HOW FASCINATING!! (learning from Benjamin Zander)

As I read Benjamin Zander's book, The Art of Possibility, it puts me in a " right place" with my job and my personal life. Rule # 6 is a great place to start. Humor and laughter are one of the best ways to get over ourselves! Humor can bring us together around all of our stressors, constant calculations, many discouragements, miscommunications that bring us down, and the many demands and expectations from ourselves and ones around us! Benjamin states that Rule #6 can help us distinguish (and hold at some remove) the part of ourselves that developed in the competitive environment of the "measurement world". You know that world... the SOL world, the budget world, the AYP world, the money world.... He refers to this as our calculating self. When we apply Rule #6, we coax ourselves and this calculating self to lighten up, which breaks a stressful hold on us! In work...my coaching team certainly is a serious bunch, and we all are so different and yet very compatible and complementary of each other. I'm so fortunate to have these brilliant colleagues in my corner. We tap into each other's strengths... but the thing that really solidifies our working and personal relationship is the fact that we attend to Rule #6 and we occasionally visit BTFI!

So who is Benjamin Zander you ask? He is the co-author of The Art of Possibility and conductor of Boston Philharmonic. He is also an educator at the Boston Conservatory. Here's the exerpt...

I've included below an exerpt from a blog post titled in my copious free time, on Zander http://inmycopiousfreetime.typepad.com/in_my_copious_free_time/2008/03/ted2008-day-3-s.html This blogger's comments and notes are from listening to him speak. It's in tweets or notes, so may be confusing... but they mirror the stories I remember Ben Zander sharing this summer, so here they are in red.

I love the story he usually tells about the 2 shoe salesmen who go to a remote area and both telegram back about the prospects:

One said "Prospects grim, they never wear shoes here."
The other said, "Prospects are incredible, they don't have shoes yet!"

"I'm a one-buttock player" - the music moves his body around. (@missrogue and I went to Twitter this at the same time and we've finally worked it out so we'll take turns instead of double tweeting the good stuff)

People aren't tone deaf. Everybody has a fantastic ear. If so many people were really tone deaf, they'd never know when to shift a manual transmission car.

He played a Chopin prelude in different ways, finally telling a story of the longing in the piece and how the notes reflect the feelings and they need to be treated as a whole, not as each individual note to be plunked out on the keyboard.

"For me to join the B to E, I have to stop thinking about every note along the way. This is about vision, the long line, like the bird who flies over the fields and doesn't care about the fences below."

"The conductor's power depends on his ability to make other people powerful. My job is to awaken possibility in other people. If the eyes are shining, you know you are doing it. If they aren't shining, I must ask, "Who am I being that my players aren't shining?"

Possibility to live into -- we might not be able to achieve perfection or a very lofty goal, but we can work into it, live into it.

Please consider reading his and his marriage partner's (Rosamund Stone Zander) book The Art of Possibility. It's a short and easy read, but very inspiring.

He told a story about some of his students not showing up to watch a performance and how disappointed and mad he was and Rosamund told him to apologize. "If people don't do what you want them to do, you can always apologize because you didn't enroll them."

He went way over, but I don't think anyone cared at all. We ended with everyone singing the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 - he put the words up on the screen in German (sort of phonetically spelled) and worked us through it and each time we'd all start singing and he'd stop us and encourage us to put more into it. He told a story about a musician who was practicing a piece for an interview to be the associate (2nd chair?) cellist? (sorry, can't remember) in a Barcelona orchestra. Zander thought the guy was holding back - he kept working with him until the guy was giving it all he had and the guy went away to Spain for the interview. He came back and said he hadn't gotten the job because he played the first way, holding back. But then he said, "oh, fuck it" and went to Madrid, auditioned for 1st chair in their orchestra and got it. So Zander says that you have to get BTFI - Beyond the "fuck it"point.

That's the long way of saying that we got BTFI and it was incredible for that many people to be singing together one of the most joyous and magnificent pieces of choral composition ever created at the end of day 3 of one of the most stimulating thinking experiences imaginable.

As I mentioned, I had the privilege to hear Ben Zander speak last summer at Alan November's Building Learning Communities conference in Boston. We also sang the "Ode to Joy" in German, as well. I also had the opportunity to see and hear the Youth of Americas Orchestra as he conducted the group that evening... and then party with them afterwards! Wow... what an incredible experience!! This man is amazing to hear and watch! Energy abounds him. He is such a positive force. I need to carry a bottle of Benjamin Zander in my pocket at all times... and sip from it!

More entries on the book later. Better yet, READ IT! So... if you hear me say, "how fascinating!" or BTFI or rule #6... you will better understand.