WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE?

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Recently one of the emails to which I subscribe linked to this short documentary:

You really really really need to go watch it. Daniel Ajala, a man in Nigeria, saw the American movie Save the Last Dance and fell in love with ballet. There are no ballet schools in Nigeria, and so he started one. He taught himself ballet from YouTube videos, people, and started teaching others in his front yard.

Read that again: He taught himself ballet from YouTube videos, people, and started teaching others in his front yard.

Now he has students who are getting scholarships to international ballet companies.

What’s your excuse?

Another: I have a friend who claims to be pretty much unmusical, and I am inclined to believe him a little bit. How bad is it? He says he was kicked out of a drum circle. Dude.

So although I was surprised when he kind of sort of expressed a wish for a Native American flute, I went ahead and bought him an inexpensive one for Christmas.

Here’s what you need to know about Native American flutes: They are not tuned to the European “well-tempered” scale, i.e., do-re-mi-fa-sol-etc. This is the scale Bach and Mozart and Mahler used; it’s the scale I use in my compositions. It’s the scale that gives you those “Amen” endings, the feeling that you’ve come back to home on that last note.

Native American flutes are usually tuned to a pentatonic/whole note scale, which means you can’t go wrong just noodling about. It’s one reason there are so many playlists of relaxing Native American music: the tension and release of European music just isn’t there.

My friend still resisted — he’d have to find YouTube videos to learn how to play the thing.

Pfft, I replied. No one’s asking you to play Bach flute sonatas (nor could you on that instrument). Just put your fingers on the holes and just blow. [Yes, banter ensued.] Do this, I said: Play the lowest note. Play it three times in a row, not too fast. Do it again, then play the next note up, a little longer. Repeat. Keep going.

It’s like the Celebrant in Leonard Bernstein’s MASS sings in the “Sanctus”:

Mi… Mi…
Mi alone is only mi
But mi with sol
Me with soul
Mi sol
Means a song is beginning
Is beginning to grow
Take wing, and rise up singing
From me and my soul.

And I teased him about clinging to the idea that he had to get training in order to do this:

He’s one of my burner friends, and he has proposed a project called Qwest for Fyr, in which participants are cave people with no language except that which they develop. At given times, participants must go to other camps and somehow make it clear that they are asking for fire. How can he not pick up that flute and just make music?

As I stress in A Young Person’s Guide to Lichtenbergianism:

  • Don’t confuse creativity with training.

  • Don’t confuse creativity with “genius” (like Mozart/Tolkien).

  • Don’t confuse creativity with fame.

What’s your excuse?

Pick up that clari-flute and start playing.

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