Hi 👋,
Simcha here.
It's been quite a while since our last email. Things have been quite hectic here, what with bombs falling from the sky and all. The cutest thing happened on the spot at a recent house concert of ours, and I really wanted to share it with you in this little video, and connect it with ideas about improvisation.
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'Improvising' is a word that has so much meaning (and attached anxiety and pressure), and yet is in itself an act of simply being, expressing, creating. I believe that it's something we do naturally, already as little children learning to walk, talk and interact with the world around us, yet as adults, the voice of our inner critic and the fear of failure is telling us 'you dont know how to improvise'.
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So if we can just get back to our little inner child's simplicity and curiosity, perhaps we can then open the wonderous gates of spontaneity and play, and find ourselves improvising and creating music in a fun an playful way, free of self judgment and thinking whether we are good enough or not.
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And this is where our beloved dog Naggah comes in! and the inspiration for this email.
Naggah loves to howl and sing. She'll sing along with the local wild jackals at night, with other part wolf dogs, and loves joining us when we play music. (She especially loves to sing along with the shofar on Rosh Hashanah ;) ).
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Here's a little scene from a recent musical House Concert with my Tzuf Family Band (Something we love doing for groups of seniors at our home). She happened to be laying nearby (as she often does when we play music), and decided to join me for an improvised duo on the spot.
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I find it so inspiring to watch her sing so soulfully, with her head up and heart singing out.
I dont think she has thoughts of 'am i good enough?', 'do i know how to do this?', 'what if i make a mistake?' when she sings.
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So here's to learning wisdom from the world around us, and to a new exciting beginning in improvising.
And to sum this all up into a short take away,
🎶We all know how to improvise, we've actually been doing it our whole lives! Every time we negotiate an intersection while driving, spark up a conversation with a stranger or loved one, decide what to eat in the morning or what to reply to our boss or client, we're improvising. So we have the skill inherently deep in our body and soul. We just need to learn how to access that with music, let go of judgement and fear of failure, and let our inner spirit guide us, and most importantly to have fun on the way 😉
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Till next time, Simcha
P.S. Great News! I'm finally at the final stages of launching the strings of hope Harp membership.
We'll be beginning with a small founders group to get the community platform up and running. If you're interested in being part of the founders group and getting a great lifetime discount on the membership where we'll be learning about improvising, meditative harping, composing, ancient songs of Psalms and more, you can sign up here: https://strings-of-hope.kit.com/8ef0183d86
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