RÉSERVÉ/VOORBEHOUDEN

Het gaat niet ja het gaat wel maar
het kan niet ja het kan wel maar
het mag niet ja het mag wel maar
men heeft hier niet het recht men is
degene die hier staat en die dit zegt.

Het plakt zo nee het plakt niet maar
het schuift zo nee het schuift niet maar
het zakt misschien wel weg en wie zakt
mee. En zelfs niet even gaat het want
men weet hoe even werkt in levens nee?

Joke van Leeuwen

Uit: Laatste lezers. Gedichten. Amsterdam, 1994.

I figured that if I want to enjoy singing once more, I could do a number
of things:
- wait until I'm 100 and try again, hoping for a new and improved Maaike with a smashing voice.
- decide that I'm going to have fun while singing and stick to that decision, no matter what.

I tried option number two. To make things easier, I traced back my steps to my last known point of genuine, spontaneous fun in singing, and I ended up back in my student years where I sang in a large choir with a big orchestra. Thinking that this may be a good basis to find back fun, I looked for a similar situation in the present, and found a 'scratch' performance of Verdi's Requiem. In a such a performance, lots of experienced singers come together for one day, rehearse a piece, and perform it at night, accompanied by a professional orchestra and soloists. This sounded ideal, because you don't have to spend ages with people that don't know the score; you can hit the ground running, as it were.

So, I set off, armed with a bag of liquorice, just in case. And a resolution: to hell with my intellectual understanding of AT, singing
lessons, Chi Gong, and supposedly right and wrong. If it's good, it will come. Just let it, give it a chance to manifest itself.

But I didn't need the liquorice. Amazingly, I managed to sing for 8 hours at a stretch, with a minimum amount of breaks, without any pain, just a slight trace of hoarseness which I've always had after intensive use of my voice, and which disappeared again during the breaks. Even more, with 50 sopranos around me and no prospect of having to sing any solo parts, I've used parts of my voice that were completely new and surprising to me. Definitely no switch to the altos for Maaike sometime soon :-) And it was lovely to sing with a proper orchestra again, I really, really enjoyed myself.

It's good to have walked the path that I've been on the last few months; it's made some things very clear to me. Like appreciating the place I came from :-)

Some time ago, at a friend's place, I sat on a Stokke Variable - a wobbly knee chair that sat like a charm; it was one of the first chairs ever that I didn't want to get out of.



The designer, Peter Opsvik from Norway, has done lots of thinking about sitting for more than 30 years already. On his website, he tells about his views and thoughts on sitting, and why moving and variation are important.

So, I browsed the internet a bit, and last week, I found a Stokke Thatsit (or Oposit, I'm not sure, it has the Oposit frame, but the Thatsit backrest) on Ebay. It's a bit like the Variable, in that it has the wobbly, rocking chair bit, but it also has a cross-shaped backrest so that you can lean back or put your arms somewhere.



Sitting in this chair is great fun; I move all the time: rocking, leaning back every once in a while, tilting forward, and each position I end up in feels good, so I don't shift that often. Even though it has a backrest, I don't feel inclined to use it very much. To my surprise, I can even sit on it for longer periods of time, without slumping, feeling tired of sustaining myself, or getting a stiff lower back.

I totally fell for this chair; first thing I'm going to do on monday morning is ask my manager for a Thatsit in my office. If I have to sit behind a computer for eight hours a day anyway, I might as well enjoy it.

So I bought a new bike yesterday. I love the design and the green color, and the fact that I can adjust almost everything: saddle, steer hight and angle, front and back suspension (I mean, suspension. On a bike!) Riding it feels like riding a lightweight tank, very solid and comfortable. The steer is quite high, so when I ride, I sit completely straight up. I guess that if I get bored with watching the surroundings, I could do some really nice 'hands on the back of the chair' while riding.

This is it, I don't believe in coincidence anymore! I've been quite restless this weekend, checking the internet for a holiday of some sorts, preferrably in combination with AT. I was thinking of flying to Bristol, but wasn't sure whether I'd like it. Just returned home from work and lo & behold: a letter from Switserland with an announcement of a sequel to the Engelberg workshop. Cool!

"Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off."

Not some ancient sage, but good old Terry Pratchett in Small Gods.

This is a picture I took in Bristol some time ago. It's a nice reminder of where up is :-)

It's funny, last week, I felt something was different, and I couldn't determine what it was. Until yesterday, when I realised that my shoulder has been pretty much painfree for over a week now. It still feels a bit stiff occassionally, and I still notice that it's there, but it has improved so much compared to two months ago.

I had a non-singing lesson yesterday. I explained to the teacher that I wanted to find back my pleasure in singing, and that I didn't want to learn how to sing, but how to express myself. She responded very positively; we started out with a very simple Irish folk tune, and I'm not supposed to sing it, only producing some sound and investigating what happens inside.

So I'm still not singing :-)

Franis Engel sent this e-mail to the Alextech list:

No one person can be all of what the Alexander
Technique is; all of us are only where we are at the
time we are there. That's why a chronicle such as the
one you've created and maintain is so important - you
can see the progress in yourself by reading the
expression of your experiences over years of time. You
can remember where you were by re-experiencing
yourself as you did the writing that you are reading -
a wonderful paradox of perspective.

...And a valuable blog it is because it has 16 months
of entries, many months having multiple entries!

If you think about it, for most people, once a week or
two is gone it's difficult to remember what they did
in the past with any clarity - people mostly remember
what they thought, or the story of how they told it to
someone instead of the blow-by-blow origins of the
experience. Observation takes practice - and that's
what journaling does. In order to write something, you
practice at observing yourself and your experiences
and get to decide what you think about them.

AT and what happens as you learn is often quite
gradual and only sometimes dramatic; just as the
memory of pain will quickly disappear, the kinesthetic
memory of discoveries of the past that have become
integrated become also easily taken for granted.
That's why journaling your experience can only
contribute to the discovery of the people who happen
on your blog. In a blog such as yours, one person's
experience can represent a sample of the universal
experience of anyone who is learning via Alexander
lessons. That you are honest about your particular
situation of supposedly "being a slow learner" when it
comes to AT only serves others who come to read what
you have written.

I'd recommend to the list to further check out this
blog in detail. If you're an AT teacher, it's at least
practical to send your students to this blog to read
and comment on the entries and bring their comments
back to you.

I mean, wow, what can I say...I'll just stick to some more impressed silence :-)