[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It seems I ruffled a few feathers with my last blog post. (I guess that means that there’s people reading what I write – which made me smile!) I don’t write this blog to provoke, you know. Some of you might find that strange to believe – I provoke so much, but this is not one of those times. I write it to reflect, mostly. Sometimes to rant, sometimes to yarn. But a good thing came out of this horribleness. I got a chance to reflect on what I write, and why I write – all good things to do, I think. I talked about this to a few friends, and someone I trust summed it up really succinctly…. He said something like “Well, you’ve written something like you would put in a letter, but it’s where everyone can see it. And then someone has written their reaction to it, and then let you know. And it’s all instantaneous. And it’s just the way things are these days.” Actually, he said it in a much better way than that, but it made me do some more thinking again.

So before I go on, I want to clarify a few things.

1. What I write here are my opinions. Not facts. Not judgements. Just opinions. And they belong to me.
2.  I understand that you mightn’t have the same opinions as me.
3.  Number 2 is ok by me.
4.  If the world was full of Rachels it would be noisy and exhausting. And there would be too much hair.

There are various things that make me uncomfortable in life, and I will probably write about them. Inequality of education is one of them. I try to do something about this – but that is my choice. It doesn’t make my life any better or worse than others. I do not look for your approval. I will try to challenge you if I think you are wrong, but I do not judge you. If you judge me, that is your problem. Does my choice make you uncomfortable? It isn’t meant to. I am doing what I do in the education system because I love it, and am good at it, and I got that opportunity.

The way artists are undervalued is another thing that makes me uncomfortable. All artists – not just musicians. Sometimes I feel like I live in a subset of the community. Due to the choice I have made to be an artist I have given things up. Lots of money is one of them. ‘Normal’ working hours is another. Job security. Superannuation. Excellent mental health (I do not write that last little sentence lightly.) But I have got lots of other good things from my choice. I meet excellent people. I am creative in my decision making. And I am very happy in what I do. Given my time again, I would choose what I have done again. I do not regret this (well, sometimes when the car rego is due I do….) decision. And I do not look at others and judge them if they are a doctor, or an accountant, or a hairdresser, or a lawyer (maybe that last one. But it depends what sort of lawyer they are….). Really? I don’t really care what you do with your life, as long as you are a decent human being.

I do feel uncomfortable about the ‘excess’ in our communities. Big cars, big houses, lots of unnecessary packaging around vegetables, huge amounts of ‘stuff’. But if you choose to have this, then that is your business. It’s just I don’t. I have come to this discomfort by looking at the people who don’t have this stuff – and this difference is one I don’t like much. But it is not an attack on the people who do have lots of stuff. (I remind you of point one I wrote earlier…)

I am not angry as I write this, and I hope that my words don’t come across that way. I am not sad either, or rueful. I am proud of what I do, and who I am. I do not expect anyone else to be measured by the standards by which I measure myself. And I am too busy measuring me to measure you.

(She gets down from the soap box and goes to eat her breakfast…)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I have been thinking about friendship a bit lately. I’m not going on a middle-aged-person-rant about Facebook friends, and what makes a real friend. That’s all been said before, and really doesn’t interest me at all.

I know that I have some friends because they live close by, and it’s really convenient to see them a lot. Would I still be as friendly with them if we didn’t live so close? Actually, for both of these groups of friends, I hope so. I like them enormously.

I have other friends who I’ve met through my work in schools. I tend to walk into a classroom, and if I like what they do and how they are with the children, then I like them. It doesn’t happen as often as you think. But if I like your teaching then I will back you to the hilt, and call you my friend. Is that odd? Possibly. But it works for me.

And then I have friends who I perform with (with whom I perform – I know. But it sounds pretty stuffy.). Some people who I play with (with whom… oh, forget it.) I don’t have a great connection with. It’ll be a good performance, but not one that really excited me. Would you be able to tell in the audience? I’m not sure… probably, if you were really looking, and knew my playing well. And then there are others that it’s just wonderful. There is risk-taking, and a huge amount of give-and-take, and all sorts of things that happen in the concert that hadn’t been discussed or even tried out in the rehearsal. It’s incredibly exciting as a player to have this happen. And if it happens for most of the night it’s totally exhilarating. (Do you remember what it was like when you met someone that you then had a really passionate love affair with? It’s like that…) And these people I count as my friends too. Good friends. Friends I’d trust with fairly intimate information. And yet I mightn’t hang out with them much, or even see them a lot.

Odd. And yet true for me. I’m not sure about other performers, but for me it’s true. Maybe that’s why there’s a lot of infidelity in the music profession. Or maybe we’re all just fickle and untrustworthy, who knows?!

Does this happen in other professions? Probably. I don’t know any trapeze performers I can ask, or duo rock climbers, or synchronised swimmers (probably best that way too…). But there’s something about bearing your soul with another person and them loving what they see (well, hear), and responding to it and making what you have given them even better that leads to a pretty strong bond. I like these people a lot that this happens with.

I also try and perform with them a lot….[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When you are growing up you are often told by your parents (or whoever is looking after you) to ‘be an individual’, or ‘not to worry about what others think’, or to ‘march to the beat of your own drum’. (As a musician, I find this phrase strange. No-one wants to work with a muso – in particular a drummer – who just plays whenever they want.) I heard Alexei Sayle interviewed on the radio last week, when I was driving to a concert, and he was talking about the fact that he never really fitted in. He didn’t really ever know how to. And it got me thinking…

So as a kid, we are encouraged to be free, to be different. But as an adult, we are encouraged to fit in. To not rock the boat – with our opinions, or life-style choices, what we wear or even how we do our hair. When does this all change? Did I miss this class?

I don’t really fit in, you know. If you know me, this probably comes as not-much-of-a-surprise. I joke about ‘being normal’, but I know that I’m not really. I’m not hugely radical with most things – but I am aware that I’m a bit left of centre. Most of the time I’m fine with that – but sometimes it gets a bit lonely.

I didn’t come at my performing career the ‘right’ way. I was a late bloomer, as a cellist – probably due to laziness and excessive beer drinking which caused me to get a bit lost in my late teenage years. Also I was actively discouraged to be a musician by many of my teachers at school, and it took me a number of years to have the courage to do what I really wanted to do… So I didn’t go to the ‘right’ summer camps, or study at the ‘right’ post-graduate places. I loved the different path I took – it exposed me to some amazing musicians, teachers, mentors and concert venues – but it was a struggle most of the time, and completely unremunerative. (Yes – I know that’s not a word. And my spellchecker agrees with me.)

I don’t do the ‘normal’ sort of teaching (sitting with cello students in a small room teaching one-on-one). Some of my string-playing colleagues have commented on this. Some of my amateur-musician-friends have also commented on this. And the reason that I don’t do this is that I don’t want to. I don’t think it’ll benefit my cello playing that much (as I’ve been told it will). I love the sort of teaching that I do. It’s mad, and energetic, and exhausting, and it inspires me, and keeps my feet flat on the floor, and my head wondering about why I love music so much. I love the kids I see, and the programs I run.

My hair isn’t ‘normal’. My mother pesters me about this. I love my hair. I love that I look like a cross between a crazy-lady and a homeless person. I love that I don’t have to brush it, or wash it, or straighten it. I love that in the era of hair straightening and smoothness, my hair is a mop/ nest/ mass of tangles. It suits who I am, and who I want to present to the world. Funny that the person who taught me to be individual wants to change this part of me.

And the biggest thing of all? I have chosen not to have children. This seems to have threatened an awful lot of people. I have lost friendships over this. I have drifted away from others because my friends got consumed with parenting. I love kids – but I don’t want them. I never have. I don’t understand this ‘wanting’ to have children. I ‘want’ ice-cream, or a glass of wine. But not a child. And this seems to threaten people. Most of my closest friends are the generation older than me. I have a few others – women who haven’t let this get in the way of relating to each other. The number of times I’ve been told ‘I’ll regret not having children’ or been told ‘tick-tock, tick-tock’ (yes – I kid you not) is astounding.

I am not hoping to be normal. I don’t want to be. I like that I’m different. And I know that a lot of people admire that about me. I’ve been told by some people I’m inspirational – although I wouldn’t go that far. But sometimes I wish that I could be satisfied with talking about Instagram, or reality TV. I wish I could be more polite and less quick to blurt out things that people often find a bit confronting (who knew so many people were offended by the term ‘box gap’?). Times that I’m tired, or drained and don’t have the courage to stand up and face the world on my own terms.

But most of the time I don’t. I’m proud of who I have become, and what I do.

Where’s that drum?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]So…. as the title of this blog post suggests, this is not a happy post. I am not in a particularly good mood.

I do a few things in my life…. I play the cello. I give concerts. I also teach music to kids.

A lot of the kids I teach are disadvantaged. ‘Disadvantage’ is a pretty loaded word. It could mean loved children in remote areas. It could mean kids in foster care. It could also mean a family who have just had their oldest child stabbed to death over 100 times by an ice addict.

Read that last sentence again. That was me this week.

Now add this into the mix. The family know the other family of the ice addict, because the community is close.

And these children are sent to school on Monday. And the lovely, lovely teachers that I work with pick up the pieces, and continue on. And it is stuff like music that makes these kids who are grieving and whose world has just been turned upside-down smile for a little while.

And yet I feel like I’m sticking a band-aid over a gaping wound that continues to bleed.

And the charity I work for has to fight and fight and fight to get money to continue.

And yet over $200 million dollars is given to athletes to go and run very fast or swim very fast (actually, they did neither of those things particularly fast, did they?). Or politicians spend a whole lot of money debating superannuation laws so that the rich can remain so.

And the kids I see are coping with stuff like this. What will happen to this family now? What will happen to these little people?

I can guess. You see, the oldest one will get lippier. And she will go to an overcrowded high school, where the teachers are drowning in paperwork and don’t have the time to help her, or the inclination, because they are being criticised left right and centre. And so she will be ‘asked to leave’, or branded as trouble, and become known as ‘difficult’. There will be fights in the community. There will be retaliations. And none of it will be reported, because it’s commonplace.

And the people who are trying to do good will become burned out, because they work for next-to-nothing, and slowly give up.

And the rich will continue to get richer. And renovate their homes. And send their children to schools with three swimming pools, and a shooting range, and continue to be frightened of ‘the blacks’, or ‘the Muslims’. And the media will make us more scared, and not say the truth. And the superannuation rates will only help the wealthy.

Have I made you shake your head in worry? Or disbelief? I stand by all that I’ve said.

Is it hopeless? Right now, I feel it is.

Probably tomorrow I’ll have the strength to do it all again.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

I have said it before – and I’m going to say it again (in fact, I’m going to say it now) – I have a huge amount of help to run my life in the way it runs. It’s all been a bit busy over the last 4 weeks or so -lots of travel (not as glamorous as it sounds. I don’t like being on planes much, and travelling with a cello is pretty stressful. You are also a sitting duck for nutters to want to talk to you…), lots of radio and print interviews, lots of ‘being in the public eye’.

And there are numerous people who do all sorts of things for me – and so I want to write about them today. People who fix my website for me when the updates don’t talk to the plug-in (I think. I’m not sure. I am a bit of a Luddite, and my eyes started to watch for passing squirrels when this was being explained to me….). Someone who tweaked a CD booklet for a re-print when they had mountains of work to do. A friend who picked me up from the airport when I was feeling pretty wiped out, carried my bags and then took me out to lunch. Someone who very quietly calmed me down when I was being spoken to pretty awfully and could have exploded (with dire consequences). Someone else who does all the cleaning and runs the house when I’m away so I can come back to a warm, well-stocked house. Friends who manage the bar for me at concerts.

The list is pretty endless. These are just the ones I am thinking of now.

If any of them are reading this (I’m not sure if they do) – I thank you hugely.

And if they aren’t, I still thank them hugely. If you see them, please thank them as well. They’ll like that!