Rabbi
Ilene Schneider is one of the first women rabbis ordained in the U.S. and also
the author of the award-winning Rabbi Aviva Cohen Mysteries. Now she’s finally
decided what she wants to be when she grows up, recently retiring from her day
job to devote herself to writing. Learn more about Ilene and her books at her
website. Today Ilene joins us to talk about failure.
Once upon a time, there was a
little girl who thought she could sing, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Instead, she was the student whom the music teacher told to “mouth the words”
in school assemblies.
She also thought she could play a
musical instrument. After all, her grandfather had been a professional
saxophone player in Paul Whiteman’s society dance band in the early 1920s, and
her father had been in the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, as was her cousin.
Then she was introduced to the recorder in fourth grade. All she could produce
were squeaks.
Fast-forward about forty-five
years. The little girl’s sons turned out to have some musical talent. The older
played guitar and did ear-splitting renditions of punk rock. The younger one
played violin at age five, switched to piano, and then switched again to
guitar. He could play by ear, had perfect pitch, and composed as well as
played. His singer/songwriter type songs are similar to Leonard Cohen’s:
wonderful melodies combined with incomprehensible, metaphysical lyrics.
When the younger boy was still
taking piano lessons, he never practiced. “Just imagine,” his teacher would
sigh, “how accomplished he could be if he practiced.”
“I have a great idea,” said the
little girl, now a woman who should have known better. “I’ll teach by example.
I’ll take piano lessons, and when my son sees me practice, he’ll do the same.”
Big mistake. Yes, I was that
little girl who was supposedly a mature, intelligent woman who had rid herself
of self-delusional behaviors. I somehow managed to forget that I cannot
translate the sounds in my head to my vocal cords or an instrument. I have no sense
of rhythm. I have no idea if a note is too high or too low, too sharp or too
flat. My fine motor skills aren’t great – I stopped trying to make my own
clothes when I realized I couldn’t follow the lines when cutting a pattern –
and I can’t coordinate my two hands to do different things simultaneously. My
small hands can barely stretch to an octave, and I had to hit the notes using
my long nails.
I think the first song we learned
was “Jingle Bells.” It sounded like a dirge.
And my son was right: practicing,
especially scales, is BORING.
Scheduling time for lessons
became difficult, so I stopped taking lessons. The teacher, an older European
woman who was classically trained, celebrated by retiring.
Maybe it’s not my most
humiliating failure, or my most serious, but it haunts me still.
Unleavened Dead
Two members of Rabbi Aviva Cohen’s congregation are found dead,
victims, they say, of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. But Aviva has info
that leads her to doubt it was an accident. Then, police suspect Aviva’s
niece’s partner in a hit-and-run death. Aviva is sure the woman is innocent,
even though her SUV has a body-sized dent on the hood. As she looks into the
two disparate cases, Aviva discovers they may be connected, and her amateur
sleuthing takes a sinister turn that involves sexual abuse of teenage girls,
money laundering, stolen identities, and an FBI investigation. Once again, her
curiosity has put her life in jeopardy.
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I, too, have minimal musical talent. It stops me from taking g lessons. But it doesn't stop me from singing when I feel like it. Thanks for your story.
ReplyDeleteMy music teacher also told me to "mouth the words and not sing" and I was devastated. Everyone in my family sang, although no one had any musical training. And they sang well. I think I did, too, but my teacher thought farm kids were stupid, dirty and had no talent. It was an early lesson in stereotyping. But, as you've indicated and is true of most writers, overcoming failure when young gives us practice doing it later in life. Being mulish is a virtue, I guess.
ReplyDeleteYour article reminded me of the urban legend of Albert Einstein's "failures" before "inventing the lightbulb." I prefer to think he succeeded 1000 times to prove what didn't work.
ReplyDeleteOne of my prose poems, The Next Mistake, begins:
Why must every
wrong action
be labeled a mistake when
Lessons are learned?