Hello Reader,
You know that feeling that you get when you wish you were better at a skill, so that you could actually enjoy what you’re doing without feeling stuck by your lack of ability? It’s the feeling that I get when I try to read a book in Mandarin (I fail to enjoy the story because I’m stumbling over the language) or when I try to ski (I have to focus my energies on how to move my body rather than enjoy the whole experience of it).
That’s a lack of fluency.
My son started cello lessons at the end of last year, and for the first two months all he had was a small sized bow - to practice how to hold the bow. He needed to practice 500 perfect bow-holds before he could earn the privilege of receiving his instrument.
Over the course of the first 50-odd days, he had to pick up the bow and hold it with the right posture, over and over. His teacher warned us that practising the wrong thing would only cement the wrong muscle memory, so we were cautious to ensure he was doing it rightly each time. It was not the most exciting nor pleasant of things to practice.
Yet, somehow, nearing that 500th mark, he was able to pick up the bow in the right position without having to focus too hard on it. It became muscle memory. It became natural.
With that ability in holding the bow, he could then move on to learning other skills, with one less thing to focus on each time he picks up the cello.
That’s fluency.
Practising the tiniest things over the course of time builds fluency. Some days, his bow practice lasted 30 seconds. Other days, a full minute. And on rare occasions, more. While it might have felt “not long enough” that day, with the consistency of coming back to it over and over each day, the time and experience added up.
Shinichi Suzuki (the founder of the Suzuki method of teaching music) wanted his students to be so familiar with the pieces they were playing that they would not be constrained by trying to read notes, but could focus on dynamics and bringing depth to the music. The drills he required were not rote learning for the sake of memorisation then regurgitation, but building of foundational fluency to free his students to apply their energies to create beauty in their music.
What kind of foundational fluency should I be practising toward? What skills do I need to build in order to free me to focus on what truly matters?
It’s something I’ve been pondering, and I don’t have clear answers yet.
Perhaps one thing is my Mandarin fluency - the past 6 months of lessons have certainly increased my fluency in the language, although I still have a long way to go. Just showing up to speak with my teacher for a few hours a week has grown both my vocabulary and confidence. I still do have a lot of anxiety when picking up a book to read, though. (If you have any recommendations of books to attempt, please let me know!)
What about you? What foundational skills are you working on, or hope to build?
Stumbling and growing with you,
From my commonplace
“
Food is the daily sacrament of unnecessary goodness, ordained for a continual remembrance that the world will always be more delicious than it is useful. Necessity is the mother only of cliches. It takes playfulness to make poetry.
— Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb
On the blog
We’ve been fortunate to have taken many overseas trips with our children over the past couple of years. It’s definitely an area that we’ve built some level of foundational skill in, and there is little anxiety when we travel these days. If you’re unsure about travel with kids, or have an upcoming trip, check out this blog post: 5 tips to love travel with kids!
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