At the start of a new year, many musicians set our sights on new goals and aspirations. New Year’s resolutions are notorious for not sticking, but it’s important to set intentions and goals that are realistic and a little flexible. There’s no bad time of year for a new plan to mindfully develop our skills and passion.

One of the most common goals for musicians is to practice more consistently. Sometimes life gets in the way – you may not be able to play as much as you’d like every day. (I don’t think I’ve ever been able to play quite as much as I’d ideally like!) You may want to make a distinction between your intentions and your goals – keep in mind that the intention is to practice with greater regularity, and if one goal doesn’t work out in supporting that intention, you’re free and in fact wise to change your approach! Some people find it helpful to name a number of hours they want to spend with the guitar over the course of a week or a month, or longer, and to plan a little more practice on less hectic days. Others use the Japanese planning principle of kaizen, dedicating themselves to tiny incremental changes, which for some people can sound like, “I’m going to play a song on the guitar every day.” One song isn’t much but it’s better than none, and many find that one song easily turns into playing far more! Making a flexible but sufficiently challenging commitment to regular practice sessions gives us a chance to become the musicians we want to be.

Another important intention for musicians is to seek out new sources of inspiration. Going to a live show, exploring styles of music that aren’t familiar, or playing with a friend can all inspire new ideas. Playing a musical instrument is in a sense like having a relationship with a partner, friend, or family member – the fun and learning are enhanced when you try something new together. 

Motivation can often wane for many reasons. A lot of us lose steam because progress is typically gradual, and sometimes it’s hard to see how far we’ve come. One way to keep motivation is to celebrate the effort itself. If you’ve been working on the same song all week, that dedication in and of itself deserves recognition, independently of how much improvement you’ve made. In addition, you’re probably improving more than you think. Record yourself practicing something, and after another week or two, look back at the old video. You’re likely doing something better already. Offer yourself an extra measure of gentleness and kindness when you’re pursuing something that’s difficult for you. Gradual learning is very typical, and a natural requirement for playing an instrument. You weren’t born with a guitar in your hand after all – some people are quicker studies than others, but it’s a body of skill that takes time to acquire. If you learn a little about the learning process itself, you might find the journey as exciting as the destination!

Lastly, don’t forget self-care. Music is a matter of heart and soul, but musicians are also athletes of small motor coordination! We need to take care of ourselves physically and mentally too, just like any wise athlete would care for their body and mind. Exercise, proper rest, and relaxation will all help your body and mind stay stable, strong, flexible, and balanced, to optimize learning and performance!

As we embark on another year filled with opportunities for growth and creativity, make sure you have intentions and goals in place to make your practice more regular, stay inspired and refreshed, and care for the body-mind that supports your journey. With wise intentions, flexible and realistic goals, and a devoted heart, this could be your best year yet as a musician!

As summer melts into fall, many of us find that the sunlit dreams conjured during the warm summer months begin to cool and take shape into action plans.  Some of it may very well be an effect of the change in daily weather; many of us are at our most active in the summer and gradually cool toward a bit of a rest at the opposite side of the year’s cycle, so we have to make action plans to focus our efforts when our energy and time available are perhaps not as abundant. For many of us it may also be in part a holdover from our school years as young people, when the first autumn winds meant buckling down and pursuing success in school…or, for the less enthusiastic scholars, at least showing up to class.

If you find yourself changing gears toward setting and achieving goals, you might also notice a reluctance which some people have to facing their rough edges, their unfinished projects, their more distant and less straightforward dreams. Some people feel too overwhelmed, feeling like those goals that have receded from us in the past or been subject to less tractable problems in our way are more than we can stand to address. It feels too messy to revisit that again; we become ashamed sometimes, feeling like we aren’t where we should be and it’s more than we can face even to give ourselves another chance to achieve a goal. We feel too broken by past difficulties to try to mend our dreams for what could be. If you ever find yourself in that position, you might think about kintsugi pottery.

Kintsugi pottery is the result of a broken object being repaired using precious metals, such that the mend is not only visible but beautiful. Some people, reflecting on the things that have caused them or their dreams to feel broken, say, “I don’t like this way of looking at it. It seems like it’s saying I’m more valuable because I got hurt. Like my wounds make me more valuable. I hate my wounds. I hate my hurts. I wish they’d never come along. I don’t want this metaphor. Knock it off.” You have a right to frame your own narrative and I will never apply this analogy to someone who does not want it. For me however, the metaphor holds a different meaning.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of success in my life as a musician, a professional, and a person. I’ve also encountered a lot of hurt, disappointment, and difficulty along the way. However, I have very often found the grace to put myself back together with silver and gold. I’ve taken the time, I’ve gone to the expense, I’ve sought out the expertise from people who know this sort of artistry and science better than I do, and I’ve mended old dreams to make them shine even brighter.

The result is that I’m not trying to hide whatever happened. Hiding is not my thing. What happened is not my dream, doesn’t define my dream, and isn’t the end of my dream, any more so than it limits me. Instead it is part of the history of my dream and how I made it come true. The sparkle where my dream was once broken doesn’t make it or me any more valuable than before. Instead it makes visible the value that my dreams always had and which I always had. Nobody would repair with precious metals something that they felt deserved throwing away. There was always more to this than met the eye. The kintsugi piece  was always precious in someone’s sight. It was never just a bowl, just a cup, just a teapot. It always was something more. And although there may be many people who love to play the guitar, who love to sing, who write music, my dreams and my life path are precious to me. They are worthy of the silver of my time, the gold of my attention, whatever precious resource I can possibly use to mend them and bring them new life.

Jack Kerouac said, “be in love with your life. Every minute of it.” I think tending and mending the dreams previously fallen is one way to celebrate and grow my capacity for loving my life. I hope that as summer melts into fall, you can be in love with the process of breathing new life into an old cherished dream that is worthy of your time and attention, not because it’s such a grand, extraordinary dream, but because it’s yours, and you still love it. I hope you can experience mending a cracked or broken place in your treasured life path as an art form of its own.

Quite a few years ago I watched a documentary film called Beauty Is Embarrassing. It was a quirky comedy-documentary about a quirky artist by the name of Wayne White and his quest to bring more humor into the world of visual art. There was something very profound relating to the title which he slipped into the documentary. He said that in a way being an artist is a fundamentally embarrassing situation – that we as artists are creating something and presenting it to the world in the hope that others find it in some way beautiful, and the vulnerability of that is embarrassing at times. It took me a long time to understand at a gut level what he meant. I got it intellectually, but I only recognized that embarrassment within myself very recently.

The items on my guitar practice schedule that are most likely to become overdue are pretty much all my own compositions. I always brushed the pattern off as me being bored with my own words and thoughts and constructions, but a few days ago I noticed that wasn’t the problem. I am in fact a bit embarrassed at times by my own search to create beauty, and there is no greater example of my efforts than my songwriting, which with time has become only more revealing emotionally.

Most of the time, especially when I’m getting on stage a lot and it’s going well as it usually does, I feel like what I am. I’m a person in the full bloom of somewhere around midlife, with enough experience to offer perspective, and enough youth to easily offer energy and hope in spades. I feel like I have a lot to share, and it’s cause for celebration. I started wearing more red over the last few months because I finally feel like I can pull it off – I don’t feel like the vibrancy of my clothing is dwarfing me when I wear this color anymore. But sometimes something comes up and if only for a moment, I don’t feel that way.

Sometimes I feel a bit like an 11-year-old trying to socialize at a school dance. I remember those days and my train of thought back then only too well. “I’m here because I feel like I would like to dance with someone, maybe even one of the boys from another school, but I’m not totally sure how it’s supposed to work, and I’m not 100% sure how to get started, and suddenly I feel unsure about my choice of outfit, and I don’t know if those boys are looking at me because they think I’m cute or because they’re thinking of playing a prank on me. Maybe I should go get a glass of that disgusting punch just to make it look like I’m comfortable here, say hi to my friends, and then call Mom and ask to be picked up early. Then I could eat Zingers in front of the television and relax. 1970s TV reruns always get my mind off things, so I’d be able to forget about this whole sordid, silly attempt to fit in, or whatever this is. What in the world was I thinking coming here?”

Of course the problem wasn’t who was looking at me or why, or how to go about dancing, or what I was wearing. I was hoping to be seen as beautiful, and eventually to co-create something beautiful in the form of a nice dance with a boy my age. There was a vulnerability in that, and it is the same vulnerability that lines the walls of any school dance with young people who don’t know how or whether to get started. Ultimately it’s not that far off from the vulnerability that still makes me shy away from my own handwritten repertoire.

Likewise, it’s not that there’s anything the matter with my songwriting, and in fact there seems to be a great deal right with it. The most important purposes of songwriting for me are to convey something of my life experience in a way that words alone cannot do, and to provide others with some sense of commonality between my experience and their own – again I want to connect at a personal level, even though it’s going to be parasocial with most of my listeners. People have confirmed many times that I’ve achieved those goals, sometimes in words, sometimes in the form of purchasing CDs or becoming Patreon subscribers, sometimes in the form of tears running down smiling faces when I have been out performing. But part of me still finds it embarrassing sometimes – the fact that I put so much time and energy Into creating things and putting them on stage hoping somebody will find them beautiful, especially because they’re relatable. Sometimes shutting down and shutting out that part of myself feels safer, like snacking on sweets in front of familiar reruns when I was a kid. After a while habit takes over, and my own songs are the songs I just don’t play as much as others.

I’ve been in professional training with the Tamalpa Institute for almost 2 years now, and one of the lessons that has deepened time and again for me is how beautiful vulnerability itself is. Even the sad and conflicting truths of people’s lives, when presented honestly and with intentionality, are incredibly beautiful and a great privilege to witness. So then, what if the search to create beauty isn’t cause for embarrassment after all? What if the hope of showing something of ourselves to another and having it embraced is actually among our finest and most powerful qualities? What if that hopeful, vulnerable striving is one of the most noble and beautifully human gifts we can offer each other?

I hope that all of us who call ourselves artists of any sort can learn to take justifiable pride in our vulnerability.

Recently after a swim I was sitting in a community hot tub, listening to a group of educators and parents having a discussion about trends in education. One woman, a local professor, talked about a recent resurgence in interest regarding textile arts and sculpture. She said it’s becoming apparent that the digital natives, the kids who in many cases had an iPad in their hands before they learned to write, have missed much of the hands on learning previous generations had, and know intuitively that they need something more. They feel a deep hunger to use their hands to change something in their world, to make something that wasn’t there, to feel it coming into being. Our hands are such amazing tools – there is an instinct to use them and explore their capacities which can’t just be extinguished in a generation or two. It’s too much a part of who we are.

A long time ago I remember hearing a Native American elder saying that in his opinion, the inability to regularly touch bare feet to bare earth was one of the greatest losses modern humans had endured. Walking around on paved surfaces and shoes that almost totally remove the sensations involved in walking on the ground, we are literally out of touch with the Earth we live on. We don’t really understand in an embodied way how we interact with this Earth or how it holds us. I don’t get off the pavement much myself but I wear sandals very nearly every day, and I definitely feel better when I’m shoeless for a while on a beach or a pool deck. With our hands being analogous to our feet, I’d say this is another good indication that we may benefit greatly from analog, manual activity.

This is yet another great reason to play the guitar. If fidget spinners and bubble poppers help you get your tactile stimulation I’ve got no problem with it…*and*, if you’re going to deliberately attend to sensations, you also have the option, at least sometimes, to explore music making. A guitar is an amazing sensory toy…and approaching it that way can be a great replacement for the assumption that it’s always got to be a big, serious undertaking. We play the guitar, we don’t work it. It’s there to enjoy. Life is too brief and wonderful not to celebrate in song…and sometimes just joyful noise as we learn and play.

If you’d like some helpful guidance learning how to enjoy the journey of playing guitar, contact me! I teach in person in Santa Cruz, California, and lessons are also available online.

As an artist, I’ve always tried to focus at least as much on process as on product. I’ve tried to make the creative process authentic, so that the product will have something real and vivid and alive to say to an audience. The greater the surrender to the process, the richer the product. At the same time I’ve always hoped for a certain sort of product – something that I can put on stage confidently.

Although there is nothing wrong, and indeed much very right, about approaching something purposefully and with goals and aspirations in mind…habits wear grooves as surely as a repetitive dripping of water forms a channel through rock. I’ve been a musician pretty much all my life, and though I by no means consider myself old, forty-odd years is long enough for a lot to change under subtle yet sufficiently repetitive conditions. Looking back I see that it became difficult to do some of my creative work and play because of a quiet but present sense of conditional satisfaction…misgivings about whether what I was doing was “going anywhere.”

I can definitely get too serious, but I’m blessed with a persistent playful curiosity that sometimes taps at my shoulder. That curiosity leapt with joy like a kid after an ice cream truck a few weeks ago, when I learned that one of the Tamalpa Institute faculty members who taught my Level One training last year had an opening in a Saturday practice group in the Life Art Process. It is an intermodal expressive arts process focusing on using the arts as a personal expressive medium not only one by one, but exploring the relationships between art forms. Take what’s happening in your life and dance about it…but why stop there when you can write about your dance, and sing about what you uncovered while you were writing? I’m currently on track to train as a teacher of this work so I’m already quite familiar with it, and yet there is something wonderful about being facilitated by a teacher like Rosario Sammartino. Her words and ideas and even her choices of music to accompany movement give me something fresh and interesting to play with. An experience like this group restores the playfulness and wonder and freedom of creativity.

A lot of synchronicity has joined me recently, and it all came together during one of these group sessions: the experience of creative freedom, immersion in the moment, encountering by turns both the playful and the profound…this is its own product, not just qualities of the process. If I spend an hour or two in the creative process and nothing comes of it that is destined for the stage, I still get the experience of being fully alive and present. I get to be myself, feeling my body, engaging with my imagination, sensing color and rhythm and gravity and energy and sound. What more worthy product could there be? What better use of most any hour?

I like to say that I’m tough on problems and easy on people. That’s certainly always my objective. But sometimes I can be a little too tough on the problems. I can work a little too hard toward an objective and end up missing it. I remind myself a little bit of my cat that way. Sometimes she’s so busy meowing about her desire for food that I have to call her attention to the fact that I already put some in her bowl!

I’ve given myself a little more leeway lately to experiment with how I practice my own repertoire. As I’ve done that I’ve discovered the value of slowing down, and how sometimes it gets me to my objective faster than hyperfocusing. Sometimes if I practice something half as frequently, I get past the rough edges I’m trying to conquer a lot more quickly, or I discover that I’ve been capable of doing what I’ve been trying to do all along. Some of this seems to be related to having a chance to let go of mistakes made and bumps in the road more fully before reapproaching something – both the motor memory and any frustration or disappointment that might have visited me in response to a mistake. Also when I play a number of things less frequently, I just don’t have to try so hard to jam as much into a practice session or a day. I’m less stressed so I’m more present. Memory works better, muscles relax, and I’m more aware of the right things.

I also borrowed an audiobook of a language learning program using the Pimsleur Method recently, and while I was listening to the opening chapter I heard something interesting. Linguist Paul Pimsleur said that it was important not to review language learning material too frequently or too infrequently, otherwise the mechanisms of recall wouldn’t develop optimally in relationship to the language being learned. That provided some confirmation. I hadn’t been certain whether I was onto something or not previously, but I thought that maybe reviewing things too intensely might be a bit detrimental, and it sounds like that’s accurate.

It also joins up nicely with a point made by the vipassana meditation teacher SN Goenka, who advised students to use some degree of variation applied to their meditative technique. He taught the body scanning practice, moving one’s attention from head to feet and back again, taking note of the sensations experienced in different areas of the body. He advised meditators to periodically change the rate at which they did the body scanning practice, even if they were working successfully at a given rate, because “otherwise your mind will become bored and you cannot work properly.”

There were pros and cons to my education growing up, and although I learned a great deal about patience and perseverance, I’m learning that I took some of these lessons to a counterproductive extreme. I basically learned as a young person to tune out my own boredom and insist on paying attention stoically even if I was hearing the same information for at least the 20th time. It made me “a joy to have in class,” as was plastered all over my high school report cards in particular, but numbing out to my own innate sense that there wasn’t anything productive for me in what I was doing at the moment cost me something. If I’m not aware, it still does.

Fortunately the truth is that although we all have our overdeveloped and underdeveloped mental muscles, the imbalances can be moderated from a place of free choice, even well into the years past our most formative ones. In my 40s I am learning to let go, take it easy, relax, and reap the benefits.

What are your assets as a learner? What holds you back? What can you do to bring balance to your journey, making progress at greater peace with the process?

If you are a guitarist looking for someone to help guide you in the right direction, I’m happy to teach both in person in Santa Cruz, California, and online by way of Zoom. If you’re interested, click the contact button above and get in touch!

I just got back from 4 days spent relaxing in the Northern California wine country, enjoying the hot springs. A lot of the time visiting that area seems to open up perceptions or memories otherwise locked away or long forgotten. What I was reminded of this time around was the nature of time and its value; intention and attention.

Most people who know me reasonably well know that although I am a warm, fun-loving person, I’m also more than a bit of a go-getter. I see time as the most valuable resource I have, and my usual modus operandi is to make the most of every moment, usually in the form of going after something – creating, learning, optimizing, trying something new. It’s not uncommon to see me listening to an audiobook sped up to 1.5x speed while cleaning the house, or watching Udemy lectures while lifting weights, just because I see opportunities to get more out of the moment. Multitasking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and science is telling us more about that all the time, but there are still situations where my divided attention suffices, and it doesn’t seem like the things I’m doing necessarily need any more than that. That approach to life gives me a lot – I have more time to learn and grow while doing things at the physical level that don’t really require a lot of my attention – but like anything, it’s not beneficial anymore when taken to extremes without integration of the complement. Running full speed ahead is only a good idea if you know you can put the brakes on when you need to do that…and yeah, that’s my weak spot. 

I was reminded of this when I was soaking in a hot spring. It wasn’t my intention to be oriented around the passage of time, the time of the day, but it was still there just out of habit. Something inside reminded me that sometimes the best way to enjoy the maximum value of your time is to just let go of it altogether – BE. HERE. NOW.

I threw myself into that, and for the overwhelming majority of the next 4 days I was more or less passively drifting in a magical world of dragonflies, ancient waters flowing and pooling, beetles crawling and spiders weaving, blackbirds, and coyotes yipping under the strawberry rose moon as it came full night by night. That practice of being fully in the moment, not having to do anything at all, made for four of the most beautiful days of my life.

When I came back home and picked up my guitar next, I discovered a new strength and vitality in my playing. Experiencing the joy and beauty of a favorite place is definitely strengthening, and I also realized I had probably gotten a much needed rest from all my multitasking and constant endeavoring to cram as much into the day as I can possibly do. I’d probably been operating at something of an energetic deficit of which I hadn’t been aware. If you can be aware of blackbirds soaring and spiders weaving their webs for 4 days, that’s also pretty good preparation for enjoying the precious time spent with a beloved instrument. Most people’s favorite songs to hear or to play don’t last more than maybe about three and a half minutes. That’s a really short time to become present, and sometimes a surprisingly long time to give ourselves permission to just be here now. If we can do it, however, that’s when we’re visited by the magic of music in its fullness.

Whether you go on a grand journey this summer, or whether you stay close to home, I hope you have your own moments of becoming fully present and engaged in something wonderful, however simple!

I know I’m not the only one feeling like this spring is an extra special time of renewal, and a chance to drop into some new intentions. Personally I believe that the more we live in line with our intentions, the more we have to offer the world around us. If nothing else we are just happier, healthier people with friendlier faces and better perspectives to bring to whatever we’re doing. If you have been thinking about starting or continuing to learn guitar, I hope you will consider including that in your life this spring – that you will give yourself the gift of a hope fulfilled, and in turn become that much more ready to show up for your loved ones, community, and world in the ways that matter to you.

Teaching is one of my favorite ways to be of service in helping people lead richer, healthier lives. For many people, learning an instrument represents the power of enhanced self-expression; it gives them a chance to know themselves better and express themselves to friends, family, and community in a way they couldn’t otherwise. For others it presents a possibility to bring other gifts to the people around them, leading music for events and get togethers. For many the challenge of the learning process in itself is fascinating and thrilling – that excitement brings a sense of enthusiasm that translates to other aspects of life as well. Whatever the draw for you, I would love to help you achieve your goals as a guitarist!

As things open up more, a lot of us are finding ourselves getting progressively busier. That makes it all the more important to include the things we love in our habits. It is also important to have flexibility and convenience, which is another reason why I continue to offer online lessons for those who prefer that or who don’t live in the Santa Cruz area.

There’s no time like the present. Email lanakila@lanakilamusic.com or call or text 831-359-4753 to get started!

“I’m giving someone special a guitar for Christmas…can I get them some guitar lessons over Zoom to help them get started?”

“I’ve been wanting to learn fingerstyle guitar for years, and I think it’s time to stop daydreaming and start doing! Can you help me develop my skills further?”

… Absolutely, yes! If you or someone you love is ready to start learning guitar, or expanding on existing skills with a qualified teacher, I’d be thrilled to help.

I offer 1-hour lessons for $50 for ages 8 to adult. Younger students (ages 8-17) who prefer a shorter lesson can alternatively book a 45 minute session for $40. Beginners and more advanced students are welcome – contact me with questions or to book a lesson!

One big positive change since early 2020 is the widespread availability of online learning. I’ve been enjoying the opportunity to expand my horizons in the arts with teachers all over the world, from California to New York, from England to Brazil to Japan…and now I’m taking their lead, offering lessons on Zoom!

Maybe you’ve been wanting to learn fingerstyle guitar from an experienced teacher but you can’t easily get to Santa Cruz. Maybe you’re local but don’t want to spend any more time commuting. Maybe for right now you just feel better and safer at home, rather than in a public place. Whatever your reasons for choosing online lessons, let’s keep it convenient, safe, and sounding great together!