My apologies to anyone who got to this post early while it was still a difficult read/editorial nightmare. Blogger, in all of it's greatness, with it's new "autodraft save" feature, published the post while it was still it's in very messy rough draft stage. It's still not perfect a perfect post...they never are...but here ya' go:
Ages ago, I wrote about MyFavoriteKid starting guitar lessons. Being that his dad (my ex) is a bass player and was responsible for buying MyFK the guitar, the lessons were supposed to have been a father/son thing. Of course, it only took about a week before I got roped into being the one who did all of the shuttling to and from class. Since it was only a 30 minutes lesson, there was no point in my trying to go anywhere, so I ended up hanging out on the studio couch during MyFK's time there, listening and usually knitting (yes, I still knit...I'll get to that one of these days). I am so glad it worked out that I got to be there for those lessons, because in doing so, I got to learn a few things myself, and I got to meet one really awesome dude.
Doug is amazing. Besides being an extremely talented musician, he's also an extraordinary teacher. I am well aware that just because someone can do something well or is an expert in their field, this does not mean that they can teach it well. Teaching requires an entirely different skillset, and in my (not so humble) opinion, it takes an even additional skillset to be able to teach to a multi-level student base...and then an even different set of skills to be able to teach to kids. Well, Doug has proven himself beyond capable of doing all of these things.
Week after week I sat there doing the knitting-and-eavesdropping-trying-to-be-invisible-even-though-I'm-sitting-right-here thing, and was consistently amazed at what I saw. Doug had this way of talking to MyFk that wasn't like he was talking to a kid, it was like he was talking to another musician. He never got frustrated with MyFK when he had to repeat things a kajillion times (which was often), but didn't let MyFK off the hook, either. He just kept at things until they were picked up.
One of my favorite Doug moments came while MyFk was learning a basic blues riff. Doug was jamming along with him, and every time MyFK missed a beat, his inclination would be to start over a the beginning. Doug just kept on playing and yelled out, "Time waits for no one, my friend!" I totally cracked up at that.
The other thing I'd hear often during lessons was Doug saying, "I saw that!" (or some version of that) which he would say every time MyFK would make a mistake, but try (and even sometimes succeed) at making a quick recovery. Doug never said it in a nitpicky way, though. For me, when I am learning something new, and I get corrections like that from the person that teaching me, I feel like the teacher is present, I feel like I am seen, and I feel like the bar is being raised high for me to do my absolute best without skating by....but I feel supported by my teacher at the same time.
Have y'all noticed yet that there is a lot of "past tense" going on here in this post??
Well, as it turns out, Doug has become extremely busy on a professional level. A few weeks back, he decided to retire from teaching privately. MyFK was incredibly sad. So was I actually, and my sadness sort of snuck up on me...I mean, he's not my teacher...but after a little checking in with myself, I realized that I was getting something from Doug while sitting in those lessons, too.
Anyhow.
Doug popped me an email last week to let us know that he would be performing at Jemstock. I had to surf around a bit to figure out what the hell a Jemstock was, but as it turns out, this year it was to be an event celebrating the 20 year relationship between Ibanez guitars and one of their biggest endorsees, Steve Vai.
Now, this was going to be a BIG DEAL for me. Back in the days of two-legs, I choreographed multiple solo performances for myself that included Mr.Vai's music. I like to call my style fo choreography "Bellydance as Ritual Performance." Most of my solos are created to honor a major life transition, and as I result of processing my life through movement in this way, I develop a pretty deep relationship with the music I work with. The solos with Steve Vai's music include my celebrating my 30th birthday and being pregnant with MyFk, grieving the loss of a subsequent pregnancy, and the celebration of my graduation from culinary school.
Needless to say, I was damn excited about the notion of having an autograph moment with someone whose art has had such a tremendous impact on me. I really wanted to let him know that, and thank him. I spent the drive over to the event thinking about how on earth I'd ever be able to explain my sincere thanks succinctly in the 17 seconds of autograph time that I'd probably have with him (especially since, as we all know, I'm prone to rambling). I am also prone to getting completely starstruck and stupid, which I prove time and time again, the last big case of that happening at the YarnHarlot's book signing (I become such a dufus when I have brushes with greatness). I was also trying to be a good mommy about this....I didn't want to suck up the 17 seconds or myself, because helloooo...the whole reason or going to this thing in the first place was for MyFK to check out the event, and if he was going to meet Steve Vai, I needed to make sure he got to have his own brush with fame (I still kinda hogged it though).
Great. So now I'm realizing that I probably need to express my thanks in under 4 seconds. Hrmph. Realizing this, I began to fret. Which I suppose is a bit of a pun.
As I kept on driving to the event, I found myself thinking about the people that came up to talk to me after all of the Dandelion Dancetheater shows during the tour last summer (one-legged dancing). There were quite a few people that wanted to share with me their thoughts and feelings about what they had just witnessed...and I appreciated knowing that my dancing impacted people....but there were a few folks that actually took the time to write to me about what seeing the work had brought up for them. I was really blown away that people would actually take the time to put their feelings on paper and gift it to me. The written word is just that special to me.
So there I was, driving to Jemstock, and I realized that I needed to give a thank you card to Steve Vai. I pulled off the road, bought a blank card, and took a few minutes during a break in the day, to write a thank you card to him.. I gave it to him, and then he signed the CD that I did all of my dancing from.
awwww, loooook....my very own personal Hallmark/Kodak moment
I fully blame the photographer (MyFk) for how crappy I look in this photo, but it's the only shot he got, so whatchyagonnado
I have no idea if Steve Vai will actually ever read the card or not. I kind of have this vision of it getting being left behind on the table or lost in the shuffle or completely forgotten about...but whatever. It really feels good all on its own just having written it and passing it along.
The big kick of the day though, was seeing Doug play. I hadn't seen him actually perform yet. I'd only seen him noodling around and riffing over my son's basic rythyms during lessons, and a few snips of his instructional dvds. Seeing him live totally exceeded my expectations.
He rocked.
sorry, I'm not geeky enough to make one of those tiled photo collages, and I couldn't pick which photo I liked best
After Doug's set, some guys hanging out near us were talking about how blown away they were by him, and one of them turned and asked MyFK if he played guitar and if he liked the set he'd just seen. I can't tell you how proud MyFK was to be able to say to the guys, "He's my teacher!" and watch their jaws kind of fall open a bit with envy.
I'm hoping Doug has the greatest of success with this next phase of his career (he's touring with Michael Schenker, and I think he's got lots of studio work, instructional peformances, endorsements, and lord only knows what else). I wish him nothing but the best. But I'm crossing my fingers that maybe some day his dust will settle and he'll resume teaching. Even if it's just the occasional lesson. We'd totally settle for scraps.
Sheeit, if he did, you might even see me picking up a guitar to see if I could get anything by osmosis ;-)
