The Music Education Podcast
Listen for authentic and challenging conversation on all things music ed. Brought to you by Charanga. Hosted and produced by Chris Woods of The Chris Woods Groove Orchestra.
The Music Education Podcast
Episode 67 - 'Pure Musiking, Commodification and Mental Health' - Adam Ficek
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In this episode Chris chats with Adam Ficek, psychotherapist and musician (Baby Shambles). This episode is sponsored by Longy School of Music; find out more here...https://longy.edu/
Welcome to the Music Education Podcast. I'm Chris of the Chris Woods Groove Orchestra, and this podcast is brought to you by the Sandstorm Music Education Hub and our sponsor, Longie School of Music. So in this episode, I chat with Adam Fajek. Now Adam is a psychotherapist, but he also happens to be an incredible musician. In fact, the drummer from one of Britain's greatest bands of the past 20 years, I think is fair to say, Baby Shambles. He's a music educator as well, and he has a lot of absolute wisdom to impass on. And I know I do say this a lot, but honestly, this has to be one of my absolute favorite conversations. Just flat out favorite conversations, not just in a podcast. We're talking about mental health, I guess, and mental health of musicians and music educators. And I think that's just so important because everything that we offer in any education setting has originated in our brain, in our mind. So why not spend some time thinking or taking a look at how our brains and minds might be functioning? Not simply for your own well-being, but also just for the benefit of the other people around you, including your students. Before we get stuck in, if I can ask a very, very quick favor. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, please help us by subscribing or following or giving us a rating in whatever platform it is that you listen to us in. It really helps the podcast to grow and really just helps the conversation spread a little bit more widely. I hope you enjoy listening. Adam, thanks so much for joining me this afternoon. Can we start off with uh who you are and what you do?
SPEAKER_01Um I'm Adam Fajek, and I'm a professional musician, uh psychotherapist, researcher, and music educator in there as well.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. Well, the sort of stimulus for this conversation was around specifically around musicians and mental health, I suppose. Um so I I guess a nice place to start would be to hear a a summary of your well, I'll give you a choice. Either your journey to arrive at being psychotherapist and person delving into the brain after being a musician, or maybe you want to delve into the a summary of your sort of findings. It's up to you. Yeah. I'll leave it to you.
SPEAKER_01I guess it'll all unfold together because it's all quite intrinsically linked. So my I guess my music and journey, as as I call it, would be um I didn't really come from a musical family, um, and uh for me it gave me a sense of everything from identity to community to validation to emotional regulation. Um, I guess I'll just flip between the timeline. I mean, most of my research is well, all of my research is really interested in professional musicians and their musicing, and by musicing, I kind of adopt in the term of Christopher Small, which is any engagement to do with the an act of a performance, but you know, a performance could be a recording because effectively it's somebody performing and it's been captured in some way. Um, so so when I refer to musicing, it means anything to do with the act of, the verb, the doing of, um, rather than the artifact. Um, and it's only it's kind of come full circle for me, really, where my research is based around musicing and how professional musicians make sense of that. Um, and I'll go into that a bit later. But you know, as I look back and frame my own journey in terms of musicing and how I made sense of it in terms of mental health, I think you know, when I first started, I was just in a garage band really playing drums. Like there was no nothing more grand than that, it was just knocking about, and I struggled psychologically um late adolescence. Um, I guess coming from like lower social mobility kind of background, there was not much there. So, yeah, started just playing drums and being interested in bands, and then kind of come to a bit of a crisis point in my life. Um, I had a friend that took his own life, and another one had just been people were just either getting involved with with drugs or petty crime or going to prison or you know, ending their lives, and it was uh it was a counsellor that said to me, What do you want to do? I said, Well, I quite enjoy playing the drums, and she facilitated for me to go get out of where I grew up in Milton Keynes and go to Essex and do a BTEC at quite a uh an old age for a BTEC, I was 19. Um and didn't know anyone there, so just kind of really worked hard and realized that if I studied hard I could actually achieve something because I left school with very little qualification wise. Um and just learnt piano on an old keyboard I had. I learned I taught myself guitar, um, continued practicing drums, but there was no formal route. So that was my first way into musicing, really, as anything other than just knocking about in a garage band. So it did finished the BTEC and then went on to do a jazz degree at that time. There was it was very small regarding choice. It wasn't like the environment now where we have I guess you've got our BIMs and our ACMs and all these places springing up. If you weren't classical, you were doing jazz probably at Leeds or at Middlesex University, that was like mid-90s. So I went to Middlesex and done a jazz degree, didn't I knew hardly anything about jazz, um, but you know, cultivated a real passion for it. I did that, kind of scraped through because I was by no means a jazz player, but really found it enjoyable, and then trained to be a secondary school teacher because at the end of my degree they were offering funding to do secondary school music tuition courses. Um so did that for two years, thinking that okay, well, I could probably carve a career here from if I practice lots doing kind of minor sessions, doing weddings, doing some teaching. That was all, you know, for me it come from nothing and no achievement. It was it was a great way in. Um so trained to be a school teacher, and after doing secondary school PGCE in secondary music, uh went moved into Perry because it gave me more freedom and it was less kind of work being brought home as it were.
SPEAKER_02So you went from being secondary school music teacher to to Perry drama teacher.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was it was a slow move, and there's some kind of SEN school stuff as well, which I really enjoyed. But my goal was always to do a three-day teaching week and then have you know, this was pre-family life, then do four days practicing, being out there playing, doing what I really loved. But from from what I saw around me, it was part of the course, really. Everyone was teaching, really, as professional musicians, most people. Um, of course, there was always that goal of making it, which slowly dissipated, I think, as I headed into my 30s. Um, and that was it, really. I thought, okay, do some teaching. Um started a master's in music education, and then one of the bands I was in kind of blew up um and kind of plummeted me, or plummeted, maybe that's the wrong word, thrust me into you know, this this pseudo-superstardom being in the eye of the hurricane uh media exposed band, as it were. So on that month for 10 years and and done all that stuff. Um and then came out of that and went back to teaching, wrote my own solo albums and learned lots about the industry in regards to self-production, um, marketing and all that kind of stuff. I picked up a lot of those skill sets anyway during the time in the band. Um studied another masters in music production because I thought, well, okay, if I'm gonna try and achieve like a semi-cottage industry perspective on my own solo stuff, I'm gonna probably have to try and save some cost on production. So I did that. Then I was also teaching music technology, um, still teaching drums and guitar as well. And also lots of DJing for all of its time. I've always done lots of DJing, um, continue to do that. So it's a real juxtaposte, really. And then went back into therapy myself, um, and then realized there was a huge shortage of therapists that really understood what it was like to be a musician. And I guess I come from more of a mu a musician-centric space rather than music industry. There was lots of music industry uh therapists, but they come from a different perspective. I think you know, if you've practiced for many, many hours a day and you derived emotional regulation, meaning, validation, all of these different things, it's quite difficult to understand, I think, if you're coming from a commodification perspective. And I don't mean that in any negative sense.
SPEAKER_02Can I ask, um, because you say there was lots of music industry therapists, in um and if you don't mind getting sort of slightly more personal if you like, but in specifically in Baby Shobles, were you guys supported in that way? In the saying of was there the option of being at that level of band and that time in history as well. That's kind of a pre-mental health awareness time, right? Were you guys offered support in that sense?
SPEAKER_01No, no. I mean, would I would I have taken it, maybe not? I don't know. You know, I even think about some of the groups that I facilitate now. And would I join those groups? Probably not at the time. I would now. Um, you know, I think it's taken me personal therapy to then to be able to reach out.
SPEAKER_02So you get think even if it was there, you wouldn't have to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I don't think I would have done, no. But I think I I didn't I wasn't as aware, obviously, as I am now. You know, there's there's been like God 15 years of reflective practice and behaviour change and all those different elements. It's quite difficult to put myself on a mindset back then, but I don't think I would have taken it up. Maybe it may be in the now, if the band were as big in the now, because it would be more explicit, it would be a much bigger component of what it means to be a working musician. But then I think we were at kind of the a bit of an end of an era, really. Um, and it was very difficult. I found that, you know, of course, with all the gains and all the the glory of you know, I guess the wealth, the the fame, the validation. But I think it also peeled me away from what music really meant internally and emotionally. I think I lost that connection. Part of me going back into therapy was to try. I'd I'd all I'd I've I've always used music to get through, whether that be listening to it or playing or composing, always different colourful components of what it means to be a musician. And I think coming out of that band, I think I'd lost that. I think it had been really tainted, and uh it took me quite a number of years to claim it back for myself and thought hold on, musicing doesn't mean the band, it doesn't mean the magazine profile, it doesn't mean the you know the private jets, it doesn't mean the the the money and all the hedonism and all that stuff, and I think I'd kind of fell into that a bit. So it took me a while to really put it back, and again, this has also fuelled my own research about musicians that do have a level of fame, media exposure, success. I think it changes our musicing. I think it really I think it slightly, and this is my take on it, it there's a slight impurity to it, and and I've just just about to release another paper, and I use this what I call this um pure art and commodification continuum where you realise it over time, but I think as musicians we we can empower ourselves if we choose where we're going to place ourselves. We can be over here pure musicing for the for all the other stuff, the validation, the self-regulation, the the community, or we can move it and we can commodify it in the music industry where we're doing it for a process of commodification. And I use that continuum a lot in in my work with musicians because I think many of us don't realise that we have flexibility over this, and certainly for me, I started I got into music from the emotional regulation it gave me, and then there was a peripheral experience of all the other elements, but I think over time I'd forgotten about that, and I kind of become quite stuck on what the other stuff that it brought, you know, the the the fame, the wealth, the the esteem, the glorified sense of self, and all those other things, and I think I've lost somewhere along the line of where I started. So it took me a while to get back to that, which I'm at now, you know, and it's really nice that I don't have to commodify my music in any way. Um I can choose to, and I do I release maybe might release an album this year, but I can tour that as much as I want. I'm really privileged in that situation, I think, in that aspect of it.
SPEAKER_02Um and is that directly that continuum then directly linked, do you think, to mental health or general well-being, i.e., if you're spending too much time over there on the commodification side, then you get ill, if you like, you know.
SPEAKER_01It depends on the person. I think for me, there was many wounds. I think music not only brought me all those kind of more uh healthy elements, I think it gave me a lot of unhealthy self-esteem, a lot of external validation, as you can imagine, being in a boundary profile, all that stuff comes. And of course, when that's no longer there, I think we fall to a much lower depth than we were previously. So I think for me, I mean not suggesting for everyone, but I think as a as a way of viewing ourselves as creative artists, and I think as you know, musicians, a lot of the research suggests that we are more sensitive, and the more that we music, we cultivate that sensitivity. And for many of us, we start musicing to validate and to emotionally regulate. Um, perhaps we are more sensitive. A medicine, a literal medicine, like a medicine, and this is this is where the paradox comes into it because you've got this medicine that we've all found, and then you're super you're trying to monetize that, and then you know you're you're you're having to bend yourself and to bend this this this very natural medicine that we've found into different shapes. And I certainly didn't step back and see the continuum, I got lost in that. So for my own journey, I use this as a model when it does appear to be very helpful for professional musicians, especially if you're more in like the the pop world where people are you know it's not about the music, depending on what genre you're in. I think we move more away from the music. I mean, if it's more classical jazz or any of that stuff, it's it's closer to what the notes you are playing. Whereas if you move into more of a popular field, whatever that means, it's more about how you look, the ethos that you're projecting, all of those things. Um, so depending, I think also where you are in the genre, it means different things. But I think it's it's a really it's like a contextual tool which I use a lot with people, just to kind of say, Well, where are you? And then you don't have to not bend because then people can fragment that and say, Well, I'm not going to bend at all and do the things that are important to me. And I say, Well, that's fine, but then you can do that in your bedroom, and people may not buy into that. Um, especially if you're a heritage act heritage act where people are buying into a certain nostalgia and heritage. Many artists push against that and say, 'I'm not doing that, and that's fine.' So you're choosing not to go and commodify this as efficiently as you can, but then also there's going to be a detrimental impact on how much money you get from your art. But if you can do both, why not do this over here? But no, you're doing it. Then when you have your time, whatever you want to do, you come over here and keep it more pure for yourself. And I think so, having just having that as a continuum, a contextual continuum has been really beneficial, I think, for framing a lot of the kind of clients and patients I work with, just to give them that as a context. To say, well, look, so you know, if you want to bend over here, that's fine. And I never mean that in a negative sense, you know, the commodification, I don't mean that in any negative way. I think we all need to as artists, or we we just stick to doing it, you know, within our bedrooms and get the joy from it that way.
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SPEAKER_02I I'm I'm fascinated by that and feel um almost slightly freaked out by the timing of this conversation because it's something that I've been um thinking about a lot and if essentially sort of battling with. So I had I was very lucky to have um an arts council developing your creative practice grant, which is different from most grants, if you like, in the sense of you don't have to produce anything, it's money to to spend on time playing, if you like. And I I have to admit to being the most the happiest I think I've ever been during that time. Because I was just it took me a long time to battle through actually going, no, no, no, it's cool, you don't need to make anything here, you're just exploring and you're having money to do that, so you're still supporting your family, and it's it's okay. Um but even in the way that I then exist as a musician, which is by no means in any pop way or any sort of mainstream way, I I have to constantly adjust what I do to make it financially viable. And the but the battle is always well, I know I'm gonna be able to do more music if it's financially viable because it means that I then don't have to go and get a normal job in inverted commas, but I know that anything that really brings me the most joy is um shockingly the least popular. The more happy I am with something, the less enjoyed it is by others. And it's like, oh man, this is this is just it's like some kind of curse. Like, how do you not I I'm not like um miserable doing um uh uh some something else, but I I just I yeah, I I don't know, it's just it's hard to work out what how how that works, how how you can ex whether you should just give it all up and then just play for sheer enjoyment and go and get a straight job, if you like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, and I think this is where it comes down to this, isn't it? It's it's not doesn't have to be either or and and maybe again if we're teaching we we can just indulge in the art that we love creating because we have another outlet to generate income. But if you're stepping into the realm of this continuum and saying, right, this is where I think it's a fluid process. I think it's it's and and both rather than either-or. And I think just just knowing that suddenly that conflict that you're describing just dissipates because well, it doesn't have to be you, you know, you've got this gauge, and you can say, Okay, maybe I will nudge it up here so I can try and entice more people to buy into what I'm doing, or maybe not, maybe I keep it here. Do you see what I mean? Already the binary notion of that becomes more pluralistic, it becomes more about okay, well, I can sweep this along. Maybe I can you don't even have to use that funding for this element, it's gonna be something else you do. The typical thing is you know, people and I wasn't you I was in a covers band, I was also in a very original band, I was also making my own experimental art music, but it became really this real mess and really difficult to integrate, and then this clarifies that it says okay, well I have the choice here where I put my where I position myself because there is an innate conflict, and it doesn't have to be, I think.
SPEAKER_02I think it probably applies to music teachers quite a lot as well, doesn't it? Because there's a there's a lot of music teachers that I've met throughout my life, and and I've been that teacher, I think, where you're switching off from music because you're doing it in the it's essentially in the commodification element, aren't you? Because you're going to deliver it for money. Yeah. Um, even if you there's some kind of um philanthropic element of where you feel you're doing something good because you're working with young people or whatever, but ultimately you're doing it as a job, and then that's sort of ruining art for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it does. It is it's quite, I mean, I found it difficult, especially when I went back into teaching, I was doing a lot, you know, maybe six, seven hours a day on the drums. And you know, we know a lot of the kids do want to be there, a lot of them don't. They're never going to be probably as impassioned as as we are. But and it is, I think the last thing you want to do is to come home and music after you've been doing that. It's a similar kind of thing of what I was ex you know describing in the music industry. And you're on tour, and maybe you're touring the same album for two years, and you know, there's there's great parts to that as well, but it can dry it up, it can dry the well up. And and I think it wasn't just that, I think there's a host of other elements in my experience, personal and environmental. But um, yeah, kind of what you're saying, they're grappling with this concept, which really informs. My research, you know, informed I wanted to explore how professional popular musicians understood it themselves, not the music industry. That's that's a very small part of being a musician. And this is also the difficult. As soon as you mention a professional musician, it just automatically gets you know placed into the working environment. And my research takes uh I guess a musician-centric approach, which like, well, let's talk to the person. The environment is just peripheral because we have our working environment. We also have when we come home and we listen to music and what it does for us emotionally, and the community, and the validation, and the identity, which is bigger than the occupational environment. And when I was seeking therapy myself, all I found was occupational environmentalists didn't really get it. Um, so part of my research is hopefully to be able to kind of disseminate that to different perspectives. I think if you've never practiced an instrument, you don't know what it's like. We spent hours and hours. I remember when I first came out of university, even though like seven, eight, nine hours a day for days on end, and we sacrificed so much. And that's not that's from not for monetary gain, it's because we get we because we get something from it, and if you've never done that, I don't think you can even conceptualize what that is.
SPEAKER_02So you found sitting down with a counsellor or therapist and they just didn't quite understand that sort of cosmic attachment that you had to some skins.
SPEAKER_01So just just just stop it then. You're like, well, it's more than that. It's it's innately in my bones, and and and the groups that we run, you know, work for a charity called Tonic Music, and um the feedback we get is that those groups hit the floor running. You don't have to explain, you don't have to spend hours. Well, what's it like? Why do you bother doing that? Because everyone knows, you know why you do it. You might not be able to articulate it, but it's innate, it's not sometimes I think it's a burden and a blessing, you know, being a musician because it's always there, you never really get there as such. There's always more to learn, but it's never gonna leave you, you know. There's always gonna be different colours that you can impart or extract from it. Um it's such a difficult thing to even grasp the concept of if you've always just been in you know, marketing an album or or or an agent, etc. I think, you know, and I don't mean that in any negative sense, I just think it's a difficult thing to contextualize if you've not done that journey.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that that makes perfect sense. Um in in a recent podcast, um, when I was talking to another psychotherapist, and we were very much focused on um the psychology of actually being a teacher um but being a music teacher, and she and she talked a lot about the sort of personality traits, if you like, that musicians tend to have, even using this word lightly, sort of narcissistic traits, if you like, of having to focus to be able to practice. In your research, what what what are those things that you do that you find come up again that are sort of set there with musicians generally speaking?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, on a on the periphery of of you know scanning the literature to not scan it, God living with the literature as it were, especially for non-classical. I think there is that. I think there's there's this innate sensitivity that we are more emotionally attuned both to ourselves and others, and you know the the jury is out with extroversion and introversion, but I think on on a whole it's we're more introvert. I think we have to be selfish and we have to have grandiose tendencies and narcissistic tendencies. I mean, that word's given a bad rep, I think, you know, in the world of TikTok. Yeah, but it's but that word, I'm a narcissist, I'm not sure. But that word, you know, all of these kind of catchphrases that have been thrown down our necks via Instagram and TikTok that people don't really understand it. And five signs, you're a narcissist, it's like, oh god. Um, but we need that, and don't forget there is, you know, it's not a binary, it's pluralistic. We we have there's healthy narcissism to be able to say to friends and family and to others, I'm gonna take this time, even for an hour a day, which if you're professionals, you know, we know it's not enough, to say, I'm gonna take this time to develop myself as something I'm really interested in. It's such a foreign concept to some people, so there's that, there's a healthy sense of that to perform, to project that musicing outwards for others to hear, you have to have a healthy dose of that, you know. So I think I think innately it's there. I mean, there's there's certain things to suggest that in more popular musicians, anyway, there's a much more grandiose sense of self, also because of the the the reflective nature of that, you know, the way the industry can bolster you up and try and sell you, you need that. Um so I think trait-wise, I think we're more sensitive. I think there there is a healthy sense of grandiosity, or you'd never music outside of your bedroom. Um yeah, those are the main things, and and I think regards to some of the stuff I found was also that you know, the what went hand in hand with the emotional sensitivity was this need to use music to mitigate that as well. You know, we've what you started with, we found this medicine, and then we and then some of us choose to try to monetize that, which good or bad, who knows? You know, I often have friends that never really got much further than just self-releasing records, and I think sometimes ignorance is bliss, I think they haven't been through all that, so it's quite a nice place to continue to be doing it with that vibrancy and passion as when they were younger. But I'm quite cynical now, and the thought of dragging out a drum kit, it's like, oh no way, I don't want to do all that stuff.
SPEAKER_02Um I think so.
SPEAKER_01I I think I mean I play a lot more guitar now anyway. Um so I think it's I think yeah, I think sensitivity and I think a healthy sense of narcissism. I'm gonna bring that word back because I think it's got a bad rip.
SPEAKER_02I'd like to see how successful you would be in TikTok uh videos saying I'm bringing narcissism back.
SPEAKER_01I'm never going near that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, okay, let's let's hit on that because that I mean that's a conversation that I've had with a million old fart musicians like myself. Of it's so weird, man. You know, when we were in bands and we were writing stuff and spending months practicing and talking about what we're gonna do with it, and then we finally do a gig and you know then the band falls apart. But now it's like they do a practice, and oh, better post that up on Instagram then, haven't we? You know, it's just such a different thing. Well, what's the experience of talking to those those people?
SPEAKER_01I think every musician I talk to has disdain for social media.
SPEAKER_02I think you know, and I guess even the younger guys who have sort of come in with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do a lot of stuff for help musicians and um and and Bapam, where I do like a kind of a mental health check-in with them just as a one-off session when they get their funding, and it's always always the same about they don't want to do it, but they feel they have to, and I agree, you know, that's the marketplace now, isn't it? If you're trying to commodify your music, you've got to be doing that. And I had some stuff the other day, like you know, some labels expect like two, three hours of content every day. I would never have gone into the industry if if I was expected to do that, you know. I think maybe it's different if you're and again, I I view it as commercial musicing versus corporate musicing. I think if you're commercial, if you're more corporate, it's more about you've got to take care of business, you don't have to sell yourself as an entity. And we live in a visually aesthetic world now where what you'd look like is far more important than what you sound like, unfortunately, for musicians that spend most of our time cultivating the uh the sonic. Um so I think I think, yeah, all of them don't like doing it. Um, but it's more of like, well, we have to do it because this is the marketplace now, this is the window that people are looking into. Personally, you know, I I try to use it as a just as a broadcast, you know. I'm doing this here, that's what I'm doing. But I try not to engage with it, and I do, you know, I can't pretend I'm some zen-like person that can yeah, and I get sucked in. And whenever I kind of attune to it, I think, how do I feel after just spending that 10 minutes? It should have been a quick look at a message, and it always I never feel elevated by it. I always feel you know, some guilt, some shame, some resentment, some anger. It never lifts me up, and yeah, it's so addictive, you know, and I see it with my kids too, and trying to kind of control and contain that. I think we're in a dangerous time. I think we'll look back at this and it'll be like, you know, the smoking of of the 50s, where it was kind of considered a good thing to do. I do think it's really, you know, we see mental health rates soaring, and uh yes, there's connection within it, but it is it real connection. So so for me, yeah, I've it's part of the the journey now, but I think for me it's it's a horrible place, it's quite toxic. I don't really like it.
SPEAKER_02Well, with all that in mind then, and sort of bringing towards some kind of almost conclusion, um as a tips and tricks and advice, what do you think music educators should be trying to instill or inspire younger musicians to have like equipping them um with knowledge about using social media or um you know understanding this continuum, for example? What what do you think educators can do? People who are in that sort of part of responsibility where they're delivering I'm gonna teach you everything about music, but actually we leave out the fact that this path that you might take could could have sort of psychological ramifications. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think the first thing is that making uh and my pupils are very aware that yes, you know, we generally artefactor led because somebody wants to do the grades, you know, or this is what we've been employed to do. But making it clear that this is going to be a lifelong endeavour for you, this is the same as you going to. I mean, I say going to the gym, but now going to the gym has aesthetic connotations that you can do a TikTok or Instagram and look a certain way. But but but but the internal health of eating well and going to the gym, looking after ourselves, this is a component of that. What I'm teaching you today isn't to pass grade three rock school drums. Yes, that's great, and that's nice validation for your sense of discipline because you learn that through being a musician, you learn discipline and resilience hugely, but you are cultivating a self-reflective emotional regulatory skill here that you're never going to lose. So I try to hold as an educator, I'll hold that middle ground between pure musicing and it's not commodification because you're not getting any money from it, but the artifact which will be the grade. And I think before we all feel that we've all felt the pressure of God, you know, we've got an exam coming up and someone needs to get the GCSE piece through, whatever it's important, but I think there's a bigger picture that I I and I'm lucky now, I'm not quite privileged in the sense of I I have pupils that probably come to me more for that, you know, more for it's going to be a bigger experience because of what we get from it. So I think holding that in mind, holding that continue in mind. Um, I think modelling, I think modeling social media, you know, I think a lot of teachers are also kind of guilty of just kind of being all over it all of the time. I've also seen it in, you know, I've seen teachers pick up phones and stuff while they're in there kind of doing stuff, which is because it's so addictive. I think modeling that. Um I think being really reflective. I also run, I've run peer groups for the MU regards to for music tutors and educators, and the big struggle is this boundary issue of because you know, if you're teaching music to a person that might be really emotionally vulnerable, you can get sucked into their process. I think it's really important to boundary and know where you are in regards to how much you can help them to learn an instrument and where that crosses over in terms of being an you know an interpersonal confidant, etc. And I think if you don't have your own stuff together personally and you're not reflective enough, you could really easily be sucked into someone else's emotional journey, especially if for older pupils. And you know, I guess I'm I'm thinking about this more so in the terms of periwork, but then if you are in one of these more commercial-based universities, I think the social media thing is vital. I think making sure you teach kids to pace it, you know.
SPEAKER_02Is what you're just talking about there, just essentially having an awareness of your own stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To sort of be careful of how you're interacting with yeah, it's interesting because that doesn't seem to come up so much in you know, like teacher training or any kind of, you know, there's no well, not that I'm aware of on mainstream PGC courses, for example, of okay, you need to be having an hour a week of therapy of some kind of or self-reflection.
SPEAKER_01I think so. You know, whenever I get asked as for these tools, I think self-reflection is key. And then the biggest stressor I heard from these MU groups where I was doing music educators was this sense of burnout where you're they're being invited into a relational enactment with somebody where they end up give, give, giving, and it goes from just let me teach you the scales and get you through an exam or give you a piece of music to increase your repertoire to I'm gonna rescue you, and then you end up burning yourself out. And I see that a lot, and in some of the peer groups, that was a big discussion was how do we bound you that because where else do you have a one-to-one with such an emotional and an emotional material as music you're both sitting together and it's hugely emotive for some kids? It's the only validation that they get, it's the only implicit emotional experience they get. So, of course, you're gonna fuse, you know, and it's about this. And I think if you do have a tendency to kind of rescue people, you're gonna be sucked into all sorts of stuff. So I think boundaries, you know, general mental health awareness, you know, there's all there's all the kind of the practical stuff about safeguarding and all of that, but just I just think knowing yourself, you know, knowing yourself a bit better, and if you have a tendency to do that and superimposing our own backgrounds on people, um, you know, in respect, I think I was slightly guilty of that going into teaching of what music had given me, you know, literally saved my life. Wanted to give that and impart that to kick to kids in North London, and it's like they don't care. Um, yeah, so I'm like, I don't need saving, man. Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. But look, you know, you look what you could get, and and and then because they're not taking it as seriously and because it didn't mean everything to them, it it it then kind of comes back. And in hindsight, there's you know, probably close to burnout because of that, and those kind of things. I think really knowing ourselves um is is really important, and and modelling, you know, modelling healthy boundaries and modelling healthy practice and modelling healthy musicing. You know, this isn't just a thing to do upgrade, this is something you can take, this is going to be with you throughout your life, and I also have the real privilege of working with with retired musicians in another group, and you know, it's just so motivating and and infusing to hear people in their 80s attempting to put on, like, you know, uh a concert next year, and you think this is amazing. I just can only hope that I'm doing some form of musicing of that age because it is a lifelong endeavour, and this goes back to what I say about yes, I've had you know a really good experience in regards time-wise in the music industry, and I know it very well, but that's just a small part of it, it's a small part of what I do. So knowing that I think the bigger picture, zooming out, gifting people music as a emotional resource rather than something to kind of tick validation boxes. So that's what I would say in a long-winded way.
SPEAKER_02That's brilliant. That's brilliant. I could talk to you forever, Adam. Maybe we'll have to do a part two sometime. Um, but yeah, that that's wonderful. Thank you for your yeah, insight, insight, and wisdom. Yeah. It's a pleasure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, really good chatting.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much to our sponsor, Longy School of Music, and to Soundstorm for making this episode possible. And thank you to you for listening.