Next Time Round The Sun

Another year is gone, time will not be captured

Even when we try so hard to hold on to the past

No repeats allowed of regrets or rapture

The moment comes, the moment goes

It happens all so fast

As the planet spins around again

As dreams are lost and found again

We take a look at where we’ve been

And where we want to be

When all is said and done

Next time round the sun

As I thought of what I’d done right this past year and what I’d done wrong, lots of big and little regrets and raptures came into my mind, and I knew that there wasn't a darn thing I could do about either one. I wish I’d tipped that great cab driver better last week. I was glad I’d chosen to make the too-long trip to spend the holidays with my kids and grandchildren. I wish I’d taken the time to write more music in the past year. I was glad that I dared to perform for the first time in a long time, even though I regretted not practicing more for it. Will this be the constant theme of life?

 As parents and grandparents, we’ll always make mistakes, little and big, that we wish we could take back.  And we’ll do things that we’re proud of having done, seeing the results shining in the eyes of the children, and wish that moment could last longer. We can’t take back the mistakes, we just have to try to not do that exact one again. And appreciate those good moments as much as we can.

No repeats allowed, of either regrets or rapture.

There is only one thing that we can do to help minimize the mistakes and maximize appreciation of the good times---staying balanced and rested as possible. When we’re rested we can think more clearly and make those snap decisions with better brain power, calculation, and intuition. Research shows that calming music at bedtime can help both you and your kids fall asleep faster and sleep better.

Staying rested isn’t easy, with so much to do in our fast-paced world, but it’s a goal. That’s my Big Goal for this New Year, because then I know that all the little goals will have more of a chance of being fulfilled.

Happy New Year to all!

Sweet Dreams,

Jane

On vacation with my daughter, we sat by the beach for one whole gloriously sunny day and watched the ocean waves rolling in with endless energy. They just kept coming and coming and coming. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year. Sometimes calm and sometimes wild and dangerous. They had no choice about it—it’s what they have to do, being tied to the irrefutable forces of nature.

The song of the river is a song of devotion

It doesn't know why, but it travels till it reaches the ocean floor

It’s song fulfilled in the ocean’s roar

Caution: Do Not Use Lullabies For Political Campaigns

Music serves different purposes for the different parts of our lives. It’s the background score for all of us from the cradle to the grave and every moment in between. Music serves to soothe us, to heal us emotionally, to inspire us religiously, and this week it serves —hopefully--- to motivate us to action.

You won’t hear lullabies being used for campaign songs. Why is that? The people who plan these things don’t want to soothe and calm us right now, they don’t want us to fall asleep---they want us to get up and vote and make phone calls and go door to door, to get out there and cheer for the guy with the best message and the best song.

“Music connects on so many levels,” says James Elliott, chairman of the songwriting program at Belmont University in Nashville. “There’s patriotism, there’s maybe an element of nostalgia, pride, and just a love for country and a love for fellow man.” Music can stimulate all of that, and politicians on both sides are well aware of it.

“Since the nation's founders rocked out to “God Save George Washington,” music has been an integral part of our political system,” writes Mike Burr for Prefix Online Magazine.  “Songs have drawn attention to problems in society, served as rallying points for the citizenry and opened discussions on topics that were otherwise unapproachable.”

In the past years, after “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” caught the attention of the nation in 1840, songs have become an important part of the campaign process. Most songs weren’t written specifically for the campaign---candidates just pick something they think expresses their message. Mike  Burr picks “This Land is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie as the most important patriotic song in our nation’s history. George H. Bush used that one in 1988. George W. Bush’s song pick didn’t work out so well: Tom Petty threatened to sue him if he didn’t stop using his song “I Won’t Back Down.”

Texas billionaire Ross Perot used the Patsy Cline hit “Crazy” for his campaign. Other political songs range from ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me” to Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” and of course, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” Campaign songs come from all genres, all political orientations, and all age groups.

The one thing they have in common is that they are definitely not lullabies. We’ll get back to that next time---after the election is over.

Sweet dreams,

Jane

Music In The Air

Music is in the air, if we stop to hear it. And in the street, and the cornfield. Listen to it, and then point it out to your children. I was just in downtown Chicago for a few days, downtown by the river, and the sounds of that great city are the symphony of modern civilization.

Sirens, of course---a fire truck, police car, and an ambulance each has its own musical pitch and rhythm. Honking, as annoying as it can be, is music. Notice the rhythm of trains on the tracks, and how they sound different far away and up close. Buses have a different rumbling sound than cars... If you can find the music in construction it becomes more tolerable—drilling, hammering, hollering.

Now back at home in Iowa, there are different pieces being played: birds, crickets, geese overhead, the wind, and being a small town, the whistle of the train night and day. In the suburbs there will be different sounds—lawnmowers, cars and motor cycles, kids playing outside. Then there’s the song of the ocean---waves, gulls, wind--like in the picture above of Cape Cod.

There is a wonderful book called “The Listening Book” by W. A. Mathieu. He describes the day when he discovered that there was more in the air than he’d ever heard before. “I remember the amazement in realizing--the more you listen, the more you hear . . . the delight in registering sounds that have always been present but that I’d never heard. The ecstasy of knowing this is a life-long experience, infinitely expandable, basically musical.”

Here is someone’s take on the musical sounds of New York City:



Enjoy the music of life that is all around, and teach your children to hear it too.

Sweet dreams,
Jane

The Best Possible Music Teacher

There’s a lot of research showing that when an older sibling teaches a younger sibling something, the learning is more effective than when taught by someone else. The older child also gains from teaching and learns more than he would have without doing this.

This makes perfect sense. First, we always learn more ourselves by teaching — breaking it down into steps, going slowly and thinking deeply about the subject, finding a way to explain it so that someone else with less experience will understand it.

And from the younger child’s side, another child is the best possible teacher (for better and sometimes worse — think of peer pressure in high school) because children are of the same species. Grown-ups are necessary but are just so... big.

This is true even for a new baby. Older siblings often get the first smiles from a baby brother or sister who must be thinking, “Ah, here is someone who’s more like me, but she can walk and talk so she must be really special.” And if the older sibling can cool it on the deliberately too-hard hugs, the life-long adoration to the point of idol-worship is assured.

Encourage your older child to show off his/her musical talents to baby brother or sister. Have them share their latest preschool songs often and with enthusiasm. Get the rhythm instruments out (or the pots and wooden spoons) and have a command performance in front of the front row bouncy seat. Put on music and have a toddler dance session to show that bouncy seat occupant what the potential is for expressing love of life.

This alone can be a huge boost in developing the younger child’s love of music and movement — anything that this all-powerful older sibling does is inevitably imitated, so why not have it be music?

Sweet dreams,
Jane

This is a great example of Sibling Singing: improvising the words (the best message possible: "I love her!") and tune, communicating perfectly with the baby. Notice how the baby is trying so hard to sing along!

A House of Music

Last week I met a young woman who grew up in a house that has a drum kit in the living room. It also has a keyboard in the living room. And a piano. And three guitars and a banjo.

Guess what she plays? All of them, constantly and enthusiastically. She and her musical sister have started an all-volunteer run music venue — The Beauty Shop — in our hometown, a place where any young musician can come and play, collaborate, take lessons, hang out, and enjoy easy access to the creative process.

This is a picture of my new living room. Your job is to imagine the grand piano in it, which, when I find the right one, will take up the whole thing.

Though my friends raise their eyebrows at this plan, it feels right to me because, as a child, I thought that having a piano in the dining room instead of a dining room table was perfectly normal. After all, we can (and do) eat anywhere but you can’t stick a grand piano just anywhere.

What does this have to do with you and your babies?

Access. Priorities. Access. Encouragement. Access.

Even if you don’t play an instrument yourself, I encourage you to have instruments around — real instruments or toy instruments — for your child to hear, touch, play, enjoy. Have something right there, in the way, that can create magical sounds when touched, struck, or plucked.

The brain loves to hear music, and grows stronger from it, but it loves making music even more. When engaged in the process of creating music, our brains comes the closest to what scientists call “whole brain functioning” — many parts of the brain talking to each other in the same language. And this is a very good thing.

It doesn’t have to be a Steinway. It just has to provide access to making sounds, and eventually those sounds will — I promise — turn into music.

Sweet Dreams,
Jane