“Maybe play can be practiced just like yoga and meditation can. Maybe it even needs to be practiced.” — Victoria Brouhard

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One of the things I treasure so much about the Songtaneous space is the lightheartedness and sense of play we can create there. After reading Victoria’s post, I realized that this is one of the reasons I hold the space for Songtaneous every month. Even when I’m tired. Even when it’s hard because I’m busy or sad.

It’s to practice playing. I do so little of that elsewhere in my life, I need the practice (*grin*). Practice showing up with my talents, my insecurities, my self and opening up to connect with others.

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Have you ever watched how kids can become “instant” friends? They separate from us stodgy adults (*smile*) and approach each other with openness, curiosity and delight, usually jumping right into doing. Inventing some game with complex and changeable rules that they make up as they go along. (Does that sound like life to anybody else?)

I’ve noticed that in many areas of my life “making it up as I go along” has made things easier for me. In a lot of cases — directing my group, coaching my students, facilitating Songtaneous — it even works better.

Because I’m more open and honest. More authentic and available and less entrenched and invested in doing things a certain way.

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I love watching how the people who come to Songtaneous show up. How they’re open and curious. And delighted in and generous with themselves and each other.

Not bad for day’s play.

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I’m one of the worst quitters in the world.

It’s true … I can recall only a handful of things that I have consciously quit in my life.

One of them was swim team.

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The summer between 7th and 8th grade, I was on the summer track team and I decided to join swim team, as well. I have always loved to swim, so I was excited. This would be my sport. I was born for this. I was gonna kick butt at this.

I hated it.

Not only did I hate it, I was bad at it.

Still, I waited until several weeks after my first horrendous meet (did I mention I was bad at it?) to quit. Every weekday for most of the summer, I biked two miles to track practice, ran track for a couple hours and then biked to the pool for swim team practice.

(Did I mention I hated it?)

I couldn’t let myself off the hook. I’d made a commitment, I should like swim team. I should be good at it. (I had a racing suit!) Quitting would mean I was wrong. Wrong to commit, wrong to try something new, even wrong about how much I loved to swim.

Finally, I decided I didn’t care. My level of loathing trumped any sense of failure. Swim team made me unhappy. I didn’t like it. In fact, I hated it.

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After quitting, I realized that I still loved to swim. I didn’t like competing or training. One really had nothing to do with the other. And if I hadn’t tried it I would might have regretted never being on a swim team. (And, hey, how else would I have learned that I hated it? *smile*)

Most important, quitting swim team didn’t mean I had to quit swimming. It didn’t mean I didn’t “know myself.” It didn’t mean that I was a failure. (It simply meant I didn’t have to bike to the pool after track practice.)

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When creating spontaneous “songs,” sometimes you have to quit an idea. You might be attached to it, you might love it — but it isn’t working.

Or, you hate your idea. It maybe even kind of works. But every time you try to sing it, your inner critic takes another whack at your self-esteem. (“That is sooo __________”  … well you know better than I what she says. *wink*)

In either case, your idea doesn’t fit into that piece at that moment.

It doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. It doesn’t mean that you never have good ideas. Or that you should just stop singing altogether. (Heaven forbid!) It’s about the “fit.” It’s about timing, cooperation and the function of your idea in that particular piece as a whole. So instead of stubbornly jamming your square peg into that round hole, give yourself permission to quit.

Here’s the cool part, letting go of something that doesn’t work lets you move on to something that does.

Let me say that again: Letting go of something that doesn’t work lets you move on to something that does.

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Expert quitters know this.

Over the years, I’ve met expert quitters. (I’m related to one. *smile*) They are not flighty failures unable to commit. These “quitters” are some of the most driven people I know. They tackle BIG goals (multiple degrees, changing careers, start-up companies) and quit the small stuff and the yucky stuff.

Expert quitters are unwilling to be unhappy, dissatisfied, disrespected, or disinterested a second longer than necessary. They listen for the sound of the whole and, when needed, they have the grace (and the grit) to quit.

Happy Mother's Day!

As Mother’s Day approaches, I’ve been thinking about expertise. (After all, moms end up being experts at such a variety of tasks, don’t they?)

A while ago, I told a friend of mine who’s an occasional web surfer about this blog. She didn’t really understand the concept of a blog (why would you write one and who would read it?). I told her blogs are like super niche magazines on the web. (Probably my publishing background talking.)

“To write a blog, you take an area about which you have a lot of knowledge or experience — or unique or unusual knowledge and experience — and write about it for other folks who are interested in what you do or what you know. Everyone has some topic about which they know a lot more than the average person.”

“So I could write about raising four children under the age of 8?”

Umm … yeah. I’m guessin’ she could blog for a good long time about what she learned from doing that! She has unique, unusual and probably extensive knowledge about raising children.

I’d call her an expert.

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As you may have figured out, I’m working to become a “spontaneous singing expert.” Since I don’t know a lot of other spontaneous singing experts, a large part of my work is following my mother’s profoundly simple advice … “Figure out what you want to do next.”

Hold a space where spontaneous singing can take place? Find like-minded singers and instrumentalists? (Write a blog? *smile*)

(A liberal amount of my sister’s “fake it ’til you make it” advice is thrown in.“If I were an astronaut (manager, dog-walker, … ahem … expert spontaneous singer, etc.), what would I do in this situation? This approach usually gives me permission to move from “whether” (or not) I should do something to “how” I could do it.)

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Yaro Starak writes that “Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it.”

Well, I’ve got that covered. I mean there just aren’t that many of us spontaneous singers (aka improvisational vocalists … you say tomato, I say toe-mah-to) out there to start with. In that small universe, the number of folks out there talking about how or why they improvise is even smaller.

(Uh-oh, maybe I’m an expert?)

I mean I sure do talk about it, don’t I? How I feel about it, what I learn from it, and how I struggle work to get better at it. Every week, right here.

(But, still … C’mon, an expert?)

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Here’s what’s funny. (Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha.)

Even though I’m (more than a little) uncomfortable calling myself an expert, I’m perfectly willing to continue learning and exploring and experiencing spontaneous singing (and writing about it here). After all, as my grandmother would say, “You can never have too much education.”

So … I’m willing to be on a path to expertise. To state that I want to be a spontaneous singing expert. (I’m just not ready to be an expert … yet.)

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Starak continues “If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened.”

Here’s to my future expertise.

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Apologies to my mom who hates being called “Ma.” Seriously, when I was a kid there was a song and everything. *smile*