Here's a mind/body puzzle for your fine morning:
How do you teach cello to ten-year-olds?
This rabbit-hole goes deep.
With your permission, let's find out how far.
I. Introduction
Cello playing is a sublime balance.
It is a blend of abstract art and practical body mechanics:
To play a cello well, you must
imagine the right sound
reverse-engineer the body mechanics needed to MAKE the right sound
practice them until you can PLAY the right sound, even live under performance pressure
learn how to re-engineer the right sound on demand, OPTIMIZING it for each specific live audience & acoustic combo
Become fluent in reading sheet music, so you can KNOW what the right sound imagined by others should look like
That's a lot!
Now, consider the title of this article:
How do you teach ANY of that…
…to a ten year old?
II. Words, Minds, and Familiarity
As I sit here writing these words today, carefully choosing which words to put here for you to read, I am counting on the fact that our combined lifetime experiences with words, both yours and mine, will bring to your mind more or less the same meanings that I intended.
Familiarity is a load-bearing principle in written communication.
But cello playing is
born in the abstract mental world of idealized sound
brought to life in our world by the precise execution of learned physical skills
viscerally powered by the coordinated muscular and neurological activity of the body.
At all three levels, cello playing is a non-verbal process.
Words literally cannot do it justice.
And beginning cello students are almost completely unfamiliar with how a cello works…
The lines of our fine mind/body puzzle are emerging:
Cello playing, like anything, is best explained in familiar words.
Remove the words?
Communication gets tough.Remove the familiarity?
Communication gets much, much, tougher.
But remove both, and you have opened an extraordinary window into the human mind.
Still with me? No?
How about a guided tour?
Let's keep our words, abandon familiarity, and see what happens.
III. Early teachings find differences
Over the years, I have taught perhaps 100 cello students, ranging in age from 6 to 76.
This means I have been teaching the same constant, unvarying set of abstract/mechanical cello principles, over and over, to lots of different people.
Lots of different body types, lots of different backgrounds, lots of different places, lots of different minds.
Early in my career, what do you think stuck out to me about teaching the most?
The differences.
No matter how carefully I chose my teaching words,
No two of my students have ever
understood my words in quite the same way
MISUNDERSTOOD them the same way either, leading to much hilarity
used identical words to talk about ideal sound
used identical words to talk about body mechanics
asked identically worded questions about anything
Thus, my early teaching experiences confronted me with a harsh truth about thinking:
Other people’s thought processes are confusing as hell.
When you find yourself teaching
an intricate, high-precision, non-verbal skilltree
in one-on-one lessons, once a week
to students of vastly different ages and experience levels
who nonetheless really want to learn what you have to offer
and who trust you enough to ask half-formed questions rather than just polished, "acceptable" questions,
Over and over again, you WILL experience the wild, chaotic, synergistic flowstate of a mind/body in beautiful questing motion…
…and it WILL manifest itself DIFFERENTLY in each and every student.
Seeing this will throw you for an absolute loop.
But,
IV. Later teachings uncover universals
But, if you stick with it long enough, eventually the wild process itself will become familiar.
Eventually, a higher-level clarity emerges:
Thinking was ALWAYS THIS WAY.
See it?
"Thinking" is the wild, chaotic, synergistic mind/body flowstate of real-time thinking that happens before the load-bearing familiarity of habit has been acquired.
"Knowledge," or ‘habit,” is what's left after the wild, chaotic, synergistic mind/body flowstate of real-time thinking has quit growing, gone dormant, crystallized, and been pruned back.
See it?
Thinking isn't what you know.
Thinking is how you learn.
Where does learning happen?
In the face of the unfamiliar.
How can you see it happen?
By making it physical.
Where is knowledge stored?
In habits of thought and action.
And how can you map the whole process?
By talking about it together.
Or by writing and reading about it together, as we are doing here now.
See it?
For those who are wondering:
Can you think with your mind, without ever involving your body?
Sure.
But if you never involve your body, then you'll miss out on the telltale signs.
The body makes hesitant, contradictory motions as it explores the unfamiliar. Since the body/mind is a two-way street, those exploratory motions are what reveal to you the true shape of your equally exploratory thinking process.
Without familiarizing yourself with HOW the process of habit-formation gradually crystallizes from exploratory thinking, you’ll never really understand how your own mind really works.
Not knowing how you learn will limit your learning potential.
Worse, it will allow others to take easy advantage of you, by manipulating the hidden levers of your own thinking that you do not know to be there.
You MUST train your body, in order to reveal the hidden potential of your mind.
So go forth, and learn a new physical skill from scratch!
It’s a REALLY good idea.
Back to the main storyline.
V. Universals point to applications
If you stick with it,
If you teach enough students,
If you keep thinking about thinking long enough,
Then you may discover (as I have) that you have accidentally acquired a deep familiarity with hidden universal patterns across ALL of human thought,
patterns that crystallize over time into a universal knowledge about how thinking works,
crystallize into a teachable, load-bearing familiarity with thinking.
What does this newfound familiarity do for you?
It restores a PROFOUND sense of optimism about your fellow human beings.
VI. Applications create optimism
Keep going after that,
Keep on trying to communicate these newfound principles to people OUTSIDE the cozy micro-world of cello playing (YOU ARE HERE), and even more things begin to fall into place.
Optimism breaks out all over.
Yes, there will be turbulence along the way.
But remember, turbulence is a necessary price for going supersonic.
Look past the turbulence. Study the larger flow. Raise your gaze, and watch the wide, wild, chaotic/synergistic world of human potential begin to look very bright indeed.
VII. Conclusion, in which we come full circle
After that? The last remaining challenge?
How to choose the right load-bearing words, in order that others can read them in the peace and comfort of a familiar setting, and then put them to good use.
Wish me luck.
(rough draft, minimal edits, hit send)
I just published a follow-up post:
https://piercello.substack.com/p/the-universal-shape-of-learning