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To musicians everywhere: Connect with your breath, not your brain. That will catapult you into the Music of the Spheres, the music of your own Heart. It is your vibrations that will save the world. I don’t know what will be happening in 2046, but if we’re still here, it will be because of you. It’s time for you to be what you are — emissaries of Universal Consciousness. Musicians, it’s time to worship the Higher Power with your sound. It’s a wonderful game, sculpting sound into what we call music. — Thank you for reading, Kenny Werner
Becoming the Instrument
Kenny Werner
Nancy Edison also sensed, or discovered by chance, the real direction of her son’s interests; for one day she brought forth an elementary book of physical science, R. G. Parker’s School of Natural Philosophy, which described and illustrated various scientific experiments that could be performed at home. Now his mother found that the boy had truly caught fire. This was “the first book in science I read when a boy, nine years old, the first I could understand,” he later said. Here, learning became a “game” that he loved. He read and tested out every experiment in Parker; then his mother obtained for him an old Dictionary of Science, and he went to work on that. He was now ten and formed a boyish passion for chemistry, gathering together whole collections of chemicals in bottles or jars, which he ranged on shelves in his room. All his pocket money went for chemicals purchased at the pharmacist’s and for scraps of metal and wire. Thus his mother had accomplished that which all truly great teachers do for their pupils: she brought him to the stage of learning things for himself, learning that which most amused and interested him, and she encouraged him to go on in that path. It was the very best thing she could have done for this singular boy. “My mother was the making of me,” he said afterward. “She understood me; she let me follow my bent.”29
THE PROFESSIONAL HAS COMPASSION FOR HERSELF I got the chance a few years ago to watch a famous trainer work with his thoroughbreds. I had imagined that the process would be something hard-core like Navy SEAL training. To my surprise, the sessions were more like play. The work was serious, as in teaching the two-year-olds to enter the starting gate, and the horses were definitely learning. But the trainer took pains to make the schooling feel like fun. When a horse got tired, the trainer took him off the track. If a mount got bored or restive, the trainer never forced him to continue or drove him "through the pain." He explained: A horse is a flight animal. Even a stallion, if he can, will choose flight over confrontation. Picture the most sensitive person you've ever known; a horse is ten times more sensitive. A horse is a naked nervous system, particularly a thoroughbred. He's a child. A three-year-old, big and fast as he is, is a baby. Horses understand the whip, but I don't want a racer that runs that way. A horse that loves to run will beat a horse that's compelled, every day of the week. I want my horses to love the track. I want my exercise riders to have to hold them back in the morning because they're so excited to get out and run. Never train your animal to exhaustion. Leave him wanting more.
Turning Pro
Steven Pressfield
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