Making your own teachers

In Alexander circles, so it seems, any mention of hardware – furniture, seat shape or height, computer monitor height, piano stool height, computer layout, shoes, etc tends to stimulate the teachers amongst us to frown, on the one hand,  become very enthusiastic on the other, or, to provoke a healthy disinterest on the third hand.

My response tends to be towards the frown, though admitting that in some circumstances, ‘good practical use’ is very, very dependent on the nature of the hardware with which we interact.

Take my own specialty,  playing the violin. It’s quite clear that for many violinists the set up of chin-rest/ shoulder rest (especially)  is hugely important not only in using oneself well, but in being able to play, conventionally speaking, at all.

I remember being part of a group who  played a joke on a very, very fine violinist just before a recording session in which he was to play a tricky solo. We (for it takes a few to generate the courage, though only one to commit the treacherous act) lowered his rather high shoulder rest about 1/2 inch on either side.  Looking back it was a silly and rather childish prank to play on our very much liked and respected colleague, but I remember well the pandemonium it caused.

At the appointed time, with the solo nearly upon him, he had to stop, and, noticing that something was wrong with his set up, asked the conductor if he could take a five minute break (costly in the recording studio..)  to re-adjust. It was the familiarity that he missed, and whilst he probably would not have been quite the fine player in his solos we all recognized (though probably still fine enough!) , his response was to stop and re-adjust to something he knew and felt comfortable with. Perfectly understandable.

Chairs, too, often make good ‘use’ seem impossible, though rarely do we have a chance to change to something ‘better’ in the course of a day, to the extent that we might say that we have no option to give in’ to their wayward and often troublesome design, with a sense of exasperation.To this day I still choose a coffee house with this fact in the back of my mind.

However, we can still allow ourselves to maximize our experience or at least limit the damage in a variety of similar situations by not trying to be right in the face of what might seem to be overwhelming odds. In the case of playing the violin at least, it can sometimes lead to a discovery that completely changes our conceptions of how to play. And,  if you’re interested in the development of skill, to consider what ‘good use’ really means.

On this point, I’d suggest that good use is simply an openness to learn in this moment. …..when I first joined the professional music freelancing circuit I often used what I considered to be a ‘cash cow’ date to deliberately try something out that I knew was not ideal and to see why that was. I think it lost me work in the short term (!) but it provided sufficient reflective head scratching to enable great strides to be made subsequently.

Non-engagement, with situations like the above is, conversely, one of the most pernicious problems that we might face in our journey to be less constrained…. It’s hard to identify this opportunity, though, because it is definitely the case that ‘no reaction-doing nothing about it at all -’ is sometimes the best response, if not the easiest. Doing what we know, perhaps even more attractive!

So, what I’m saying is that to inhibit well is to engage with what is before us (or underneath us) and to decide on the best means of engagement for learning, rather than to bring our own  design,  Alexander habit or prior habit with us, to make it feel better. Skilled performers, musicians etc  might well know about this and ‘Alexander habits’, can, strangely, allow us to miss an opportunity in just the same way as shown by my violinists friend. I’m talking about just going with it – saying ‘No’ and also being able to say, YES!

Indeed, remember it was FM Alexander himself who warned against the over use or mis-use of inhibition – if I can put it like that…… so that it too, becomes a kind of ‘doing’ or ‘drift’. NOT reacting should not be confused with not caring!

What does this mean in practise, then? Well, not to try to get anything that you know about – to inhibit your desire to be somewhere (or on something, in the case of our chair) else, for a start and to learn to work with and not against the forms (physical or organizational) with which we interact

I’d say that it was good practise and a chance for the comfort of familiarity to give way to the focus that issues from un-familiarity. When giving a concert, for example, it is often the case that the familiarity of the practise room will give way to a quite different focus and that how we listen can be rather different (and unsettling) and require a different response in the way that we handle or ‘direct’ ourselves.

So, in one sense, hardware, furniture or external forms are important, and I would not recommend practicing too much in a straitjacket just for the chance to inhibit, but it’s wise to remember that forms we might otherwise depend on to function (in our own comfy image) can be  friend or foe depending on how we view them and allow them to teach us.

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