I tell my students that I’m not a teacher.
Not like the teacher in their classroom.
Yeah, I know my degree says I’m a teacher.
But I’ve always presented myself as a musician, no more, no less.
Sometime during my last year of college, I ran across an idea/occupation/term that resonated with me.
Bricoleur . . . a tinkerer.
I tinker.
I don’t tell kids I’m a bricoleur. Them knowing the word isn’t nearly as important as them observing the behaviors.
I’ve always been a tinkerer.
From the time I was a kid.
Taking apart appliances and small machines, trying to understand how they worked.
Playing with words and sounds in order to express myself.
Puppets, stapled volumes of books, epic stories, juxtaposing Escherian conflicts with elegant dénouements.
Putting aluminum foil on classical guitar strings to make them sound . . . different.
Never really mastering any idea because mastering wasn’t the goal . . the goal was to have the last idea dovetail to another idea.
Arranging or orchestrating sounds on paper.
Experimenting with the goal of finding something new to experiment.
After I graduated and finding myself in a room full of little children, my first instinct was to act like a bricoleur, never settling on an idea, always finding ways to fold into other ideas like an endless kaleidoscopic origami design.
My second instinct was to be a busker, a street musician in search of a street, a maker of music, not to be what a musician in a display at the Smithsonian would look like under glass but rather . . . a bricoleur in hiding, masquerading as a troubadour.
Can one be a professional bricoleur? I think I am living proof.
I encourage all music educators to explore being a bricoleur as your side hustle.
Allow kids and the world to see you experiment, try new things, succeed, fail, morph, crash, burn, rise from the ashes, wash, rinse, repeat.
It isn’t the safest lesson plan or life trajectory. It eradicates the comfort zone we all crave, especially as we age.
But for people like me – and maybe you – it becomes the air we breath and anything less doesn’t cut it.
Not like the teacher in their classroom.
Yeah, I know my degree says I’m a teacher.
But I’ve always presented myself as a musician, no more, no less.
Sometime during my last year of college, I ran across an idea/occupation/term that resonated with me.
Bricoleur . . . a tinkerer.
I tinker.
I don’t tell kids I’m a bricoleur. Them knowing the word isn’t nearly as important as them observing the behaviors.
I’ve always been a tinkerer.
From the time I was a kid.
Taking apart appliances and small machines, trying to understand how they worked.
Playing with words and sounds in order to express myself.
Puppets, stapled volumes of books, epic stories, juxtaposing Escherian conflicts with elegant dénouements.
Putting aluminum foil on classical guitar strings to make them sound . . . different.
Never really mastering any idea because mastering wasn’t the goal . . the goal was to have the last idea dovetail to another idea.
Arranging or orchestrating sounds on paper.
Experimenting with the goal of finding something new to experiment.
After I graduated and finding myself in a room full of little children, my first instinct was to act like a bricoleur, never settling on an idea, always finding ways to fold into other ideas like an endless kaleidoscopic origami design.
My second instinct was to be a busker, a street musician in search of a street, a maker of music, not to be what a musician in a display at the Smithsonian would look like under glass but rather . . . a bricoleur in hiding, masquerading as a troubadour.
Can one be a professional bricoleur? I think I am living proof.
I encourage all music educators to explore being a bricoleur as your side hustle.
Allow kids and the world to see you experiment, try new things, succeed, fail, morph, crash, burn, rise from the ashes, wash, rinse, repeat.
It isn’t the safest lesson plan or life trajectory. It eradicates the comfort zone we all crave, especially as we age.
But for people like me – and maybe you – it becomes the air we breath and anything less doesn’t cut it.
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