Kenley Kristofferson

On paper, last year was a pretty incredible year. In the first half of 2019, I completed my Master’s degree in Composition (with the gold medal for the Graduate Music program, so it went well), I taught a lot of amazing kids and made some wonderful music, and I was flown out to Arizona State University for the American premiere of “Transcendent Light.” I got some articles published in our national band journal and I presented at our provincial music conference in front of my peers. On the home front, my family was doing great, my then-one-year old was growing and changing… everything was in good shape.

When summer finally came and I had July and August away from work, I crashed incredibly hard – harder than ever before. The intensity of my graduate degree while teaching full-time and being a present and involved father while still trying to be a working composer finally caught up with me. While there have been summers that started as burnout (like watching “The Office” from my couch for a week straight), I usually came out of it within a week or two and then was back to my old self. That didn’t happen this time.

I spent a lot of the summer despondent and overspent. I felt the absence of presence, like I was floating through the days as they slipped away toward September, when I’d have to go back to work. In hindsight, I’m quite certain this is what depression felt like for me; not feeling sad, but instead, the absence of feelings, like being a shell of oneself. For the first summer in recent memory (or maybe ever), I didn’t do anything creative – I didn’t make anything.

It was like plugging in your phone after the battery dies – it doesn’t turn on, just a white plug and a lightning bolt against a black background. It’s on, but it can’t really do anything.

When I got back to work, the metaphorical phone was functional, but it was nowhere near 100%, probably less than 50%. I started some small contract work lined up since before the summer and it took me months to finish (I just finished it today, in fact), and old me would have hammered it out in six weeks.

Something needed to change. For the last few years, I’ve been feeling that the work/life balance (whatever that even means) has been climbing to an unsustainable place and, this year, it got there. I often had this diagram in my mind:

Let’s be clear: That doesn’t mean I’m going to quit my job or shut out the world or anything, but that I needed to find ways to keep my head above water.

After much discussion with my wife, I started going for counselling and it has made a really big difference. We talk a lot about protecting time in a variety of contexts. Maybe it’s going to the gym on my lunch break at work, or declining new contracts/commissions if there isn’t time/energy to do them, or bringing my toddler to day care even if I’m home on a week day. It’s also amazing how effective it is to just say something out loud to someone – that’s a big part of it too.

It really came to a head a few weeks ago, when I was talking to my wife about how I had no drive to make anything and that I missed being creative. Her eyes lowered as she spoke: “That doesn’t sound like you. You used to love being creative.”

So one of my goals for this year is try and find my way back to the person that I really enjoyed being, someone who is creative and has ideas about people, art, and the world again. It’s not a resolution, but more of a goal. Here are some steps that I’m planning on taking:

• Protect my time, either at work, home, family, or leisure time.
• Work on things that are meaningful to me (and to not work on things that aren’t).
• Develop more rituals that are nourishing, like date nights with my wife or non-negotiable times to work out during the day.
• Be more organized at work.
• Engage in energizing solitude where I can.
• Spend more time with my friends and family too.

I know that my life has changed now, but it can be as nourishing as it once while still being different, and I think that I’m off to a good start. As I’m writing this, I feel good. I’ve got some musical ideas spinning around and feel pretty good going back to work on Monday. I’ve had some excellent family time these last two weeks and built back some important bridges in my social groups (which I’ve neglected over the past year).

I know the saying goes “new year, new you,” but for me, “new year, old you” is where I’m headed.

Onwards and upwards, everyone.

How can it be that it be that I haven’t updated this website in seven months? Wow, we’d better get started.

2017 was an amazing year, both personally and professionally.  Let’s start with the personal stuff:

• My son was born on November 4th! He’s just the best.
• I started grad school and am actually doing university right.  More on that later.
• I made some of the best beer I’ve ever made in my entire life (A citric IPA, a Cascade SMaSH Pale Ale, and a vanilla bourbon stout, if anyone is interested.)
• My podcast/YouTube show about video game music, Into the Score, is starting to gain some traction.  Maybe you’d like to watch it?

And now, the professional stuff:

• I taught a great year at my school, Lord Selkirk Regional Comprehensive Secondary School.
• I wrote a three-movement work for band and choir called “Transcendent Light” and it had the most glorious premiere by the Winnipeg Wind Ensemble the Manitoba Music Educators’ Association.  It was inspired by Ken Epp, who gave so much strength to music education in our province.  I am so grateful that I got to write the piece.
• I wrote a piece for 150 trumpets for a Canada 150 brass concert in Regina, Saskatchewan (that’s in Canada, btw).  Also, I got to hang out with Pete Meechan and Michelle Styles, who are two of the most wonderful musicians and composers you’ll ever meet.
• I worked with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra on two separate occasions: I did seven of ten arrangements for their “Manitoba, mon amour” show that celebrated Franco-Manitobain musicians in Winnipegand I did four pieces for Faouzia and the WSO for the Canada 150 Canada Day show at the Forks.
• “The Matters of Kindness” is finally published! It’s going out with Grand Mesa Music in Spring 2018 and I hope that every band in the world plays it.
• I’m still working on Ship Out of Luck by Complex Games.  It is really coming along – this game is going to make waves.  It’s looking and sounding so amazing.
• I wrote a euphonium concerto, am setting my “Prairie Trombone Suite” for band, and have some new work under my belt for the coming year.
• Published two articles in the Canadian Winds!

There’s a lot coming up on the horizon, so stay tuned!

Let’s have a great year.
-K

After weeks and weeks of researching, reading, recording, filming and editing, my new show launches today.  The original “Into the Score” ran from 2004 to 2007; it was a time where I was a very different person, or at least I thought I was.

If anyone who’s reading this knows me personally, you’ll probably know that I’ve been interested in video game music for the majority of my life.  If we’ve ever spoken more deeply, you might know that I’m particularly interested in studying it and seeing how it works musically, in culture, and in the game.

The big difference between launching the original show in my early twenties and this one in my mid-thirties isn’t just that it’s video this time.  To be honest, I am becoming one of those adults who gets more scared to take risks as I’m getting older.  I remember a stand-up comic saying that in a bit I saw: “Make sure you do things when you’re young because you’ll get too scared as you get older.”

I’m not scared of the work or the know-how, it’s something that our kids struggle with in our classrooms: The willingness to show people who you really are and to show them what you really care about.

As a now-steadily-working professional musician, I was really worried that my show would sabotage my composing career.  It might still wreck it, but I’m not worried about that anymore… because it might not.  I needed to take the advice that I give to kids all the time: “People will be more interested if you’re real and genuine with them.” Also this gem: “Everyone is too busy doubting themselves to doubt you.”  Or maybe this one: “People are interested in people who have cool and unique interests.” Seriously, I’ve got a hundred of’em.

It’s risky to go out and spread words that we believe in, but if we don’t say them, then who will? It’s okay to disagree, it’s okay to be judged, but we might be creating the very content that someone has been looking for their whole lives.  That might sound unreasonable, but that was often the response that I got for the first “Into the Score” thirteen years ago.

The early 2000s was the infancy of podcasting.  It’s true, there were podcasts before “Serial” and it was an amazing time to be creating content.  There were many shows about video game music, but they were all jukebox-style without a lot of meat to them.  I wanted something that really dug into the music, the game, the culture around it, and it’s place in the canon of gaming.  I found nonsuch podcast, so I made one and “Into the Score” had a devoted cult following.

(I’m serious, I got an email last week about it and it ended ten years ago.)

The new “Into the Score” is an unabashed, heart-on-your-sleeve, x-to-the-power-of-nerd show about studying video game music and I’d love if you would check it out.  Share it wildly with your friends, family, co-workers, students, etc.

And, if you’re so inclined, please become a patron and support the show financially (and get some cool rewards!) : https://www.patreon.com/intothescore

Thanks for all of your support, everyone.  Say what you mean, mean what you say, and let’s make the world a better place.

-K

I can’t even believe it.  The original Into the Score podcast ran from 2006-2010 (about) and, after ten years, it’s coming back in a different form.

More details to come, but it’s happening everyone… it’s really happening.

-K

As I was leaving the band room one day, I heard a booming teenage voice. When I got out the door, the hallway was lined with people watching a large young adult cursing and throwing his body around.  The shop teacher and another teacher on duty stood at the end of the hall in case something went seriously wrong.  A hundred pairs of wide Grade 10 eyes watched this boy swearing and marching toward the day, shocked and scared for what might happened next.

He looked my way as he passed and, regrettably, I said something like “Wow, such model behaviour.” I can’t remember what I said, but I immediately knew that I shouldn’t be bringing gas to the bonfire, which of course, I did.

He drew both of his middle fingers toward me and exclaimed—and this is true—“F- – – you, you band b- – – -!” Really, that’s what he said. Then he stormed out of the school and I never saw him again.

When I recounted the story to my wife, the first thing she said was: “I wonder what made him do that.” I was hoping she’d show a little more concern for me, but the fact that her first instinct was one of empathy toward the teen shows how wonderful of a person she really is.  Her first response to many situations like this is one of radical empathy.

I wonder what might happen if we approached teaching this way. What if we took a long look at what was really happening with our kids who act out, our kids who are perpetually late, or our kids who seem apathetic and resigned to participating in school.  What we’ll find is that there is, almost always, more going on than we know.

Maybe they are starved for attention, that’s why they act out.

Maybe they have to get themselves out of bed and make their own meals, that’s what why they’re always late.

Maybe they feel like no one cares about them or that they aren’t important, that’s why they’re apathetic.

In his book “Pathways,” Joseph Alsobrook recounts a time where he invites one of his outspoken students to a morning meeting before school one day. Alsobrook sat down with the student and they started talking, first about their morning, then about sports and other interests that the student had.  The student was waiting for some kind of punishment, but it never came.  Instead, he got to talk about things that interested him to an adult that was listening and empathizing.

Instead of disciplining that child over and over again, Alsobrook simply listened to him. What if we took the approach of simply asking our students questions about their lives and really listened to them?

As I get older, I find that I have to learn more about the detailed parts of my students’ interests: Social media, Pokemon Go, video games, sports, etc. However, underneath those surface parts of their lives are more timeless and eternal desires: Connection, feeling heard, validation, acknowledgment, attention, being accountable, feeling like they have value, and many others.  They are the things that we all need and that humanity will never stop pursuing.  If a student is acting out, it may be because they’re missing a core value of their life and maybe we can be the ones to give it to them.

Model radical empathy, my teachers!

-K

Disclaimer: I’m not a counselor nor an expert, but I talk to a lot of kids about a great many things related to their well-being.  Here are some patterns of experience paired with elements of mental health that I’ve learned from pro-counselors.  This is one perspective that may challenge you and that’s okay.  Allow yourself to be challenged, then consider it or never think about it again.  It’s up to you.

This past week, I met a man whose daughter was buying a cello.  She tried about ten celli and, by the end of the day, she’d narrowed it down to two.  As the girl was going through the perks of each one, her father simply asked her which one sounded better.  After a brief pause, she looked up at him and said: “It depends on the room.”

Which is so true – different instruments simply sound different when played in different rooms and the same is true with kids.   Students are dynamic individuals whose behaviour is often determined by where they are and who surrounds them.  A teenager might be goofy in English class, quiet in Physics, pensive in church, or fearful around their overbearing parents.

As educators, we’ll often talk about what a student is like when commenting on their report card or during parent-teacher interviews, but the reality is that we’re only commenting on what they’re like when they’re in our room.

One of my Grade 12 trombone players has said maaaaaaaaaybe ten words out loud over her three years with me, but she’ll howl during a sprawling story in the hallway outside the band room.

My Grade 11 bass player is the queen of sassy comments in rehearsal, but will help the drama teacher at the drop of a hat and always with warmth and a smile.

One of my Grade 10 saxophone players takes a good ten minutes to moisten her reed and get to work, but will crush it in dancing rehearsal and rugby practice.

The truth is that we don’t always know the whole story with people and often times, it depends on what room they’re in.

The original context of that cello story related to mental health and the concept of diagnosis versus looking at root causes of distress.  For example: A student can’t present their project because they have anxiety vs. A student feels anxious because presenting in front of one’s peers is a stressful experience tied in with judgement, feeling good enough, putting themselves out there, etc.  Of course they feel anxious, anyone would feel anxious about this!

The man who told me the cello story also said this to me: “Of course you have Anxiety, now take the capital off.”  I love that.

Some Grade 12 students (or first-year university ones) will start to realize their anxiety and see someone about it, then get pills to help them manage it.  As we get closer to graduation, we start to have those conversations about leaving high school.  They mention that they don’t know if they’ve made the right decision to take a year off.  They need to pick classes for college or university and have no idea where their life is going (which is normal, by the way).  They might regret registering for Pre-Med because they really want to be a writer, but their dad wants them to be a doctor and that’s the only way he’ll pay for school.  They might be scared about leaving home and moving out, or the opposite: They might be stressed out about staying at home because they just want to move-the-heck out of their house and live their own lives.

When we look back on these completely normal feelings, it’s easy to understand what they’re anxious about, but that doesn’t mean they need to be clinically diagnosed with anxiety.  They don’t need pills for it, they need to spend some time with their emotions and listen to their body because the anxiety is their body trying to tell them something.

My teaching partner often says that emotions are felt in the body and it’s something we share with our students regularly.  Our body has physical responses to what we’re feeling and both kids and adults wrestle with that.  I’ve seen students with perpetual headaches, then I meet their parents and understand exactly what’s going on.  What they’re feeling isn’t an illness, it’s a ridiculous level of stress and it’s not hard to see why.  Or maybe they have a test they didn’t study for and, coincidently (or not), have a killer stomach ache.  That’s not a stomach ache; they’re feeling stress because they didn’t prepare for something that’s important to them.  They have anxiety, but they don’t have Anxiety.

If we can recognize that, we can start to unravel what’s really going on inside our minds and bodies.  I want to leave it there for this week, but I’ll cover the perils of unpacking in a later installment of “Music Ed Monday.”  I’m not saying it’s easy (it’s the furthest thing from it), but the important work of our life rarely is.  But alas, for a different day.

-K

Side-note:
It’s amazing how much those feelings of stress relate to decision-making.  Many of the examples above are about precisely that: making decisions.  We don’t often get stressed about whether or not to choose the soup or the salad at a restaurant (unless you do, and that’s fine!) or what to watch on Netflix, but rather, about big decisions.  The gravity of making decisions during important moments doesn’t always feel good (and often manifests as stress or anxiety), but that doesn’t mean we need to avoid them.  In fact, we need to do the opposite: we need to embrace them. There is a skill about making decisions under authentic pressure and it’s really important that we develop it early on to make life more manageable down the road.  It’s hard, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s stressful… and it’s also called growth and growth is often all of these things too.

Photo Cred:

Cello – https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Vych-cTtx2M/hqdefault.jpg

Now What? – https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/article-inline-half/public/blogs/91500/2012/05/96056-92670.jpg?itok=s70_1k84