Experienced Beginner by Helen Yee

I have been mulling over my dreamboard, which I try to do each full moon, and unsurprisingly it has some messages for me. The thoughts and feelings that I've held in the background are right there on paper in front of me. There, in the cry of a newborn and the images of women in their prime, tables, flowers and ripe fruit.

How can I make peace with being both experienced and a beginner at the same time, when it comes to my creative pursuits? One of my challenges is I find myself feeling like a newbie constantly. Yeah, it can be a problem when one considers herself the perpetual student. I see all the stuff I don't know yet, and I yearn to be "there." I imagine a magical place where I'll feel okay when I have gained that next piece of experience, of accomplishment, of wisdom. And yet, I must have gotten "there" hundreds of times in my life and yet don't feel completely satisfied. An adjustment in interpretation is needed, don't you think?

My dreamboard has images of a baby, but also tall, old trees and women who stare down the camera and strut their stuff on stage. In the center, two words dominate in capital letters: NEVER HIDE. Is it that I feel I have to hide the newer parts of my creating, the not fully hardened edges of my learning and experimenting? Is it okay to show the world what I think is only half-baked right now? I need to learn it's me who keeps judging herself as not done yet and keeps feeling the need to hold back the newer edges of what she's creating. It is vulnerable territory to let the world see my process, but I do this in improvisation anyway. Maybe it's the technology of recording that creates this ability to freeze something created in the moment, and examine it over and over again that I'm fearful of. In improvising, it used to be only the people in the room with me and their memories of that moment. Now, with both fear and gratitude, I recognize that those moments can be captured for criticism, or for sharing or enjoyment.

I'll go back to my initial challenge: being simultaneously experienced and a beginner. If I can adjust my interpretation, forgive and love myself for always wanting to stretch and learn, I can perhaps come to a more satisfying place of claiming and showing myself as an accomplished artist, and let some of the fear of not being "there" yet fall by the wayside. Note to self and to readers: Don't let "beginner's mind" (in the non-Zen sense) get in the way of celebrating and sharing what you already are.

**

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist, composer with experience in a broad range of music genres. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin, a Chinese hammer dulcimer, with Music From China. A multicreative adventurer at heart, she also loves exploring and collaborating in other forms of improvisation including vocal work, movement and text improv. She considers the practice of improvisation a profound teacher, in art and in life.

Creative Living with Jamie with guest Helen Yee

This podcast is 28:35

This week's guest: Helen Yee, improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist, composer

Website: Helen Yee.com
Blog: first a glimmer
Twitter: @helyee
Facebook: Helen Yee on Facebook
CD and Music Downloads: Trio Tritticali and CD Baby


Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist, composer with experience in a broad range of music genres. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin, a Chinese hammer dulcimer, with Music From China. A multicreative adventurer at heart, she also loves exploring and collaborating in other forms of improvisation including vocal work, movement and text improv. She considers the practice of improvisation a profound teacher, in art and in life.

Show Notes...

• Jamie talks about using FreeTranslation.com.
• Jamie shares some wisdom she picked up from Chaz of Yogamazing.
• Helen mentions Artists Way.

Subscribe to Creative Living with Jamie...

• You can subscribe to Creative Living with Jamie here and also on iTunes here (Note: this link will ask to access your iTunes and then take you to the podcast. You can also simply open iTunes and search for "Creative Living with Jamie)

Stuck Notes by Helen Yee

For weeks I have been working on getting my new music-making system set up. I have logged countless hours of frustration, trial and error. With each little victory followed by more questions and possibilities, there are ever more moving parts to puzzle over. If I can get this thingmajiggy to talk to that program, then why won't it work anymore when I start up this other application? Technical problems feel frustrating when they stand in the way of creating. I know that figuring out the technology should not "technically" be an obstacle to creating. Well, at least my inner wise self knows that. Nonetheless, days went by without new musical snippets being produced, without picking up my violin (my most basic creative tool), without setting pencil to paper – all in the name of trying to build this new system that would be my "key to creative freedom." Hours were spent searching obscure corners of the internet, trying to make sense of unfamiliar jargon and abbreviations. I was in a dusty tower, poring through tall heaps of manuscripts when I only knew twenty words in this weird language. In short I felt stuck. I didn't want to create without getting this sorted out, but I was getting unhappy with myself for not creating. A vortex of unhappy.

I am happy to report that I've escaped the lonely tower, and can return to the creative playground. Sunshine, rainbows, angels singing, I have emerged from the "stuck storm." What did I learn in the process?

1. Persistence pays, but you need a strong "why" to keep you going
   when it gets rough. I was motivated by my desire to make music in a new
   way, and I have a date to give a house concert. The latter is the one which really mattered most to me.
2. You are not alone and the internet proves that. Thank goodness, over and over again, I found a trail of people with the same questions. Sometimes, I found some golden nuggets to help fill in another piece of the puzzle. I can't imagine trying to do this without computers, search engines and user forums.
3. Take notes. Writing down what I've tried and what happened helped me feel more objective and organized about what could have been hours of failure. Plus, I could more objectively understand what worked and what didn't, and I could jot down what I wanted to try out later. It helped me feel more empowered and productive to have lab notes when my experiments were failing right and left.
4. Breaks are important. I didn't take enough breaks during this challenge, and I suspect I would have been happier had I danced or knitted more. My back and shoulders are aching, so it's time to listen to my body-mind and walk away from the computer. 

Have you had an experience like this? What do you find most helpful when you're stuck? I'll check back later, after I've had a dance break.

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin with Music From China. She considers the practice of improvisation in all its forms a profound teacher in art and in life.

Finding Home by Helen Yee

I grew up in the suburbs, in a predominantly white community and from the beginning I never felt I fit in. The taunting and comments about my Asian features, or my glasses, or being a “brain” cleaved within me a rift of otherness that was never to be soothed in the full comfort of belonging, feeling at home among my peers in the town I grew up in.

Those early conclusions that I’d never fit in didn’t make me completely miserable, but they have been annoying, muddy footprints trailing me in too much of my life experience. You may have heard that childhoods like this create people with a different point of view on the world, and maybe these odd ducks are more likely to become artists and creatives. At times I found a small corner of comfort in this idea, but mostly I still wanted an expansive yet enveloping feeling of home that I imagined everybody else just automatically had.

These days I feel I’m almost home but not quite there yet. From where I stand I can look back at the voyage I’ve taken, each step leading me closer and closer to knowing the nirvana I sought. I moved away from the hometown, met interesting and open-minded people at university, moved to a large and diverse city where I could blend in, met new friends, found some artistic communities that welcomed me. And after a long time I also found love. A friend once asked me what this kind of love feels like. My answer: “It feels like home in a person.”

Yes, most of the time I know my life is really good, and I’m grateful for true love, great friends, interesting and fun creative projects, talented collaborators, and a cozy and welcoming apartment in a fabulous city where people can be who they want to be. Yet those old muddy footprints continue to haunt me. If I’m still not feeling completely at home where will I find it?

I think I’ve already looked everywhere around me so now I’m left with the question: “What if the only way I’ll find home is if I know it within myself?” Hm. It looks like I’ve begun another journey toward home. Does this remind you of any stories, folk tales, myths?

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin with Music From China. She considers the practice of improvisation in all its forms a profound teacher in art and in life.

Stop Waiting for Permission by Helen Yee

I was in the third grade and it was during my first weeks of learning to play the violin. I remember it was one of the earliest songs in the method book, and I was so excited to see I would actually be playing a song I’d heard of before.

They called it “Twinkle Twinkle.” Filled with delicious hope, I played the notes written on the page, but “DDAA / AAD- / DDAA  / AAD- / etc.“ was a befuddlingly disappointing melody that was most definitely not twinkly.

So what did I do? I figured out how to use the fingers of my left hand to make the other notes. And I played the whole song. I figured it out by myself.

But I told no one.

You see, I was waiting for permission. I didn’t want to be the one to jump ahead, to do what no one had told me to.

Can you guess what happened? Not long after that lesson I witnessed one of my schoolmates at the piano, teachers huddled around her, plinking out the theme from the movie, “Love Story.” There were ooh’s and ahh’s, comments at how talented she was to have figured out all those notes by herself, and I quietly kicked myself for not daring to show what I had achieved.

I remained afraid to take a step without being asked to. From the earliest years I was taught to be a good girl, to study hard, practice my violin, not make mistakes, get top grades, be humble. I learned my lessons well.

Fast-forward umpteen years.

I had just finished playing a show at The Blue Note, a show where the bandleader created loose structures and relied on his musicians to improvise and flow with him to create an entertaining and theatrical show. The stage was filled mostly with men: two guitarists, a keyboard player, the vocal bassist, the drummer and the leader of the band. And on stage left were three women: tenor saxophone, trumpet and violin. Despite the hearty applause and cheers, at the end of the night I felt underutilized and a little bit angry. By the end of the gig I didn’t feel I'd had my feature moment and wasn't called enough to add to the mix.

We weary musicians were packing up our gear when I noticed a woman coming to the stage to talk to us. Let’s call her Connie, the mother of an NYU music student, and out for the night with a girlfriend. Her motherly instincts and feminism made it imperative she speak her mind and she told us what she’d observed.

The guys, they feel something and they jump right in. The women, you're all waiting, waiting, for the leader to give you the signal to come in. The men just jump. The women wait. I know you're really talented, and we are longing and needing you to share with us what you have. You'll see it on the videotape. You need to be more like the guys. Jump in more.

This annoyed me because I knew Connie was right. And obviously, this was not the first time I felt this way. But how could I get past my default setting of waiting for permission?

Fortunately I was in Circe’s Circle at the time, and I received a great suggestion for moving away from that default setting by trying on its opposite, by stretching in the other direction. My assignment was to experiment for a week with the opposite, to let myself try on the role of “the woman who always jumps in.” I was to jump in as many places as I possibly could, letting myself risk being seen as aggressive, impolite, a show-off, or whatever other associations I had with jumping in. Just to see what happens, see how it feels…

I did. And I haven’t looked back.

Oh yes, I still feel at times those hesitancies to offer up an idea, to start a new riff, to suggest a different approach to some problem, to be the one to call first – but it has gotten a lot better. Because now when I feel that internal squelching sensation I recognize it as “waiting for permission” and I now know there’s a more satisfying choice I can make. I’ve learned from that week-long experiment that when I put my ideas out there they are almost always appreciated. Even if the idea ultimately doesn’t work out, I now consistently feel glad that I put it out there.

In truth, I had felt that night like the guys had been overplaying. They played too much stuff, weren’t sensitive to the context, didn’t leave room for others, took another solo when it seemed like the song’s ending was right there. I didn’t want to be like them, but I had erred on the other side.

Whenever I think of this lesson, I wish I could thank that NYU mom. What she said that night made a huge impact on me. The lesson is clear: You may be on a crowded stage but there are people out there hungry for your gifts. Do not wait for permission. Jump in. Try being the kind of person who always jumps in.

Put it out there because only then can it be seen, responded to, appreciated. Put it out there because if you hold your expression inside, you are squashing your self into a small container, teaching yourself to be okay with Not Being the Real You. If you hold back there is nothing for the people who are longing to hear it to be nourished by.  Like Connie we are waiting for you to shine. There won’t be a signal. Give yourself the permission.

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin with Music From China. She considers the practice of improvisation in all its forms a profound teacher in art and in life.

Imperfect Gratitude by Helen Yee

I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I have a complicated relationship with gratitude. Gratitude follows patterns in my relationships to other practices which I imagine others to be easily and faithfully, um, practicing.  I feel like I must be the only one that constantly falls off the metaphoric wagon, or mat, or meditation cushion, or in this case gratitude journal. But while I've succeeded at practicing meditation, movement, music or journaling for stretches at a time, gratitude has been the most difficult practice for me to establish. I just can't seem to come to an easy relationship with gratitude practice.

A look at my journal will show maybe a string of seven days with three gratitude entries each day, then a large gap, with nothing except maybe a weird dream I had.

The evidence suggests my relationship with practicing gratitude may be more casual than I wish it would be. But maybe that's because I feel I have to do all the work here. I have to go through the day noticing things I can write notes of thanks about later. But where is the payoff? I pay attention to small and large things for which I can express gratitude, while the pen and journal are blissfully free to ignore anything I've done for them lately. Okay, maybe that's ridiculous.

Writing down the things I'm grateful for doesn't seem to do much for me. When I do have occasions to notice and write down what I can be thankful for, I do indeed have many, many things to be thankful for. Yet somehow, in moments when I am wanting to feel not completely lost, reading these lists hardly seems to help me feel better. Instead, I feel a yucky guilt for failing – how can I have such a wonderful life with all these things to be thankful for and still feel down, discouraged, or frustrated?

Is there a chance anybody else feels this way? Should I be doing something different? Would this change if I had a thousand gratitude entries instead of one hundred? Maybe you can change my mind about gratitude journaling. What does keeping a gratitude journal do for you?

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin with Music From China. She considers the practice of improvisation in all its forms a profound teacher in art and in life.

A Date with Desire by Helen Yee

There’s something magical about the first warm days, when people cast off their jackets and sweaters to soak in the warm energy of late spring and the primal energies are palpable. It feels almost as if our animal selves and desires stir, loudly enough to enter our consciousness. What happens when we notice those stirrings and pay attention to them?

I wrote this poem more than ten years ago, and looking at it now I see something beyond a poem about flirtation.

Stir

Warm spring night, with that scent in the air
spread over sidewalks, hanging in doorways
not the sweet scent of flowers
something else.

Two guys walking
eyes catching something,
two girls walking
but who’s counting?

Upstairs, in cool grey domes, no accountants
take up sharp no. 2 pencils to enter figures
in a tidy ledger.
But all eyes clickclick,
an abacus betraying surging signals
from somewhere farther south,
and in the deep, warm jungle a cat makes a move.
He leaps to touch a restaurant awning,
a muscular flash of shoulders and forearms
stretching toward the winking arch of sky.
The girls pretend not to notice
as their accountants finally take up pencils and laugh.

With our own creative desires, it can feel like a dance of courtship between the animal self and the rational self. The point isn’t to only hear our inner desires, only to sit down and rationalize them away. The magic of our desires can only come to life once the jungle cat and the accountant go on a date together. Here’s a fanciful reminder to you (and to myself, since I keep learning and forgetting): notice what jungle cats are leaping into your consciousness, and try inviting them out to tea. It can be a wild ride, but we’re worth it.

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin with Music From China. She considers the practice of improvisation in all its forms a profound teacher in art and in life.

The Power of Why by Helen Yee

This year I found myself short of time but still wanting to create vision cards to help me keep in touch with my intentions for the new year. While I saw these simple cards as a temporary solution, until I could dedicate time to find juicy and intuitive images to add power and insight to my intentions for the year, it has turned out to be something I might just leave as is.

I didn't want to just command myself to exercise, or drink more water, or compose, or practice. I wanted to infuse these ideas with something more meaningful to me, more motivating than the imperative "Do this!" I don't know about you, but somehow commands often arouse a deep-seated rebellious instinct in me, as if there were someone outside of myself telling me I "should" do this and that. To dig deeper I wanted to remind myself why I was making these choices.

Why? What is the deeper reason I am interested in this intention?

I simply followed each written intention with an arrow pointing to a powerful Why. Powerful to me, at least. My hope is that each day when I encounter these cards, tucked inside my journal as a book marker, I will reconnect with the essence of what I want create by choosing these actions.

If you find yourself losing steam on an intention or resolution, I invite you to find ways to reconnect with your initial desires. Why do you want to make this change in your life? You might find answers that help you make the little choices each day that point in the direction of those big "Why's."

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin with Music From China. She considers the practice of improvisation in all its forms a profound teacher in art and in life.

Celebrating the Intangible by Helen Yee

I just finished knitting a sweater for my boyfriend, and it gives me as much joy as it gives him. Each time he wears it I get to savor the feeling of achievement. It's the largest knitting project I've taken on so far: my first sweater, my first cable project, my first 2-way separating zipper. You can see more pictures of the sweater on my ravelry page.

And as I take time at the end of the year, looking back at the highlights, I notice that except for these end-of-year reviews I lose a lot of that delicious feeling of being done with something and gazing proudly at it. It's so different from my experience of knitting things and seeing them being worn. You see, as a performing artist, the work I do gets lost in time. There's all the work done in preparation, and I love that sense of anticipation and focused effort, but when the performance is over and the glow fades, so too does the memory of having done it. I'm off and rushing off to the next thing. Does this happen to you? Especially with creative endeavors where there is no physical "evidence"?

I don't often spend moments looking back at my achievements or celebrating them, and now I'm wondering if I can make the other creative processes more like knitting. In knitting, I get to see a piece gradually growing as I progress. So how could I apply this to learning a new piece of music, or trying to build a new technique on the violin? In knitting, I get to enjoy over and over again the feeling of "Yeah, I did that!" when I see a piece being worn. Could I maybe lengthen the afterglow by creating something tangible and visible to mark a performance or an achievement that would otherwise be lost to memory and time? Contemplation and journaling are great ways to put these on paper, but for me those pages also get lost in the shuffle. How can we enjoy more regularly what we "knit" into our creative lives?

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin with Music From China. She considers the practice of improvisation in all its forms a profound teacher in art and in life.

Looking Under The Hood When The Dream Stalls by Helen Yee

Last last week I realized that I have not worked as consistently as I would have liked with my composing project. It made me uneasy because I had just felt like I had hit my stride, and yet here I was, stalled.

Somehow, instead of my more typical reaction, criticizing myself and labeling this as failure and proof that I'm never going to succeed at composing music, I wanted to look at this as an opportunity to learn what works for me. I wanted to pull over to the side of the road, open up the hood and look inside. What are the things that support working on my project and what doesn't?

I decided to ask two questions: Why has my project stalled, and what might I do differently?

It is more challenging to write when one's time is being pulled in different directions: the everyday life stuff, commitments to other music making endeavors, having house guests for a few days. What could I change? To be honest, I couldn't have done any work while hosting visitors so I gave myself a pass for those days. But for the other days I could see I might need to establish some kind of routine. For instance, I've noticed that once I'm at the desk with my tools around me and I begin, the creative process starts rolling easily. It doesn't seem to take much more than telling myself I'll only spend a short time on it, and (surprise, surprise) that timer is beeping in a blink and I wish I had more minutes remaining.

Or sometimes, my project stalls because it just doesn't feel fun anymore, especially when it seems I'm not making enough progress, or fast enough progress. I'm slogging away and I only move an inch, and I can't be so sure that's even an inch in the right direction! What might I do differently? I try to trick myself into making the work feel more like play. Putting aside pre-planning, relying on following curiosity and intuition might help me reduce the pressure of trying to produce a "great" work. It might mean finding some tools and methods that allow for more spontaneity. But I've also discovered that maybe I need to find tools that are more fun and inspiring for me to work with. It is like a garden tool that doesn't fit one's hand properly.

If the tool isn't a good fit the gardener winds up with muscle strain and blisters, the time creeps along slowly and the work of weeding seems interminable. But if she finds the tool that fits her hand, using it is a pleasure and the tool almost seems to do the work by itself. Or maybe making working on my dream more fun and pleasurable means taking the work to a cafe, or sprucing up my desk area. I believe the key is to keep trying different things.

I don't know yet how the experiment with establishing a routine to help me arrive at the desk ready to create will go. I don't yet know yet what the tools and methods that fit best in my "hand" are. What I do know is just by changing my approach from seeing "failure" to looking into how I can improve my creative commitment and process, I am already declaring to myself that my creative dream is a priority in my life. It is worth taking a look under the hood and starting up again when it stalls.

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin with Music From China. She considers the practice of improvisation in all its forms a profound teacher in art and in life.

Meet the Dreamers: Helen Yee

Helen Yee

Helen Yee is an improvising violinist, multi-instrumentalist, composer with experience in a broad range of music genres. Currently violinist for the eclectic string trio, Trio Tritticali she also performs on yangqin, a Chinese hammer dulcimer, with Music From China. A multicreative adventurer at heart, she also loves exploring and collaborating in other forms of improvisation including vocal work, movement and text improv. She considers the practice of improvisation a profound teacher, in art and in life.

Website: HelenYee.com Blog: First a Glimmer. Facebook. CD and music downloads: Trio Tritticali and CD Baby.