More of the Best of the Next Generation...

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 (2:10am)
More of the Best of the Next Generation...
One of my favorite things about teaching is having students who are like sponges. I can teach them the mechanics of what they need to be able to play their instruments... but they have the passion and the fire that inspires them to push forward and use that knowledge to create something beautiful or significant.

Rachel is someone like that. She wanted to be able to play worship music. She’s worked really hard to learn her chords and her strums and all that stuff. But more importantly, she’s internalized the songs and made them live for herself and the other’s she plays for. She’s only been playing for a little over a year but she has tons of songs memorized already.

More than anything I love the purity and the innocence of what she’s doing. In a world that tries to take music and warp it into something ugly, it’s beautiful to see it in such a pure form. It is such a gift for me to be able to see that. It’s my prayer that it always stays that way for her. When I was in 7th grade I began a relationship with God that was new and foreign to me. I was never raised around faith at all... quite the contrary. But the main reason I wanted to pick up the guitar and play it was to express something to God that I was having such a hard time expressing with words. I had a profound sense of gratitude and awareness that my life would never be the same. In Rachel I see myself at that age. The bottom line for me is that sure I love to rock n’ roll. I love to play rowdy music... but there is nothing I love as much as sitting alone with my guitar and doing exactly what Rachel is doing here. Welcome to a glimpse of what is best in my world.

Some Opening Thoughts On Christmas...

Sunday December 14, 2008 (11:39pm)
This has been sort of an interesting Christmas season for me. The economy and the resultant unexpected loss of students, and the recent due date of property taxes pretty much nixed any monetary celebration of Christmas this year. But that really hasn’t bothered me that much. When I went to pay the property taxes I found myself very thankful to be able to pay them one more time. All the recent upheaval with the economy has made me more committed than ever to work towards living more simply and being thankful for what we do have.

We live in a country with so much abundance. It’s easy to loose sight of that with the news blaring at us and the incessant advertising trying to convince us that our life will be less fulfilled without those new granite counter tops. I realized recently that one of the benefits (and pitfalls) of being self employed is that I’m always aware that we live in a world where very little is certain. There is no guarantee that our money and health, relationships and employment will remain the same. I’ve found myself turning off the news more, and trying to be in the moment with my husband, my friends, and my students.

Traditionally Christmas is a tough time of year for me. I’ve had to learn ways of dealing with it other than just slipping into depression. To celebrate the season in a more meaningful way I decided it would be fun to do something special for my students. I’ve been video taping them for the least week and will continue this week. Instead of doing one of those dreadful recitals that kids dread and parents hate finding time for right before Christmas, I’m putting their videos on a special youtube page that can be found at lindabstudents You’ll find a wacky bunch of videos... some by people who’ve only been playing their instruments for a few weeks. What I’ve loved about it is how they just enjoy playing for the joy of it. All of them played a simple version of smoke on the water... Ken is editing them together into a wacky video Christmas card that will be up later this week. I’ll start putting up some videos here too for you to check out. I dare ya to throw yourself into something like these students. They always inspire me. When I post the videos I’ll post a little about them too.
In the mean time, in the midst of all the running arounding, I’m thankful again for a place to live, family and friends who love me, a job that lets me be a part of so many kids lives to learn from them, and the tender care of a loving God who chose to come be part of our world. Merry Christmas.

A Christmas Gift From One Of My Students...

One of my favorite things about teaching is watching my students take the raw material that I give them and then bulid on it to make it something different, and a lot of times better. Here is a video of one of my students... Ryan Palmer. He was working on one of my arrangements of Silent Night. He changed some of the chords to give it a slightly darker feel. I love what he did with it. That's one of the things I love about him and his music. I think you'll enjoy it too. If you have a youtube account, stop by and give him some feedback.