busy measuring me to measure you.

(She gets down from the soap box and goes to eat her breakfast…)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]