How to slow down?
The world is fast. Always. Maybe it wasn’t always, but fast is now a constant. I don’t want to always be fast, though, and I don’t always want my students to be fast.
How to help them slow down?
Listening to calming music can help, meditation and slow action can help. But for me, it’s often most effective to slow myself through making music that slows me down.
In the Aces, we’re working on Alice Parker’s deliciously slow arrangement of “Shenandoah.” And it’s just the balm my students need as they prepare themselves for the final weeks of their musical, second trimester final exams, and so many other fast things.
When I sing this music the way it wants to be sung, it slows me down. My heart beats slower, my breaths come more easily, my very mind releases its fastness.
Part of the loss we experience when we don’t make music is this: we don’t get to guide our mood through music-making. While experiencing music can be powerful, nothing is more powerful than making music.