Inner Landscapes

Someone once told me that the only difference between me this year and me next year is the people I will meet and the books I will read.  Though this is obviously a simplification, I tend to think that there’s a lot of truth in that statement!  The one thing I would add to this (and this is something I happen to be doing a lot of this summer) would be – the places I will travel.

I like to think of these three occasions as opportunities to not only expand one’s outer world and range of experience, but as opportunities to make one’s inner world more spacious and rich.  To learn to see the world from a different point of view, to have more colors and textures to add to our imaginations, and also to let new terrain –whether interpersonal, emotional or physical – work on us and teach us.

One of the most inner-landscape-enriching places I ever visited was Israel.  I went there during college to be a part of a winter music festival based outside of Jerusalem.  It unfortunately no longer exists.  It was a truly international group of musicians – I made some very close friends in the three weeks or so I was there and learned so much from them.  We stayed in a hotel located on a kibbutz and therefore kept kosher – a new experience for me.  And Israel itself worked on me.  Even though I knew quite a bit about Israel before visiting, to experience a place with so much history – and ancient history! – was a revelation for a girl who had spent most of her life in a relatively new U.S. city.

The mesh of cultures in the Old City of Jerusalem was electric and fascinating. The beauty of the desert and Dead Sea took me by surprise and impressed itself upon my mind and heart.  The tastes, the sounds, the smells – everything was so very different and new and I felt – opened up.

This is perhaps an extreme example.  This trip occurred at a particular time in my life, and the place was SO out of the realm of anything I had previously experienced.  How can one NOT be somewhat changed?  But I think that, even in our less extreme travels and encounters with new people and new ideas, we can allow ourselves to absorb our surroundings, expand and be worked on in similar ways.

In my experience, meeting new people, reading good books, and traveling have served as the biggest tools of growth for me.  Not that one must adore every new person one meets, or book one reads, or place one goes.  But to never experience something new, or to not be open to new ideas, is to squelch opportunities to expand and be enriched.  A sense of staleness and boredom can easily take over.  What you get is a RUT.

For the record, if there is anyone in this world who LOVES routine and a sense of the rhythms of life – it’s me.  But at the same time, I actually find that daily and yearly rhythms and rituals enhance my experience of the new things that come into life so that the passage of time has a beautiful blooming, yet cyclical quality about it.  It allows me to go deeply into life while still expanding and growing and trying some new things.

This can be tied over to horn playing in a very specific way.  For instance, I love my warm-up routine.  It is essential for getting my body and mind in a good playing groove for the day.  Yet if something isn’t working, I will vary it and try something different, or experiment with a different approach.  Often, it’s just a matter of changing something just slightly enough, or placing the focus elsewhere in order to get things working smoothly again.  Just a little shaking up is usually all I need.  Every now and then, a bigger shaking up is necessary if the rut and frustration are deep enough.  But more often, I just need to go for a walk, read a book, or talk to my husband or a good friend, perhaps set a new goal (even if it’s a small one) to shake off my mind/body-rut.

I know that some of my students and former students have great opportunities to be in a new place this summer having new experiences.  Soak it up!  But for those of you who are staying close to home and in a more-or-less normal routine, don’t despair! Those times can be just as rewarding, and you can create your own new experiences by setting a new goal, coming up with a little project, reading a great book, or by taking a smaller trip if you can get away.

For right now, I find myself in Colorado surrounded by stunning landscapes.  It is not a new place for me, but I hope to take a hike or two that I haven’t done before, though I am dying to revisit an old favorite once I acclimate to the altitude.  I’m reading a new book and revisiting an old one.  I’m practicing some old, favorite etudes and learning some new recital pieces.

But being in Colorado, at the mercy of the ever-changing weather, and in the shadow of breathtaking mountains, within earshot of a rushing creek – and with a great hike or two in my future – makes me think of one of my favorite passages from Rilke’s Letter To A Young Poet:

And to be among conditions that work at us, that set us before big natural things from time to time, is all we need.