Looking focused

Jordan has to write a couple of essays for middle school application purposes. To the question, "What rule do you have a hard time following and why?" he quickly dictated the following response:

"I have a hard time looking completely focused. When teachers talk, you are supposed to be looking at them, watching everything that they do, and not doing anything to distract anyone. I am not usually doing anything to distract anyone, but they want me to also look engaged, which makes my mind drift. When I am fiddling with something I am still completely listening to what the teacher is saying and taking everything in, but it’s hard to also look engaged. At my old school we had something called a fidget where you could talk to the teacher outside of class and she could say yes or no to your fidget, telling you whether you could use it or not."

I find this fascinating. I am especially fascinated that he chose a social rule, one that is probably not written anywhere or even explicitly stated, but that he gets in trouble for not following. 

I wonder if it is true that he is taking everything in when he appears inattentive. Another possibility is that he just cannot give the teacher the visible attention he is supposed to give and knows it. Yet another possibility is that he thinks he is attending fully but actually is not; this seems the most likely, human awareness of multitasking being what it is (not). 

T sign

Aaron had his first choir recital this weekend. He was very excited and pleased with himself! Here he is in his cool outfit, and lining up with his classmates at the church where they performed.

They sang Christmas songs, which Aaron is making peace with. There is a video of him here: it's password-protected, but just message me and I can share it with you. His part starts at 6:30, and he is in the front row on the right end.

The recital was held in a church, as they all are. As I was walking Aaron in, he said, "Mommy, what is that T sign they have all over?" I didn't know what he meant by a T sign. Then I realized he meant the cross. Oh. I admit I felt a tiny blush of pride, having gotten him all the way to age seven without being entirely infiltrated by ambient Christianity. But of course I think kids should know this kind of thing:

Me: That's called a cross, and it's the symbol of Christianity, like the Star of David is for us. It tells you this is a Christian place.
Aaron: Okay, but why is it that shape?
Me: Let's get inside and I'll tell you all about it.
[This is my usual tactic for when I am asked a big question - I come up with some plausible two-minute delay, which helps me get my thoughts together. Once we were inside:]
Me: So you know about Jesus.
Aaron: Yes, right, the baby Jesus.
Me: Probably the number-one thing that makes Jesus so special for Christian people is that they believe that when he died, he took away everyone's sins. And the way that he died, actually it was pretty mean and nasty. People killed him, and they killed him by nailing him up on a big pole with another pole across it to nail up his arms. That's the cross shape. It's a terrible way to die and very sad. But looking at that cross shape reminds Christian people of what is special for them, which is that when he died, he took away everyone's sins.
Aaron: Oh! Okay.

Conveniently, we were at a Catholic church, so there was a great big giant crucifix over the altar illustrating what I had described. I'm guessing it was twenty feet high. There were also statues around the periphery depicting various scenes from the end of Jesus's life. Jordan and Dale and I had seats near one rather graphic crucifixion scene, complete with bleeding heart and weeping ladies. Jordan was disturbed. "I don't like looking at that one," he said, "It's creepy." We don't do much with suffering in our strand of Judaism, so this might have been unfamiliar on several levels.

Show and share

Jordan's class has been having "show and share" lately, where each kid gets five minutes to show something to the rest of the class. The range of presentations runs from kids who formed a band that practiced for months, to a kid who just got up and told a joke, to a kid who made an elaborate presentation about the pet guinea pig. I asked Jordan a couple days ago what he planned to do and he said play the trombone. I wondered if this was the best idea, since he has not touched the trombone in months; maybe he should talk about choir or piano instead? Nope: trombone. Okay.

Well, it was a giant hit. He took requests. People yelled out Hanukkah songs and he just played them - not perfectly, but pretty good for a first try. How does he do it?

[iPad or iPhone users try this link instead.]

As you can hear on the video, I asked him how he does it, and it's not something that he can articulate very well. He said, "I know where each note is and I know what it sounds like." He also stated truthfully that he barely ever practices; "Somehow I just pick it up and I know it every time," he said. His teacher reported by email that during their snack break, he played some more, and the whole class sang along with him.

Not Christmasy

In the car after school, tonight being the first night of Hanukkah:

Me: So this is the first year that you two have been at a school that does not celebrate Christmas at all.
Jordan: In fact they don't even want us to talk about it. If we talk about it with our friends they suggest that we change the subject.
Me: Maybe they are thinking that school is a good place to get a break from Christmas. Since it's kind of all Christmas all the time outside of school.
Jordan: I feel like there is no Christmas anywhere that I go, in any of the things that I do.

This surprised the heck out of me. Jordan has been incredibly immersed in Lessons and Carols for weeks, and to me, Lessons and Carols is just about the most extremely, religiously Christmasy thing our family has ever participated in. Not only are the carols primarily religious, but also there are readings from the Gospels, and an overall atmosphere of reverence, in a church. It has taken a fair amount of conscious relaxation for me to feel comfortable with it. (And now I love it, as beautiful classical music.)

Me: Um... really? Even with Lessons and Carols?
Jordan: That is just stories. The baby Jesus and so on. I don't see that it really has anything to do with Christmas.
Me: What would make something Christmasy to you?
Jordan: A tree and presents.

I reported this to Ben, one of Jordan's choir directors, and he was as surprised as I was, but then he backtracked. He said that in choir, they don't treat the carols as religious; they check that the boys understand the text, but the carols are musical objects, not prayers. This fits right in with Jordan having said he is untroubled by the Christian content of what he is singing.

Lessons and carols

Jordan is now well into his first performance season with the Performing Choir of the Northwest Boychoir. It is intense! They have eight performances of Lessons & Carols in two weeks; each performance is 90 minutes, plus another 2-3 hours of warming up, working out how they will get on and off the stage (mostly it's a new church every night), getting dressed, and so on. This is in addition to a heavy rehearsal schedule at their home base in the U-District. Everything is incredibly well-organized and well-communicated; this choir has been doing this a long time with the same highly capable staff, and they have really got the logistics down cold, thank goodness. So we have made good plans, and arranged carpools, and are supporting Jordan with lots of rest and food and encouragement in between. But still, it is a busy and hardworking season.

I ushered for the first performance, and I have to admit, the music is transportingly beautiful. I don't care for Christmas carols generally speaking, but these pieces sung by this choir are so precisely gorgeous, so classically perfect, so rich with harmonies and soaring melodies, I can't help myself. I love it. I listen over and over.

Here is an official picture of them at the concert I attended. Jordan is in the front row on the far right - a tough position, because he is highly visible, he is not comfortably surrounded by more experienced boys, and he has to start the recessional on an exact cue. (The cue is the word "let": "Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let--"). The robes they wear, and the format of the performance, are patterned after the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols performed every year by the choir of King's College in Cambridge, England, founded by Henry VI in 1441. (However, the British Lessons & Carols is only about 100 years old, and includes modern as well as ultra-traditional music.)

We are watching to see how Jordan is doing with this new height of musicianship. So far what we see is that he has a lot to manage. First of all, he had not 100% memorized everything in time for the performances, and missed two key rehearsals because he got sick, so he is straining to keep up musically. Then, there is so much to pay attention to in addition to the music: stand like this, do not look at the audience, activate your peripheral vision so you are sure to do the same thing as the person next to you, tip forward when you sit down so that your robe does not choke you at the neck, sit perfectly still and tall at the edge of your seat, hold your binder open in this hand and turn the pages with that hand, when you stand up move your binder this way so it is under this arm, remember what happens when you sing "Let." He also has a lot to deal with regarding the acoustics of the spaces they sing in: at the church in the picture above, for example, he could not hear other sections much at all, and there was an echo off the back wall that sent their sound back to them a beat or two after they made it. This is all on top of the super rigorous musical perfection they are expected to produce. I am curious whether Jordan is enjoying his performances, but I think he is mainly just working very hard to remember everything and do it all right. He says that even when there is a bit of a rest (like while another boy is doing a reading), he is going over the thousand things he needs to remember in his head.

To me, he (and the choir as a whole) seem to be pulling all this off brilliantly, but apparently things have been rocky behind the scenes. After the first concert, their director told all the new guys (except one) that they had made so many mistakes he was tempted to kick them out of the rest of the concerts, but wouldn't because he can't afford to lose their sound. Ouch. The second concert, according to the director, was no better. It is hard on us parents, picking up Jordan tired and hungry and discouraged at 9:30pm, but Jordan does not stay down for long: after a good night's sleep he feels matter-of-fact about the whole thing, and is mainly concentrating on what he needs to do better the next night. Finally, the third night, they were much improved, and the director was happy, and Jordan's sense achievement was tremendous. It was wonderful to end that first string of concerts on a good note.

We aren't sure how this is adding up yet. Is it too hard for him? Is this too much to ask of a ten-year-old? Or is this totally healthy, exactly the kind of high expectations and self-discipline that will help him develop as a musician and a person? It is hard to know for sure. Part of why it is hard to know is that we are not in the room: we do not see his interactions with his director. And this is a sign of our changing parental role as he grows into the tween years: increasingly, his interactions with authority figures are his own, not mediated by us. It is a strange feeling. However, we have every reason to be optimistic; we know that the director, the other instructors, and the other boys are providing a fantastic environment, a community of learners and mentors that we can trust to bring out the best in our kid. We have packed his world with great people and opportunities, and now he gets to make his own way. We shall see.

We all have a few days off now. Next weekend Jordan performs once at a church in West Seattle, three times at a cathedral on Capitol Hill, and then finally at Benaroya, with a symphony orchestra.