STUDY WITH ALFONS

I can’t keep up with all the things I scheduled myself to do. I still haven’t had a successful filming of my shoulder video yet. I’m way behind my writing out movement lessons. I’m late with two books. I would love to do a new video series, something like my „Getting better day by day” video series on Youtube. But I’m hopelessly behind schedule. I’m like a dog chasing its tail.

James Nestor advertised his workshop for the Feldenkrais Summit 2021 like this: „The most surprising data point I learned while researching my book is that humans are the worst breathers in the animal kingdom.”

I had a good sleep. After waking up I added two hours in bed, worked on improving my breathing. I found back to the very smooth and noise-less way of breathing I had decades ago. Human breathing is very complex and has a lot of options, and thus also a lot of possibilities for error. Do other animals not make mistakes? For a moment I was trying to find out what has bothered me about Andrew Huberman’s interview on the Rich Roll Podcast. Then I added the five or so breathing lessons titled „Glueing in the lungs” from Moshé Feldenkrais to my imaginary reading list. The one that never gets done. I was thinking about my neighbour, whose last two dogs, very cute pugs, both died early because of breathing problems. One of my childhood friends came to my mind. His bulldog had a lifetime of strong breathing problems and contributed more to their apartment’s indoor air pollution than the Chinese burning coal to drive their economy. Somewhere I’ve read that when you stop a songbird’s breath for more than a few seconds it will die.

„Mechanical constraints require that locomotion and breathing be synchronized in running mammals. Quadrupedal species normally synchronize the locomotor and respiratory cycles at a constant ratio of 1:1 (strides per breath) in both the trot and gallop. Human runners differ from quadrupeds in that while running they employ several phase-locked patterns (4:1, 3:1, 2:1, 1:1, 5:2, and 3:2), although a 2:1 coupling ratio appears to be favored.” – Running and breathing in mammals, Science Magazine

I had an espresso in my favourite coffee shop. I consider this a success. Read the chapters „Comprehension Through Prediction” and  „Surface Structure and Deep Structure” from Frank Smith’s excellent book Understanding Reading. Then I deleted all three of James Nestor’s books from my library, and worried: „Am I allowed to do this?” And worse, may I write about what I just did? Or will this shine a bad light on me? Maybe I will look him up later, to see if he is physically able to speak. Speaking, producing spoken language, vastly independent from moving, is the ultimate control of breathing, something quite unique to us humans. Without a doubt, humans are the most advanced breathers in the animal kingdom. But learn how to use our freedoms and abilities, we must. Lifelong learning it is.

Then I compared the original ending of Raymond Carver’s essay „Why Don’t You Dance?” to the one edited by Gordon Lish:

• „She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more, she knew that, but she couldn’t get it into words. After a time, she quit talking about it.” (Carver)
• „She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying.” (Lish)

This made me think about the story of the very healthy looking man I have seen in the subway, 20 years ago, the one I quit talking about.

I still haven’t written anything related to my work today, apart from the above paragraphs. The daily blog post is my hobby, and does not pay for my next espresso. However, it does give me a daily feeling of having achieved something. I click on „Publish”. I might allow myself to order another espresso.

I’m on a mission. The objective: to improve my speaking and my writing.

Tactical next step: memorise all first paragraphs from all essays out of David Sedaris’s book „The Best Of Me”, and from the book „Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” by Raymond Carver. No pun intended with the title of the latter one. Gordon Lish (the editor) went to work mercilessly on those essays, attrition warfare style, last word standing. These paragraphs are worthy candidates, honourable guests to my to-be-built memory palace.

My first course of action would have been to copy all essay titles together with their first paragraphs into one document. Get everything neatly arranged. Set myself up to highlight, underline, group and ungroup, make notes, analyse, track my progress, and to produce statistics.

But then I figured I’m not in school anymore. No time for busy work. I should just… get the job done. I will start with one essay, the one that’s already open on my desk, from the middle of the book. Do that one first, then take it from there.

For some strange reason – I have not fully figured out yet – producing well formed sentences works a lot smoother in writing than in speaking. At least for me, in my second language, English.

Today I was trying to film a short video – the one for the shoulder, the one I mentioned yesterday. I couldn’t get the sentences to sound quite like I wanted them to. I recorded the introduction more than seven times, and still, the sentences didn’t sound right. They didn’t flow to my liking. Furthermore, my face was all over the screen, like, when you take the lid off a pot of popcorn that’s just popping. Why do I move that much when I’m talking to the camera?

At the current stage of my development I do edit my blog posts 30 to 60 times over. This I have to mention to my defence. But still. Why is the difference between writing and speaking so conspicuous?

That last word, conspicuous, I chose it from a range of words that Google suggested when I just now looked for a word more descriptive than „big”. I probably should have picked „pronounced” instead, which would have been in my active vocabulary. Would have saved me some time. Would have been easier to pronounce.

Is it my memory? I probably would struggle to reproduce the last five sentences I’ve just made up, if you would hold me to it. I mean, down to the very last minute detail. Is it? It might be. I don’t want this to be the problem, though. Trying to improve memorisation power is no walk in the park. Or maybe it is? Literally. I’ve heard that walking helps with memorising stuff. I will keep thinking about it. Maybe I’ll start with… repeating myself more often. Maybe I’ll start with repeating myself more often.

Or maybe I shouldn’t compare myself to great movie actors, and other really talented and well trained folks. Maybe that would be a good start. Maybe that would be a good start.

„A fool, a jester, a simpleton full of wisdom, a laughing stock who in the end wins big, a character of traditional folklore stories that are passed through generations by word of mouth.” – Wikipedia

Once upon a time, a fool was walking from one town to the next. Suddenly, noises, hoofs of horses, approaching quickly from behind. Loudly, a carriage came to stop next to him.

The coachman, in great hurry, called out sharply: „Behold! How long to the next town? Answer, quick!” The fool replied: „Sir, you’re almost there. Driving slowly, it will barely take you five more minutes. But if you hurry, it might just take you half the day.”

„You fool!”, yelled the coachman, cracked his whip to urge his horses, and hurried away in fast gallop.

The fool continued his stroll, leisurely, down the long stretch of the road. Then came around the next bend, where the road had many potholes. He spotted the carriage stuck in the ditch at the side of the road, the front wheel broken, the coachman cursing, busy repairing, throwing an angry, reproachful look as the fool passed by.

The fool, grinned, winked, said: „Told you. It’s five minutes, if you drive slowly…”

I put this story together in English language, inspired by Middle Saxon folklore. I want to use it in my next Youtube video, a short routine to improve range of motion in the shoulders. A great, little short routine to deal with chronic shoulder pain or frozen shoulder, problems that do not easily respond to traditional therapy.

The key strategy of the lesson is the reversal of proximal and distal: instead of walking the hand (of the painful arm) up a wall, the client keeps the hand in place and squats down. Both motions result in an extension of the shoulder joint, but the reversed motion is usually much better tolerated, as it does not trigger pain; or at least not in the same way, thus instantly providing more range of motion, and a successful movement experience. Often times the results are quite spectacular, miraculous even, big improvements happening in a short time.

The essential movement quality in this lesson is to move slowly. And to stop before pain occurs. Before the carriage derails into the ditch and breaks its front wheel, so to speak.

The most important metric on Youtube: „Click and watch.” The longer people keep watching a video, the higher its monetary value.

The same goes for publishing houses and their quest for best selling books: „Open and read”. The more people read, the more they invest themselves, „I couldn’t put this book down”, the deeper they fall in love, the higher the monetary value. Margaret Atwood, for MasterClass, tongue in cheek, boiled all theories on writing successful novels down to one phrase: „Hold my attention.”

For the music industry it’s „Click, listen, repeat”, for restaurants „Order, eat, come again”, for Youtube „Click, watch, click again”, for publishing houses, ”Open, read, buy one more book.”

The things people come up with in order to make other people hold their attention, the crimes they commit.

„Is there any thing that cannot hold attention?”, she cries out loud. Is there a single thing, a single motion, void of the ability to capture and hold attention?

It’s a serious question, „What on Earth” cannot be used to hold attention? There’s people who sit down to stare at the space in front of empty walls, pioneers of holding attention, some of them, forcing even formlessness into dropping some coin.

When you buy one package of cow’s milk you don’t get to drink the milk of one cow only. It’s not as if you went through the factory hall and noticed, „Oh, this cow has beautiful eye-lashes, I want to drink her milk!” or „Hey, I found one without udder infection, can I have milk from this one?” That’s not how it works. You always get to drink a mix from dozens, if not hundreds of cows.

That was an odd start for this blog post. I wonder if the following story would have made a better choice:

When I was in my single digit years my father’s career looked pretty good. We moved to a better neighbourhood. The type of housing development where every family has their own two-story house with a big garden, next to hills with forests, yet close enough to the city. 

All of the neighbours were doing well. One row above us lived the guy who wrote our Austrian president’s presidential speeches, and he did the same for some of our ministers. My mom said that’s his job. For two decades I didn’t know what that meant, but this man was for sure dressed very well, better than everyone else. Later, when I first heard Obama on Youtube, I was like, „Wow, Obama can speak pretty well”. I thought Obama’s speech writer Jon Favreau did a splendid job matching his writing to Obama’s natural style of speaking. And when I read some of Trump’s tweets on Twitter, I imagined his Twitter account manager and tweet-writer must have been a character like F. Tony Scarapiducci from Netflix’s Space Force.

„A congressman randomly hugs General Naird before a budget meeting and F. Tony urges him to just go with it. General Naird goes on to awkwardly hug a congresswoman he had never met before and she’s not comfortable with it at all. General Naird and Dr. Mallory get mad at F. Tony for his suggestion and F. Tony mumbles to himself: Why Am I In Trouble Because Boomers Are Weird Around Women?”– from Space Force Fandom Wiki

Wow, that was even worse. 

I shouldn’t touch on politics. A friend once advised me, strongly: „Never write about religion or politics, especially with your limited knowledge about these topics.” Maybe the following paragraph would have been a better choice? Whom can I ask, who will choose for me? Ok, I chose. Here it is:

We don’t know which words in Raymond Carver’s essays have actually been written by Raymond Carver, the famous American short-story writer and poet. 

Sometimes „Gordon Lish’s edits improve minimally, give shape to what’s there, or alter a phrase. But at other times the feeling is very different – the characters can be more brutal, for instance, and less is made of the women. Many stories are cut by 50% to 70%.” writes The Guardian, and goes on by reporting, „Tess Gallagher has written by hand her suggestion for the last paragraph [of the essay „Errand”]. If you compare this page to the story as it was eventually published, you’ll find that the very last words of Carver’s very last story were Gallagher’s.”

The Guardian’s continues (I quote loosely): „More than 20 years after Raymond Carver’s death, Tess Gallagher, with the help of the Carver scholars William L Stull and Maureen P Carroll, is bringing out the manuscript of Beginners. She describes the process as a restoration, and says it has taken 12 years for Carver’s words to be exhumed from under Lish’s hand, so extensive were his marks. In this sense she is offering up Beginners as an item of interest rather than a finished piece of work – a bootleg if you will.”

My Feldenkrais Book also underwent the taming – as well as inspiring – choices and suggestions of a human editor (the talented Heidi Woehrle). However, in this blog all posts are original, single sourced, „bootlegged” if you will. You can witness me changing, from blog post to blog post. My learning process becomes more obvious than with edited, published writing. More „authentic”, in the sense of „unaltered”, „unedited”, „not shaped to match a certain personality, spirit, or character”. And maybe, nowadays, this is something people are interesting in seeing.

It’s also one of my favourite things in my movement classes. I can see the process of learning and exploration and development in students. Their authentic selves become visible. And it’s ok. I love that.

Some scientists say that there’s as many causes for back pain as there are people. But in my experience there’s patterns and similarities, people make similar mistakes. Bending the lower back when you could have used your hip joints instead, is such a mistake. Give it enough time and repetitions, and there’s your lower back troubles.