Friday August 27, 2010 – Weekend at CCMAC: Travel and Session #1
The class description on the Copper Colored Mountain Arts Center website read as follows:
This Moment: Exploring the interface of music and mindfulness.I was up bright and early in Seattle. My ride to the airport arrived right on time. No problems at the airport, and everything fit in carry-on. Arrived Detroit a little early. RV (aka, I have come to learn, “Hootie”) met me out front and we made the 45ish minute drive to the Ann Arbor vicinity. Off the interstate, onto some state roads and then a dirt road, and Copper Colored Mountain Arts Center.
Weekend Workshop, August 27th-29th
Open to musicians and non-musicians alike. We will use Musical exercises integrating mindfulness and rhythm to create a dynamic space, deepening the connection between awareness and the joy of music. Using instruments, clapping, boomwhackers and group circulation techniques, we will explore the relationship of attention, rhythm and group interaction. Instructed by Curt Golden.
Friday August 27th, 7:00pm Free Introductory Evening
Saturday August 28th, 9:30am-12:00pm, 2:00-4:30pm, 7:00pm-?
Sunday August 29th, 2:00pm-4:00pm
Summer in the Midwest; hot and humid. My room is a small office in one of the houses, converted for guests. I have a lovely view of the grounds. The buildings are air conditioned. Whew. I share supper with the residents of the house at 6pm, keeping it light since 7pm is showtime.
Session #1 (of 5) was free and open to the public. Most of the participants would be taking part in the entire weekend, but an unknown number might show up just for this session. So my challenge was to present, in about 90 minutes, material that would set the weekend in motion, while being a coherent whole for those who would not be returning. I talked a little about my background and introduced the them of working with attention. A little more PT Barnum/razzle dazzle, perhaps, than I might have unleashed at the first session had it not been for the visitors. Introduced circulation with some simple forms using hand claps, pushing the complexity up to the edge of the available attention. We did several iterations of an exercise circulating our names, as well as the names of those sitting to our left and right. This not only serves as a way of introducing ourselves, but also injects a bit of levity into a proceeding that can sometimes become a little self-consciously serious, and introduces a necessary element of play into the way we approach the challenges.
At this point, the dramatic introduction of the boomwhackers. I learned this trick from watching Sandra and Rob; you walk into the center of the circle, open the bag and unceremoniously dump 50 colored and tuned pvc tubes onto the floor, making a raucous clatter that never fails to elicit smiles all around, even if you know it is coming (at least that has been my experience). I invited everyone to choose the two tubes that attracted them, and we launched into some more challenging circulation work.
Wrapped the session up at about 8:30, introducing a couple bars of specific rhythm to be memorized by those taking part in the entire weekend. This will be a thread we will follow, adding more bars each session until (hopefully) it can be all put together by the closing meeting. It is clear to me that except for a couple of guitarists known to me, the team is a combination of non-musicians and people who have begun studying hand drumming. That makes boomwhackers the closest we will get to working with melody or harmony. Changing harmonic elements is one way to inject variety into repeated exercises, but that little ploy is not going to be available to me this weekend. Most of the people taking part in the weekend seem to be part of this community, which means they have an established practice, and that will likely be what makes this work.
In that slightly psychotic jet-lagged state; very tired from a long day of travel and work, but in a time zone where it is later than my internal clock will acknowledge, I went back to my room and fell into a longish nap. Got up long enough to slip out to the kitchen for a midnight snack, then a quick wash-up and back to bed in earnest. This community does a one-hour silent meditation at 5:30am, and jet lag or no jet lag that hour is going to sneak up on me fast.
On to Day 2
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