My childhood self stood frozen, wide-eyed, and pointing my finger at the intruder while waiting for my mom to come rescue me. A "giant" black spider was crawling across the white ceiling, only two feet above my top-bunk bedspread. Mom would come in and "save" me from the scary arachnid, my heart rate would return to normal, and I would go back to my day.
One of my biggest fears as a kid was spiders. I HATED almost all bugs (ladybugs and butterflies were the only exceptions), and the eight-legged variety were the scariest. The strange thing about this fear was that I had a large stuffed spider that I considered to be my friend. I wasn't scared of "Spider," as he was so creatively named, at all. I gave him hugs. I put him on my head - as I weirdly did with many of my stuffed animals. He even got to stay on my bed with me, an honor bestowed to only my favorite stuffed animals.
I owned several strange breeds of stuffed animals, types that would terrify me in real life - an orange crab, a red lobster, and even a purple scorpion. Why were these plush toys considered safe to me, while the real ones were things to fear?
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Recently during my flute practice sessions, I have been searching for a way to solve a long-standing problem. Whenever I play fast, my fingers tighten up and the notes don't speak quite as clearly as they could. This happens despite repeated practice at various tempi. The reason why has remained a mystery for quite some time.
After my recent color experience, in which I was able to play scales quickly and (for the most part) cleanly at rapid tempi by associating them with the color light blue, I was convinced my problem with technique wasn't to be solved with "more practice" at all. I have the ability to play fast! The real obstacle? FEAR. At some point, a long time ago, I convinced myself that scales (and fast playing in general) were difficult. The thought embedded in my mind so deeply that almost all the time that I play fast now, my hands tighten up. They prepare for difficulty.
I looked at my Schubert Variations the other day. Variations I and V contain some rapid passages. However, I look at the notes, and I know I can play all of it. The notes aren't difficult. They are scalar, things I have played for years. Yet, when I attempt to build them up to tempo, my hands tighten as always. I found myself asking - Why? Why do these notes appear easy when I mentally break them down, but they feel so difficult when I speed them up?
Franz Schubert, Variations on Trockne Blumen, Var. 5
I admitted to myself that I needed to re-train my brain. I needed to find a way to convince myself that rapid notes in succession weren't scary. So, I slowed down my thoughts. I really looked at the first variation and thought, "What is causing me anxiety in this passage, and what can I do to alleviate that anxiety?" I found a few sections in which more fluid playing was as simple as not pressing down my right hand pinky key.
Today, I repeated the process of training my brain so it could know that the rapid passages weren't difficult. I memorized the first half of Variation 1 and slowed it down. To half speed. Now, I really don't like playing things ridiculously slow. My brain hears the finished product, and slow playing seems to remove the magic of the music for my ears. However, I realized, in order to get to the finished product I desired, I needed to show my fingers that these notes weren't difficult. I repeated the passage several times from memory, gradually building up to 3/4 speed. And then I stopped and put it away. Going any faster would have allowed the fear to come back
Now, I am confident at 3/4 speed. If I can get to 90% tomorrow, that will be excellent progress. What I am seeking to do is to alleviate the irrational fear into which my mind trained itself. Exposure therapy. If I show myself the notes aren't difficult at half speed, or 3/4 speed, or 90% speed, well, my chances increase that it won't be so bad at 100% speed either.
I share an office with other graduate assistants, and while I was practicing the Schubert slowly, one of my fellow graduate students knocked on the door. I explained to him what I was doing in this way: "Somewhere along the line, I convinced myself that playing fast was scary. So now, I am slowing it way down and proving to myself that it isn't. It's exposure therapy, like you would do with someone who is afraid of spiders. You show the person a picture of a spider, then give him a stuffed spider, then a spider in a cage. Eventually, you get to the point in which the person can touch a tarantula. Well, that is what I'm doing here. I'm showing myself gradually that I can touch the tarantula, and it will be OK."
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That is when I thought of my good friend Spider. So why was my big Spider safe and cuddly to me, while tiny spiders were the most frightening thing in the world?
All stuffed animals were safe to me. My brain was convinced, until the end of the world, that any type of stuffed animal, even a spider, was OK. Contrarily, my mind had learned that tiny, REAL spiders were unsafe. These both were learned, conditioned responses. I had received exposure to the point that my beloved stuffed Spider was safe, but not enough that the real thing was.
Eventually, I got to the point in which I could take care of the real spiders myself. I didn't have to stand, point, and scream for help whenever I saw one. I now know that, while spiders still give me the heebie-jeebies sometimes, they aren't scary to the point of petrifying me. The same will happen with my music as I teach myself the skill of safety.
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