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Year Four, Day 245: A Lesson in the Blues

 Hello Friends:

I have much good news!  First of all, the music center where I have been teaching for many, many years is rehiring!  

My life will soon be back on track!  Well, soon is relative. It will be a process. I will still be teaching online at home, until the City of Portland allows us to return to our building. At that point, we may still be teaching online, but I will have the option of teaching with better quality equipment, on better quality instruments, in a better lit space.  

Plus, I will be able to walk and commute and emerge from my cave on occasion!

To celebrate, I grabbed my weighted hoop and walked across the street to the park for a hoop workout.  I have not been hooping much. I still walk daily, and have been trying to make it into the gym but I have had extra Zma duties since my daughter and her husband's photography business has been super busy.

I am always a bit nervous to hoop in the park in the afternoon lest I run into oodles of people. Rather self conscious am I. But for some reason, putting my 58 year-old self out on Youtube for the whole world to see doesn't bother me. 

I really need to get back to daily hooping. I need to get back to daily lots of things. 

I feel like I am coming out of a depression.  Of the pandemic sort. It does help that I have an awesome man that I am dating. It doesn't help that it is a long distance relationship...

Which brings me to my other good news: I am actually taking a real live vacation at the beginning of September. 

To Vegas!

To visit my boyfriend!

Most excited am I! I have never been to Vegas. And more importantly, it has been many moons since I have had a boyfriend. :)

Life is definitely looking up.

It has been challenging working from home. At first, I was quite thrilled to have the excuse not to go anywhere. It was like a gift of extra time.  I spent a lot of time, reading, watching television shows, walking in the park, and watching the news of the pandemic unfold.

As time dragged on however, I stopped watching the news. I merely check in with a few news sites daily for anything earth shaking. 

And I stopped watching tv.  

And all those projects I had in mind when we were first quarantined?  Like learning ukelele, learning to play in a different style on the piano (most notably blues and worship music), well that kind of fell by the wayside too.

And I thought it would be fun teaching online. It is not horrible. But the internet signal is not so strong in my basement room.  The audio is often distorted. I have been able to teach, and many of my students are actually thriving, especially my intermediate and more advanced students.  It is really challenging to teach the beginners. They need me there.  And to be honest, this introvert is really missing people contact.  

Maybe I am not such a hermit after all!  

This week I had a revelation from one of my older students. I'll call her "B". She just graduated from high school in June.  Of course, she wasn't able to attend the ceremony with the pandemic in full swing. She had been sharing her college plans with me all year. She was accepted to several universities all over the country. 

But with the current climate of Covid-19, she and her parents have decided to delay college for a year. She will take some classes online from PCC and prepare for next year.

When we signed onto Skype this week, her hair was wild, and her eyes heavy.  Immediately, I was concerned.  Long ago, I told myself that my relationship with my students was to always be more important than the subject matter.  I have had lessons over the years where students and I just talked about whatever was going on in their lives. Sometimes for the whole lesson!

And that is what I did with B this week. We talked the whole lesson. She told me straight up she had not practiced at all. She sighed heavily.

I asked her what was going on.

"I'm depressed", she said bluntly.  She and I had talked about depression before. I shared with her some of my struggles with the blues.

"I'm also just very lonely", she said.  She sounded like she was choking back tears. She told me how she missed her friends and all her former activities.

"Also, Portland is getting so scary", she said. "Every night we hear noises like loud firecrackes, guns and bombs. It sounds like a war".

My heart went out to this very perceptive young lady. I have known her and her family since she was a toddler. She started taking lessons about 5 years ago. Piano has always been a side interest of hers. But we have a nice teacher-student friendship.

We commiserated for a bit. It felt good to talk to her.  Near the end of the lesson, I told her if she was burned out on traditional piano lessons, we could try something new.  I pointed to my ukelele hanging on the wall behind my piano.  I asked her if she was interested in ukelele. She said she was. I told her if her parents would buy her one, I could teach her. I have enough basic knowledge of the instrument as well as over 50 years of music reading experience. Plus, it would give me incentive to practice too!

She also admitted she didn't like practicing the piano in front of her parents, who stayed up quite late.  The piano was in the living room. She would put on headphones when they were there watching television, but she could feel their presence.

This made me laugh. I told her I didn't like to practice when there were people around either! I suggested they pick up a keyboard for her room. She likes to play late at night, and sometimes learn tunes by ear, improvise and compose.  She was excited by that.

Since our time was over, I suggested she get out a piece of paper and a pen. I told her to make a list of all the positive things she could do to lift her up.  She had quite a list! I told her also, that when I have the blues, I like to just immerse myself in it!  Listen to the blues, play the blues, read a dark novel. 

I had taught "B" the blues scale years ago.  She liked the idea of playing the blues when she had the blues!

I told her that I didn't like watching tv much lately, because I wasn't interested in anything.  That's when she asked me if I liked Korean drama! I had never watched Korean drama, I admitted. She asked if I like romance. 

At this point in my life, I thought to myself, yes I do!  So she is making me a list of Korean Romantic shows to watch. She's including Japanese and Chinese, but she said that she likes Korean best.

She also to me she likes to listen to "Low-Fi" when she reads.  

I asked her if that was a station.

"It's a genre of music", she replied.

I had not idea "B" even knew the word genre. She must have  a very good teacher.

I felt like a good teacher after our "lesson". No, we didn't learn a lick of piano. But we contributed to each other's well being.  And I think that is much more important.

There will always be another music lesson. But to help pull someone out of the abyss? That is priceless!

Happy Saturday Friends!

Talk soon.

Love,


Zita


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