Karen Rile: "You can actually change your life very quickly." A chat with writer Karen Rile, about parenting, flexibility, and how deliberate practice yields huge results.

Writing is hard because we have a lofty idea of what writing is. We imagine people--fancy people--with degrees and credentials and quills and thick notebooks into which they spill their flawless thoughts from their flawless brains, sitting in flawless libraries filled top to bottom with other flawless books by other flawless authors. 

Yeah, no. That’s not how it works. 

The best writing begins with mess.

The messier and wilder you are, the better. The best thing we can do is throw ourselves in, as quickly as possible, and write a lot of mess, as fast as we can.

Okay, yeah, but how? 

If you’re ready to make the leap, here’s five ways to unstuck your writing. 

“So….do you still play the violin?”

Recently, people have been asking me this a lot, and I’ll be honest with you, it kind of pisses me off.

My reaction to that question is visceral: defensive, angry, defiant. And a little scared. Because, dammit, I didn’t give up my childhood and every fun thing to be a violinist and have it called into question now. 
 

I’m also aware that my outsized reaction to this question also reveals my own insecurities. Because if someone is asking me if I’m still a violinist, it’s a pretty innocent question, right? I mean, I should be able to say, yes, without needing to prove it.

Lately, I’ve been wondering, why do I feel the need to prove it? And why, just because I’m doing something else in addition to playing the violin, are people so confused?

It seems like it’s difficult to process that I do multiple things. For example, I play the violin (yes, I still do) and yes, I also write.

It’s made me wonder why this seems so difficult to understand?

Do you ever feel like if you aren't doing music with 100% focus, then you aren't a serious musician? Maybe it's not something your friends or colleagues say explicitly, but somehow, you feel it or sense it?

I think it's because classical music - like ballet or ice skating or gymnastics, perhaps -- demands monastic devotion. 

Listen to this episode for why I think something about classical music training might keep us stuck in one identity and makes us afraid to try new things.

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Since I received my Fulbright in the creative writing category, I thought it might be helpful for me to share some ideas about how creative writing has helped me and my violin playing:

How Creative Writing Could Make You a Happier Musician

In classical music, we accept nothing less than perfection. We mustn’t miss a shift or play out of tune. This perfectionism made me relentless and hard-working and followed me from The Juilliard School to the M.F.A. classroom. But it also made me deeply afraid to take risks, to grow. I suspect I’m not alone in struggling with toxic perfectionism. If you struggle, too, consider putting your violin away. Not forever, just for a pause.

There’s an idea that I like called “wabi-sabi,” the embracing of flaws in pottery where, instead of throwing away broken pieces, they’re mended with gold lacquer so that the restored object is gilded, made more beautiful. In Korea, we have the idea of “mak” or suddenness. A welcoming of imperfection that’s present in architecture and aesthetics. An affection for the unrehearsed, the unprepared. The surprise of unplanned delight.

Like meditation, writing has provided surprising lessons that have helped me with my violin playing:

1)  Create distance from the inner critic.

Our inner critic is a bully who doesn’t want us to change. Through writing, I’ve learned to grow fond(er) of the “sh**ty first drafts,” a term coined by writer Anne Lamott. Crappy early work is necessary. A willingness to tolerate it without self-loathing makes it possible for me to accept “sh**ty practice days” on my violin, too.

2)  Curiosity NOT judgement.

This is a mantra from the writer and teacher, Megan Stielstra. When I’m too tight in my writing (or violin playing), it’s because I’m trying too hard to be good. Judgement is heavy, mocking the toilet paper stuck to our shoe. Curiosity is lighter, gazing at our mismatched socks wondering, “hmm, how did that happen? Do I want to fix it? Maybe I like it this way?” Curiosity helps us grow in spite of our flaws. Judgement keeps us stuck in our flaws.

3)  Clarify your thoughts.

Everyone’s a writer. If you think, you’re a writer. If you talk, you’re a writer. The legendary pianist and pedagogue Leon Fleisher said that if we can’t articulate what we’re trying to do with words, then our intentions aren’t clear enough in our minds. Writing helps us understand ourselves. The clarity of mind that comes from writing makes you a better problem-solver and musician, not to mention better human, citizen, and advocate.

4)  The importance of “play” and making something of your own.

Writing teaches us to follow our creative impulses. Making my own stuff is like being a kid, playing for play’s sake. I’ll write something that I might throw away or put in a drawer. But it's ​mine,​ something I made for myself. What do ​I​ want? What do ​I​ think? Instead of: Am I doing it ​right?​ What will ​other​ people think? Writing cultivates a creative mindset instead of a corrective mindset

A term I use with my writing students and violin students is “creative courage” or the willingness to:

...be brave and take risks

...make mistakes and fail often

...look foolish

...be awesome

Writing has made me more creatively courageous and a happier violinist. I think you might enjoy writing, too!

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Learn more about the stuff we talk about in this episode:

Jennifer Fawcett

Jennifer teaches at Skidmore College and her first novel, The Octagon House, will be published by Atria, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. 

Working Group Theatre, the theatre group that Jenn co-founded.

Imposter Syndrome

The International Theatre Project, the organization that allowed Jenn to travel to Tanzania and Rwanda to teach storytelling and theatre to young students.  

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0:59 - Cellist Laura Usiskin on perfectionism and the ways we compare ourselves to others.

2:41 - Pianist and scholar, Mina Yang, gives some advice on being grateful and why you don’t have to do music professionally to find value in it.

3:43 - Violinist, conductor, and scholar, Sean Wang, talks about the importance of being yourself and finding your unique artistic identity.

6:05 - Sarah Carter is a cellist, medical doctor and a former child prodigy herself. Here, she talks about why there’s always enough time to grow and explore.

7:50 - And finally, violist Celia Hatton, on taking up space, speaking up, and fighting systematic bias and racism. 

Thank you to all of my guests and a special "thank you" to YOU, the "Is it Recess Yet?" community. I’m really grateful to you for listening and I look forward to 2021 with more guests and opportunities for us to grow together.

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Miki is a core member of the Grammy-nominated ensemble, A Far Cry

The Boston Globe profile on Miki's "Little Criers"concerts for families and children. Find "Little Criers" on A Far Cry's Facebook Page.

Miki and I play in the Solera Quartet together: MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE is from Mendelssohn's String Quartet, Op. 80, from the Solera Quartet's debut album, EVERY MOMENT PRESENT.

Robert Levin, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

Ronda Cole, Director of NVSMS , Violin Teacher, Teacher Trainer for the Suzuki Association of the Americas (SAA)

Ricardo Cyncynates, Assistant Concertmaster of the National Symphony Orchestra

Ani Kavafian, Professor of Violin, Yale School of Music

Miriam Fried, Professor of Violin, New England Conservatory of Music

Donald Weilerstein, Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies, New England Conservatory of Music

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Noa Kageyama, Bulletproof Musician

Noa teaches at the Juilliard School

The Suzuki Method

Noa got a double degree at Oberlin

Don Greene, Ph.d, Performance Mastery Trainer

Seymour Bernstein, pianist and pedagogue

Ethan Hawke and his film about Seymour Bernstein

This is Your Brain on Jazz: Researchers Use MRI to Study Spontaneity, Creativity

Seth Godin

Alexander Technique

Hidden Brain: The Edge Effect

Ivan Galamian, legendary violin teacher of Itzhak Perlman among many others

Louis Persinger, legendary violin teacher of Yehudi Menuhin, among many others

Rev. D. Maurice Charles

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2:33 - Dean Charles talks about his growing up in the church and how his family migrated from the Jim Crow South. How his family's stories of slavery and survival and faith make up the story of his heritage.

5:12 - When and how Dean Charles was called to the ministry. His background in microbiology, psychology, and sociology. How he became a university chaplain. "Human beings are stranger than microbes."

7:31 - What is a university chaplain? "Helping communities process trauma."

11:05 - What it means to be the first African American chaplain at the University of Chicago. "Chicago is a challenging place to be a black male."

18:18 - How Dean Charles's childhood experiences of the turbulent 1960's led to his scholarly work in religion and violence. "What is the religious response to violence? Can we reform policing?"

26:00 - Protest songs and why music is important during social movements: "One cannot live on rage alone....Defiant joy keeps things moving forward."

27:49 - [Music] presents an image to us of the kind of community that we're striving for. It also names community pain."

28:07 - "We need poets and musicians to help us name our reality." How the arts help us process trauma.

28:54 - "We need artists and musicians now more than ever because there is a certain level of pain and rupture that defies prose."

29:44 - On Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's essay, "The Vocation of the Cantor": "Music has a shattering quality; it allows the soul to have an encounter with reality that is beyond what we have simply by mere cognition."

31:32 - "You can be aware of the barriers to access and to advancement while at the same time being told by the people on the other side of those barriers that they don't exist. It is absolutely crazy-making."

31:47 - Death as the universal experience that allows entry into "intimate settings you wouldn't normally be welcomed into" and how death breaks down barriers.

34:07 - "A bad day if you're poor is much worse than a bad day if you're wealthy."

38:09 - "Oppression Olympics" and how "we act in this country like empathy is the only impetus toward moral action...you don't have to feel what some else feels to do the right thing."

43:25 - "We act in this country like empathy is the only impetus toward moral action. You don't have to feel what someone else feels to do the right thing."

44:43 - "Treat others not only how we want to be treated but treat others the way they want to be treated."

45:19 - "Create a society that makes space for all of us."

48:18 - "When things don't make sense, we still resist because to resist absurdity is to live." What Dean Charles does to counterbalance his own despair in these difficult times.

59: 35 - Dean Charles's advice to his younger self: "Take your experience of the world seriously. It's valuable. It's a gift to you and to those around you."

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Kenji Bunch 

3:56 - How Kenji got started in music on violin and piano.

5:32 - How Kenji always had an "abstract notion" that he wanted to compose and how this led to his double major in Viola Performance and Composition at Juilliard.

6:49 - The creative aspect of music and how making his own music was always attached to Kenji's musical consciousness and imagination.

7:56 - The value of listening to music in "a non-hierarchical way where everything [is] worth our listening attention. Listening to everything with the same ears and treating it with the same respect."

9:22 - "We see a tendency in the classical world of sometimes dismissing the seriousness or value of non-classical or more commercial kinds of music."

9:40 - "Even if it's a pop song with three chords, a lot of people worked really hard on that song and took it very seriously....there's something to learn from that amount of detail that's put into a product."

10:57 - Kenji's "Neo-American" sensibility in his compositions and how he responds to critics."It would seem less authentic to me to write music that sounds like I'm in Vienna in the 1920's or if I only played music from Vienna in the 1820's. That's not the life I'm living and I don't want to be disconnected...I'd rather embrace and draw inspiration from what's going on around me."

12:11 - Why Kenji draws parallels between his compositional style and chefs of the past twenty years who elevate comfort food and respond to multitudinous cuisines present in the culture.

13:01 - "I've never thought of myself as an innovator...[but] simply part of a long tradition...of composer who are influenced by what they are hearing around them."

15:52 - "My mere existence was a creative risk, as a bi-racial Asian kid in the 1970's." How this experience of identity was "awkward" for Kenji but also liberating: "You're already imperfect in the eyes of a lot of people, so the pressure is off."

17:10 - "So much of it is giving ourselves permission to take those risks and to define ourselves, to call ourselves composers or composer-performers, or improvisers.

17:59 - What Kenji is doing to continue to grow and develop during quarantine. "The direction I was heading in as a musician has been accelerated because of this extra time."

19:45 - "I want to be able to connect with people with my music. If there's a barrier to that, I don't want it to be because of me. I just want to be a flexible musician who can find some way to connect with anyone else through music."

20:23 - "I tend to say 'yes' to everything because I want to prove to myself that I can do these things."

22:26 - "I felt like a misfit at Juilliard."

23:13 - "The paradox: there has to be a rigorous standard for the level of [classical] training and it's very hard to put that in place and also leave room for creative expressions and taking risks."

23:45 - "In the last twenty some years, the music world has changed more radically than it ever has, since [Juilliard] has been around."

23:54 - Why "being willing to fail publicly" is the key to becoming a flexible musician. Kenji talks about Citigrass, his bluegrass band of fifteen years. "None of us actually knew how to play bluegrass...at one point we were paid not to play." How failing publicly leads to the acquisition of new musical skills and language: "we couldn't help but improve."

25:45 - "Willingness to suck in public is so important but also counter to our [classical] training. We spend so many long years learning how not to suck in public."

26:57 - Why people assume classical musicians can play everything: "Classical players can play with a facility and virtuosity that's very easily identifiable...and not only [do we assume that] you are a genius and do all these amazing things, you must also somehow be virtuous and noble." The truth is classical musicians are just regular people and "the abilities they've attained have come at the expense of other experiences in theirs lives and it's often a painful thing."

27:62 - How classical training "develops the coordination between your eyes and your fingers" but can also "stunt the connection between your ear and your fingers or your mind and your fingers."

31:31 - Kenji is the Artistic Director of Fear No Music, a new music group and music education organization in Portland, OR. 

34:08 - Why Kenji would tell his younger self to "lighten up, have some fun, don't worry....if you stick to what you really want to do, that's the thing that [you] can contribute to the world that has the most value." Why Kenji wishes the competitiveness of classical music training could be inverted to focusing on what each individual needs to be happy because "when you are comfortable in your own skin and doing something that makes you happy, that's when you can start to contribute and do stuff that's going to help other people." 

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Karen Rile

2:05 - Karen's childhood growing up in an "arts friendly" family.

3:53 - Nathalie Hinderas, an African American pianist who faced career challenges due to racism and how Karen's mother, Joanne Rile, became her manager and pivoted towards a career in arts management, championing African American classical musicians.

5:58 - Why Karen found music lessons very stressful and anxiety producing.

6:56 - How Karen grew up surrounded by musicians and learned to revere them and how this led to a lifelong fascination with musicians.

8:00 - How Karen found her literary path.

11:04 - How Karen's children started music lessons despite her reservations.

12:25 - How Suzuki and Montessori pedagogies "collided" for one of Karen's daughters.

13:56 - How "small amounts of deliberate practice yields huge results" for Karen's children.

From the Top

18:16 - How the classical music culture of daily practice informs Karen's creative writing pedagogy: "focusing on technique some of the time (in writing) helps a lot."

20:18 - How creative writing culture can also inform classical music culture and why taking a break can be very necessary and helpful for classical musicians.

22:21 - How classical music gave Karen's children "an incredible work ethic."

22:50 - How Karen learned about homeschooling: "radical unschooling" and the flexibility Karen gained from this experience.

24:16 - Karen's obsession with the lives of musicians and how this informs her writing. Karen's novel, Winter Music, about a child prodigy musician.

27:03 - Karen's experience of Juilliard Pre-College as a parent. "It was more stressful for my daughter."

32:23 - How Karen started her literary magazine, Cleaver, with her daughter. How Cleaver became successful by combining flexibility with diligent practice.

Cleaver Workshops' online writing classes 

38:56 - How classical music training is so consuming, making it difficult to develop other skills. "The professionalism starts so young and there is hardly any time for anything else."

40:47 - "Everyone comes to writing because they've experienced ecstasy as a reader." Why college students and classical musicians seem to have very little time to read for pleasure.

43:03 - "A lot of classical musicians aren't comfortable writing because they haven't been allowed to just lie around and read a book."

43:43 - "Professional and academic writing is unclear and filled with jargon....creative writing helps develop the ability to write clearly and communicate well." Why creative writing and cultivating a writing practice are important.

47:06 - How color theory and psychology college courses continue to influence Karen's like and pedagogy.

Martin Seligman

49:34 - How arts entrepreneurship and day jobs can enable artists to pivot more quickly, especially in the COVID pandemic. Also, the flaws of a culture that wants the arts to be available but doesn't want to pay for it: how this makes it extremely difficult for artists to make a living wage.

1:03:54 - How Karen learned about creative courage from her daughter's experience with a tragedy. "The world keeps changing but you can change with it."

1:10:16 - "One Train May Hide Another," a poem by Kenneth Koch. How unexpected change can bring new opportunities.

1:11:55 - "Be flexible and know that a small amount of work every day yields more than the sum of the work. And one train may hide another....be open because you have no idea what may happen to you."