For those of you slighty familiar with my biography - I walked "out of music" about 10 years ago, after 20+ years spent IN it - professionally, from age earlier than age of my son right now.....and occasionally - a lot of time - it hunts me, this professional conditioning so deep I think it is now in my bones.
So I taught a little bunch of toddlers today. Taught them solfege....just the very very beginnings - what are notes, what are keys, where do notes live and how are keys organized....and for the first time in SUCH a long time I felt comfortable, comfortable not because of my exceptional "talent" of a teacher (I think I actually have very little of that alltogether) but rather because this felt good, it felt as I was practicing something in which I am a pro, a real expert, something so deeply "in" that it just feels competely natural, even when the expessive media is new and foreign - like teaching toddlers...
I can't feel anything like that doing anything else. I am a good - even great - professional, and I can probably do anything I set my mind upon. But whatever I do - no matter how successfully - I can't stop feeling like a phony. Because it is not something THAT deeply engrained and it is not something - ever - to which I have had so much exposure that it fused to my bones and skin....thus no matter what I do it is never as "pro" as anything related to piano or music...sad and scary.
Now....I am curious to find out how people do things they learn so "late" in life like professions decided upon in college....if nothing is "fused" deeply in childhood - does it make it easier for one to become proficient in something or do people just never really question how "them" is what they do?
P.S. The picture of course is from my dear dear friend and great inspiration....Vita Usova.
