Using musical structures and techniques, stories and exercises we’ll explore ‘home/safety’, disruptive change, curiosity and courage.
Disruption challenges who we are and what we’re doing, and it creates big stresses and big questions. It can result in fear, overwhelm and even despair, but it can also – with the ingredients of courage, resilience and curiosity – pry open windows and doors to new possibilities and surprising new worlds.
Nik will perform a 12 bar blues song he wrote called ‘Not In Kansas’ which includes live looping (the musician records, in real time, short musical ‘riffs’ and plays over top of them) and ‘feedback’ (what Jimi Hendrix was famous for; having the volume of the amplifier vibrate the strings of the guitar creating a highly volatile scream or roar). We’ll consider how the reliable circular musical structure of 12 bar blues and ‘loops’ can create a feeling of stability (a ‘home’), and how ‘feedback’ can be a metaphor for ‘virtuous cycles’ and ‘vicious circles’ (behavioural loops that self-generate exponential change in our lives).
We’ll also reflect on the lyrics of the song, which references ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (a story of a child being sucked from her home by a tornado into a brand new, magical, world), and the story of Adam and Eve (the Christian creation myth about the conflict of curiosity and authority and how it drives the first couple out of their home, Paradise).
Through music, stories and exercises we’ll explore the ‘homes’ and disruptions of our own lives.
There will be lots of room for discussion and big questions!
Please bring a pencil and paper!