What Teaching Piano Has Taught Me
An incomplete list
It’s okay to skip a boring song every so often
You really can learn something with just a half hour each week
Don’t forget to eat an afternoon snack if you’re going to work through the evening
Playing a duet with someone can make you feel like a rock star
Stop and listen
Every child contains deeply interesting and completely weird insights about the world
There is no better feeling than having a child want to share what they love most with you
If you’re mad, stop and stomp it out
Everyone loves stickers
Everyone can make music
Independently using your ring finger is a life long struggle
Your favorite song is someone else’s least favorite song
You really can learn on Zoom
Just play on the black keys and it’ll sound just fine
It is weird that music words are all in Italian
No practicing, no shame
There’s always next week
What I’m listening to
I enjoyed the recent season of the Prophetic Imagination Station, a podcast hosted by Krispin and D.L. Mayfield, for talking about such a niche piece of content: Christian romance. As someone who has read a shocking amount of Amish romances (I know some of you have to, don’t try to hide it) I enjoyed digging into just how weird and interesting and troubling Christian romance is. The current season of the podcast is exploring D.C. Talk’s album Jesus Freak and boy is there some unpacking happening there too. If you have an evangelical past or just are trying to make sense of all the baggage Christian culture has, you’ll appreciate the Mayfields as a guide.
What I’m listening to pt. 2
What life looks like
I recently found (again) in my inbox a mostly unhinged email I had sent myself in April that simply said “Rice krispie treats.” Why did it say this? Because I really wanted to make rice krispie treats. Dear reader, I have made this top-tier dessert since then, but I cannot bear to delete this email because every time I see it I am reminded that I do, indeed, want to make rice krispie treats again.1
Also someday I will migrate from sending weird emails to myself to using the iPhone notes app like I should. Today, however, is not that day.
The spell check function has alerted me that it is krispies, not krispie. I also refuse to concede this point.