Are you goal-oriented or process-oriented?

I’m extremely process-oriented. And I don’t use the word ‘extremely’ without giving it a little bit of thought first. The more I think about it, the more I see how I’ve always been process-oriented in all areas of life. I loved drawing for as long as I can remember. I’d start with a person’s or an animal’s left eye with no plan behind it. I was curious about how it would unfold without any idea of how it could look like in the end. I always found it close to impossible to make something based on a recipe, and to strive for making a replica of the picture of a dish or a knitted sock. How uninspiring that would be! I always preferred risking failure, ending up with a weird-tasting dish or a useless knitted thing, than to follow the recipes. I love the journey to and from work. Getting on my bike, starting a walk, or catching a bus. I’m not fixated on getting from A to B, I’m simply where I am, enjoying the scenery, reading a book or doing some Duolingo on my phone. During my studies, there wasn’t a second where I thought about life after school. I didn’t try to build connections for a life as a musician. I just played my cello, read books and socialized without any thought on the usefulness of any of it. I’m not kidding. Only very recently did I become aware of this way of seeing it, being goal-oriented or process-oriented. Aha.

Riiight… You mean, some people go through their university degrees and consciously making connections for the work life to come?

Radical.

Anyways, how is all this babble related to cello playing?

I of course realize how my process-fixation also shows up in the practice room. I simply love the practice itself, no matter how it sounds like today, no matter if I can’t hear ‘progress’ in the piece I’m playing. I’m just excited about what will come out from the cello. I’m listening to what’s happening, going with my energy, taking notice of how it sounds different this time from earlier times. I play the Bach suites over and over as the years go by, and the same movements sound different every single time they are being played. It’s exciting. I’m losing myself, and instead becoming the playing, becoming the listening, feeling the room as one whole unit full of sound. My intellect has no space in it. There’s just that sensory being in the moment.

Ok, but how can anything be achieved?

I have experienced that the achieving is a constant unfolding. If I have a concert coming up and I’m practising the repertoire in my process-oriented way which is based on curiosity and a letting go of perceived control, I end up with an intimate knowledge of the music which will be performed on stage with the same excited feeling of ‘I wonder what’s going to happen this time’ as in my practice room. And if I’m excited, the audience will be too.

Needless to say, I never got the idea of making an interpretation of a piece to render it as if from a recipe in a performance. I’ve had lessons with teachers who had this idea, and I found it exhausting and soul-killing, not to mention plain boring.

We’re all different, right.

As a cello teacher I’ve found that the pupils who stick with me long-term are the ones who really appreciate that I’m focused on the process of playing rather than on some measurable progress. If someone didn’t practice since last lesson, I feel excited rather than disappointed cause then we can together re-discover the beauty of the practice through the simplest of exercises and they are reminded of the fact that the playing will always be with them, it can’t just disappear because no practice happened for a while.

Realizing this about myself as a cello teacher is really a relief, cause then I know it’s totally fine that I’m not the right teacher for everyone. I’m the right teacher for a lot of people though, and that’s enough for me.