64. Your Fortune
Katie plays the drums
Hi friends,
It’s been a whirlwind start to the fall session for me, so I’ve been a little less active here on Substack. Finishing the summer with a music camp was amazing, but it also complicates the start of the school year, making the first few weeks seem like a race, making sure all of my rehearsals get off to a great start, while managing the day to day needs of a community arts school. All that said, it’s been a fantastic couple of weeks and the school year is now well underway.
The day we returned home from camp, Katie and I visited one of our favorite restaurants, which has an eclectic menu of dishes from throughout Asia. Though my meal was Japanese cuisine, when the check arrived we were provided with fortune cookies, a staple at American Chinese restaurants. I opened my cookie to find the following fortune.
“Don’t let past traumas define your sense of self.”
When I speak with adults about being creative in their daily lives, about making music or art, I often learn that many avoid such activities because of a past trauma. A horrible experience with a teacher or parent. Many have been told they have no talent, musical or otherwise.
Just last week I was at a social gathering, meeting some new people, and I asked one person if they had ever played music. The response they gave was the old joke, “the only thing I can play is the radio.” It’s a classic deflection for people who believe they have no business even trying to play an instrument.
If this is you, and your belief is based on a past trauma, I ask you: “why allow your past trauma to define your sense of self?”
Trauma can be difficult to recover from. Certain traumas leave lifelong scars. It worries me that so many people allow fear to prevent them from trying something that can have such a powerful, positive impact on their lives. There are few things better for our wellbeing than making music, making art.
My wife, Katie, wanted to play the drums when she was a child. When she asked about playing the drums at her local community music school, she was told that “girls don’t play the drums.” She was offered piano lessons instead.
She didn’t fully understand the traumatic impact of being told she couldn’t do something because of her gender until much later in life. In her forties she began to study drums at our school and has never looked back.
That night at dinner she received the following fortune:
“You are an excellent student!”
How apt. What if we all replaced the belief that we couldn’t do something with the belief that we are all excellent students. Maybe that thing we were told we couldn’t do could become a passionate focus of our life.
Don’t let your past traumas rule your future self. Make some music. Make art. Dance. Sing.
Be creative.
~Russ
Hi Russ. Love your fortune cookies messages and the appropriate interpretation of the messages. Thanks for your ongoing thoughts on the importance of connections through the arts and music in particular. I am in Holland now. Tomorrow night my cousin and I will go to a performance called "Oscar" about Oscar Carre, the founder of one of Amsterdam's oldest theaters. It was a circus originally that then became a theater after the war. As a child growing up in Amsterdam I joined the Scapino Ballet - a well known ballet academy in Amsterdam and The Netherlands. Our performances were on the stage of this magnificent theatre, right on the river Amstel. I remember the excitement as a kid being on the big stage. I cannot wait to see tomorrow's performance and remember how my little feet jumped all over that stage - it is an honour to have those memories - and be able to see this production, which will show the entire history of the Carre theater, with all the varieties of arts performed there. Yes, sing, dance and be joyous - I cannot wait for your little Hope to be dancing on stage one day for all of you!!
As always Russ great write up. Just to echo what you've written about, after Maryse and I returned from Snowpond she decided to immerse herself into playing an instrument. She recently started private clarinet lessons ( given by one of our concert band conductors ). She also joined the Montreal New Horizons Initiation Band and will try to learn playing various percussion instruments. She is 63 years old and not retired.