Good Golly, Miss Molly

You have to help yourself before you can help others. That's something that Austin, a sixteen year old volunteer at another social project in town, told me this week. He's staying here at the Healing House with a group of people also volunteering at the same project. He might just be going into his junior year of high school, but he's already got his goals planned through college. He wants to become a champion wrestler and I've seen him training every morning for hours on end to make sure he stays on track with that.

Anyway, that bit of advice really helped me make sense of a lot of what I've been doing here. I've really enjoyed being in a band with Giancarlo, Daniel, David, and some of the other local musicians here. I haven't really performed with them for the past couple of weeks, but I'll say there was a period of several weeks where we had back to back performances every Friday and Saturday night.

I definitely learned a lot performing with them, from the little things, like how to hold a mic well, to bigger things, like how to have a good stage presence and really take ownership of each song. Even just rehearsing with them taught me a lot. It wasn't always easy. I'll say my Spanish is definitely more than decent, but it was quite a challenge to keep up with what people were saying to each other. Musical jargon definitely doesn't translate so readily. Still, it was so cool to watch them communicate with little to no use of sheet music or any notation at all. These guys could harmonize songs at the drop of a hat. It was really impressive.

Giancarlo and I in the kitchen practicing some songs

Pouring so much of my efforts into my own performance skills sort of caused an inner conflict because I really intended to come here to teach music and help others get better. So, when Austin shared that bit of wisdom with me, I really felt some of my questions were answered. The farther along I get with my own music and the better of a musician I become the better of a music teacher I'll be and the farther I can take my students. That means though that I've got to help myself before I can help others. I do feel like I did indeed. I made a lot of mistakes in performances and there was definitely some miscommunication every now and then about who was going to come in next or what have you. I grew a lot from making those mistakes and being more clear myself about what I wanted to happen.

a Friday performance at the Marriot

Regardless of how perfect our performances were, I think the biggest lesson I learned was about myself and how much I really like to perform for others. At school, I really concentrated on how I was going to teach others, and don't get me wrong, I still love that. But I also just really enjoy singing for other people and being in a band. There's really nothing like just losing yourself in the music and expressing yourself so creatively. Also, I just really enjoy pretending to be Little Richard and I sure like to ball.