The menagerie

I live near the Place des Vosges in central Paris. I’ve visited it more than three thousand times over the decades. It’s a big part of my daily life, my creative life, my married life, my life. History, architecture, nature, literature; birds, trees, branches, leaves, flowers, grass; fountains, water, weather, sky, rain, snow. And humans, many! Adults and children, visitors, groups of tourists, joggers; park workers, gardeners, cleaners; musicians, sometimes just practicing and occasionally busking. It’s a whole world.

We zoom in and we see a small child, maybe three years old, entering the park and rushing toward one of the four fountains, an adult rushing behind to make sure the child doesn’t drown. And we zoom in further, and we see the child’s face looking at the water spouting from the mouths of stone lions: sixteen lions arrayed symmetrically around a circle. In the child’s face, sheer wonderment, sheer delight.

The park is magic. The fountain is magic. The stone lion is magic. Water is magic. Everything is alive, beautiful, strange, sometimes threatening, often funny, and always meaningful. Children are unstoppably attracted to the fountain. But also to leaves on the ground, blades of grass, pigeons, sticks, pebbles, grains of sand.

Children are fantastically good at exploring and discovering, and also at playing, and also at teaching themselves how to play, how to dig holes, how to transport buckets of water from the fountain to the sandbox, how to walk and run, how to play ball, how to talk to other children be they friends or foes, how to get attention from their parents, how to evade their parents’ unwanted attention.

Warning! Here comes what appears to be a change in subject!

At home my wife and I keep a whole menagerie of stuffed toys. Molly the duck in a dress; Max the tiger; Maya the lioness; Nadia the cub, Enescu the baby elephant. Some people have children, others have pets; my wife and I limit ourselves to stuffed toys. Don’t you understand? They’re alive! They’re beautiful! They’re funny and meaningful! We tell ourselves stories triggered by Molly or Enescu (named after a great musician who’s a source of inspiration to me) or Nadia (Boulanger, or course). I received Molly as a gift when I taught a workshop in London several years ago. I was traveling with just a backpack, and after the workshop I headed straight to the Eurostar station. My backpack was too full to accommodate Molly, so I placed her inside my coat, her head sticking out and pushing gently against my throat and jaw, caressing me and helping me orient myself in space. Molly, a gift from Claire and Kamal; Molly, a memory from London; Molly, a traveling companion; Molly, a delightful embodiment of magic and wonderment; Molly, teaching me not to worry about what people will think when they see me wearing her in public, so to speak, as an adornment of my adult self.

Max the tiger is kinda floppy. He likes it when I grab him by the neck and get him to shake his head as if to drums that only he and I can hear. Maya the lioness is (1) extremely cute, (2) very expressive, and (3) soft and cuddly and fluffy and soft and cuddly. To touch her, to squeeze her, to press her against your face is to enhance your perception of the physical world, the world of sensations and gradations, of textures, forms and shapes, volumes, weight or the lack of weight. Squeezing a stuffed lion makes you sensitive and smart. And it makes you wanna cry a little from time to time.

By the fountain, I interviewed an imaginary child, a spokesperson for all children: “The lion is my friend. He talks to me. He’s called Leo Stinkybreath.” This is the child’s existence, and to lose touch with your own inner child is a loss with tragic consequences. All adults should have one or three or twelve stuffed toys in their homes and offices. Your birthday is coming up? Stuffed toy. You received a new book contract? Stuffed toy, celebration. Christmas? Stuffed toy. Lonely rainy Friday? Stuffed toy, tenderness, healing. You have no reason to go get a stuffed toy? That’s the very reason why you should go get one.

 ©2024, Pedro de Alcantara

Learning & Healing

Every process is a learning, and every learning is a healing. I know, I know; this is too absolute a statement, starting as it does with “every.” Every statement that starts with “every” is too absolute, therefore not true.

We start again: Some creative processes involve a lot of learning, and through the learning you get to feel good about yourself and about other people.

I recently spent a day recording four tracks of contemporary music for a CD project led by my friend Katharine Rawdon. An American flutist, composer, and improviser, Katharine has lived long enough in Lisbon to have become a Portuguese citizen. We recorded in Coimbra, a monumental city in the Portuguese heartland and the home of a great university first established in 1290. Yep, just short of a thousand years ago.

From any one fact we can draw connections to any other fact, usually through a hyperlinking sequence that only takes a handful of steps.

Coimbra >> university >> tradition and innovation.

An American in Lisbon >> A Night in Tunisia >> Casablanca.

Katharine >> Catherine of Aragon >> Sergio Aragonés >> MAD Magazine.

The creative process thrives on hyperlinking, even though hyperlinking gone wrong isn’t that different from paranoid psychosis, schizophrenia, and playing the cello upside down. It’s useful to know when and how to hyperlink, and when and how to wear a lead helmet to protect your brain from hyperlinking.

Lead helmet >> Helmut Kohl >> Kohlka Kola >> “Oh Calcutta!”

Katharine’s CD project contains about 12 pieces; my contribution to the program is partial. We recorded a piece of mine that I wrote ten years ago. Originally for voice and piano, on this CD “Disconsonance” will live in a gorgeous version for bass flute and piano, with me playing the piano. Katharine also wrote a bass-flute and piano piece, just as gorgeous: “Cerulean Voyage.” We also recorded Cindy McTee’s “Stepping Out,” for flute and claves (with me as the newborn clavista). Most importantly, we grappled with “Road to Mathura,” a piece that Katharine wrote for the two of us in which I have to sing, play the cello, and play percussion simultaneously, in 7/4 time, with polyrhythms and pizzicato and col legno and sul tasto and three-against-four and everyone-against-me. Blisters and calluses, fingers and brains, ketchup and mustard.

In advance of the recording, Katharine flew to Paris a few times for us to practice and rehearse. Together we tweaked the various compositions, helped each other learn our parts, talked, laughed, had dinner, laughed. The thing is, I couldn’t play any of those compositions perfectly, and I couldn’t play the blisters-and-calluses festival with any semblance of precision, comfort, mastery, inspiration, delicacy, intelligence, or sang-froid.

Sang-froid >> reptile >> swamp >> methane >> stink.

But, hey, we rehearsed, I practiced, I practiced some more, I got the hang of a couple of sections in the complicated piece, I practiced lots more and evermore, and by the time of the recording I didn’t embarrass my late mother, may she rest in peace wearing earplugs.

There was a week’s period immediately before the recording during which I didn’t play the cello, and I didn’t even have my cello with me. I recorded on Katharine’s daughter’s cello, and I only got the borrowed cello the day before the recording. Beforehand I gave a workshop in Porto, then I spent a few days in Matosinhos, a beach town right next to Porto. I worried a bit about the blisters and calluses that I had built up in Paris. A well-placed callus somewhere in your left thumb really helps you pluck those thick cello strings. A week without practicing, and your fingertips become as tender as the rear end of a baboon.

Baboon >> buffoon.

I went to a hardware store in Matosinhos, a couple of blocks from the AirBnb I had rented with my wife Alexis. Two ladies worked there, mother and adult daughter. I explained my predicament to the daughter.

“I’m a cellist, I’m preparing to record a CD in which I have to pluck the strings, and I need to build up some calluses. Do you have some bit of wire or something that resembles a string that I can pluck until I have a blister, and until the blister becomes a callus?”

“Let me think.” She went looking here and there, and she came back with a potato peeler. “Maybe you can caress the blade.” Sure, sure.

My wife was with me. She too had an idea. “How about sandpaper? You could rub sandpaper and build some resistance.”

I bought the peeler and a sheet of thick sandpaper. At the checkout, mother and daughter started expressing themselves. The daughter said, “Potatoes and carrots,” and air-peeled some. The mother said, “I only do potatoes. I’m left-handed.” I was certain that, as a child in conservative Portugal, she had been forced to write with her right hand, the left tied behind her back. I asked her about it, and she confirmed it. “I write with the right hand, but I can also write with the left.” I asked her to show me, by writing “Pedro de Alcantara” down on her notepad, with the right and the left hands in turn. She got into it. Both versions were legible. I asked her, “When you’re mad with your daughter, do you slap her with the right or with the left hand?” “The left, of course,” she said, laughing.

At home I rubbed my left thumb on the sandpaper. Soon it became red and raw, like a wound. My worry about the recording went up a notch. “Maybe the wound will be better by the time of the recording,” my wife said, her voice melding hope and apprehension.

 Baboon >> good afternoon >> go home soon.

The hardware store, the mother and daughter, my wife’s devotion, my workshop in Porto, the daily round of beach walks and city explorations in Matosinhos, the fresh foods; Katharine Rawdon’s talent and friendship, our shared love of music, our Paris rehearsals, our laughing together: the recording went extremely well.

The process is a learning, and the learning is a healing. Uncertainty and risk-taking, preparation and humor, pacing and rhythm, trust and faith, sandpaper and potato peeler. Take the lead helmet off and you’ll solve all your problems.

©2023, Pedro de Alcantara

Let me count the ways

There are a thousand ways to hurt, and a thousand ways to heal.

It hurts to twist your ankle. You can heal it by resting, by going to a physiotherapist or an osteopath, by talking about your ankle and what it is like to be in pain. You can accelerate the healing by making jokes about your ankle and your hurt—that is, jokes about yourself. Recent studies have shown that laughing feels good. (These studies, however, are scientifically suspect as they were performed without a control group.)

The science on this is irrefutable.

It hurts to get a paper cut on your finger. It’s the typical “annoying” hurt. It distracts you from writing and typing and drawing and cooking and playing the piano. Even though it’s a tiny cut, practically invisible, it hurts nevertheless. Also, besides how annoying the cut is, you have to deal with how annoyed you are with yourself for having being inattentive and cutting yourself for no good reason. There’s a word in Yiddish for what you are when you cut your finger for no good reason: a nogoodreasonnik. And there’s another word in Yiddish for people who believe everything they’re told: a shmoo-moo-moo, colloquially referred to as a Moo-nik.

It hurts to lose a lover. It’s not the same type and level of pain as a paper cut. It takes longer to heal, and the process is more elaborate. While lover-less, you can go to Healing School and learn about Hurting and Healing from friends, from family members, from movies and books and podcasts, and from the sunset. Strangely, the Yiddish word for sunset isn’t sunsetnik. Instead, it’s זונ - ונטערגאַנג (pronounced “zun - untergang”).

It hurts to be told that you have nothing to say, or that you have no voice, or that you really should think twice before opening your mouth again. It heals to speak, shout, sing, howl, and meow. Did you know that in Yiddish a cat is called a meownik?

It hurts to be in an upside-down world of contagion and confinement. It hurts not to work and not to earn a living. It hurts not to travel, not to go outside, not to visit the street markets, not to rehearse and improvise with cherished colleagues. It hurts to find out that a friend is terribly ill, and to feel that you can’t do anything to help. It hurts not to know how things will turn out. Uncertainty quickly becomes a sort of certainty: Things will never be okay again. This certainty is very, very painful. Although it isn’t easy to achieve, it might heal (a little) to walk from the absoluteness of certainty and back to uncertainty, to its inherent flexibility, its untold possibilities:

In truth, I don’t know how things will turn out.

Everything has a negative and a positive charge. The positive charge of demagoguery, for instance, is our heightened conscience of the value of citizenship, of its rights and duties, and also its joys. The positive charge of confinement is reflection and meditation, among many other valuable actions. The positive charge of a worldwide catastrophe is solidarity, generosity, mutual support, the acknowledgement that we are in this together, we have always been together, and we’ll always be together. I mean, all of us: the parent and the child, the demagogue and the citizen, the nogoodreasonnik and the meownik, the sunrise and the sunset.

Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget: there are a thousand ways to heal.

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©2020, Pedro de Alcantara

Unbutton, Ye!

I often feel like a 300-pound man, ready to burst into tears of joy.

Let me explain.

About five years ago I started taking piano lessons. I’m a highly trained and experienced classical musician, but most of my training was directed toward the cello (plus music history, theory and analysis, ear training, and all the rest). Piano, not so much. Decades ago I had to take “secondary piano” in college, meaning basic training for non-piano majors. Much to my regret, the “secondary” part of it dominated my mind back then, and I paid the price. Until recently, my piano playing was awkward, insufficient, upside-down, banana-peel, and I-want-my-mommy.

Discover & share this Banana GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

I have a wonderful piano teacher, my friend and brother Alexandre Mion. Besides the helpful lessons Alexandre has given me these past five years, I’ve also embarked on a project of my own: the development of a new piano method, designed to help a pianist—any pianist—connect with the Creative Source and become happy and healthy.

A concert pianist listening to my piano playing might think that I’m a hopeless banana-peel case. “You ain’t no Horowitz,” he or she’ll think. But I’m playing so much better than five years ago that I can barely explain how I feel about it. The 300-pound man used to weight 600 pounds. He’s still overweight and handicapped, but, wow! He’s made so much progress! He feels so much better! He’s, like, 50% unburdened! That’s a lot! Let’s shed tears of joy!

I'm done

Believe it or not, this post isn’t about my piano playing, or my piano method in development. It’s about the archetypal voyage from hurting to healing.

Let’s quote, or misquote, or paraphrase, or invent a saying, and let’s attribute it to Gustave Flaubert. “If you have survived your adolescence, you have a story to tell.” Now let’s imagine a silly-ass Zen teacher re-thinking our dear Flaubert. “If you were born, you’re hurting. Life is the hurt, and life is the healing.”

We’re all trying to figure it out, to feel good or to feel better, to shed if not pounds then resentments. Life is challenging but wonderful, wonderful but challenging. If life weren’t challenging, the following people would be out of their jobs: doctors, osteopaths, priests, psychoanalysts, nurses, preachers, surgeons, firemen, cops, lawyers, judges, prison wardens, and bakers.

The bakers: that was a joke, by the way.

The life voyage from hurting to healing is universal in its need and importance and urgency, but no two people travel in the same way. Do your brother and your sister mirror your journey? Nah. You’ve been diverging for half a century. Your stuff is unique to you, and that’s cause for celebration! Call the bakers and order a cake, gluten-free and sugar-free if you know what’s good for you.

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In healing, the symbolic dimension is often stronger than the material dimension. Many years ago, I took some ballroom dance classes. A Canadian woman showed up and participated from time to time. She was a pursed-lips blonde in a man’s button-down white shirt. To my eyes, she seemed to be trying to hold it all in, afraid of looking good, afraid of the swing of life. One day in the middle of class, she unbuttoned her collar. To my eyes, it was a really big deal, as close to a striptease as she could get at that point—or ever. Healing is the healing that’s going to happen, to jerry-rig an expression. “Less fear and more love, to the extent that you can.”

It’s not possible to know what the other person is thinking and feeling, where she comes from, how she got to be the way she is. “I know exactly what you’re going through.” No, you don’t! “What you’re going through resonates with me.” Okay, that’s plausible. I may be totally wrong about that Canadian woman, but the unbuttoning—this was more than 25 years ago—has stayed in my psyche as a meaningful moment, on account of its symbolic power.

Each hurt is individual. And each healing is individual, too. For some people, piano lessons heal. For others, piano lessons hurt. For some, healing comes from doing something; for others, from stopping something. A dear person in my inner circle closed a business he had spent 20 years building up, and struggling with. Difficult as it was, the closing—which was both a letting go and an abandoning—was part of a healing processes.

When you engage in the healing process, you don’t know what the results will be. Closing a business, opening a business? Unbuttoned shirt collar? Sex-change operation? Learning to smile? It isn’t possible to know in advance. This is one of the reasons we often hesitate to get started on the healing journey: fear of the unknown. It takes courage.

The journey is akin to martial-arts training: a battle of wills between the old and the new, the bruise and the Band-Aid, the fear and the hope. As Gustave Flaubert famously didn’t say, “We’re all in it. We might as well go all in.”

Discover & share this Banana GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

 ©2018, Pedro de Alcantara