This came to me as my intermediate orchestra class has been struggling. Not the expected struggle of apathy or need to practice, but some students really wanted to do a hard song but some (one very vocal one) did not.
So today had a student print off a bunch of cocoons and post them around the room.
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Monarch_Butterfly_Chrysalis.JPG )
The are ratty, ugly, a bit alien looking (as some students said)
and when they asked what they were and why the pictures where around for about the 10th time I said something like:
I read a lot of children's books. They frequently tell the book of how a caterpillar turns into a ....(wait for it)....BUTTERFLY! (they all say it together) However, once the butterfly has come out then, thats the end of it. Hooray and cheers for the pretty pretty butterfly.
But seeing the butterfly is not the miracle. The miracle happens in the cocoon. A worm-like creature enters it and somehow, by some miracle, the caterpillar twists, turns, grows new limb and changes, indeed metamorphoses, into something completely different! If anything demands our study or attention is it not the cocoon?
So orchestra (or fellow travelers), this is your cocoon. It is going to be hard, restrictive, and frustrating but if we work and be smart for it, we will emerge something completely different. So, to the cocoon!
No comments:
Post a Comment