Music and Emulation

With my ADHD, I tend to find things to hyper-focus on. For months now, it’s been writing this newsletter. It’s been fun to see who likes my writing and who doesn’t have time for it.

These last two months, I have been swimming in music. I had an orchestra concert at the end of September, and I have another one on Sunday, with a different orchestra.

My upcoming concert has a lot of western music like “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly,” “Buckaroo Holiday,” “Man with a Harmonica” and several other recognizable western songs. Cue the tumble weed, rolling in front of you across your path.

I had an interesting thing happen because of my extensive vision issues.

For those of you who know that I can’t see in 3D and that I do visual suppression, you can skip down to the music notes - 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

New subscribers to my newsletter may not know this - but I can’t see in 3D. I have never been able to see in 3D. The vast majority of the world’s population can look outside and see a dog and a tree way behind the dog, and a car driving in the distance, coming closer. And the whole thing is easy for them to interpret, with a glance, at how far things are away from them. (I assume this is how it works - hopefully I got it correct.)

I don’t see the world like that. I have to take in the relative size of things, and if something is covering part of something else (is the dog standing in a way so that he blocks part of the tree? Then the dog must be in front of the tree). Trees are generally quite large. Well, mature trees are generally large. Whereas a dog is generally a lot smaller (height-wise) than a (mature) tree. And a car or truck has its own relative size compared to a dog or a tree.

So my brain has to think about what size things generally are, and gauge how much ground I can see between me and the object I am looking at - and figure out how far away things are based on size & the amount of ground I can see. It’s honestly rather exhausting to have to do this all the time.

My eyes or my brain (one of those) does something called “suppression.” It means my brain can’t take in all the information required to figure out what I am looking at, since my eyes don’t work together. So I’m gathering in scads and scads of data, more than the majority of folks who have eyes that work together & render things in 3D. So my brain filters out a LOT. I don’t get to choose what to filter. I can make a mental note of something I want to focus on, but if I am walking in to a new situation and I don’t know what to expect, I won’t see everything.

My partner gave me roses a few years ago. He had them on a table in front of him. He was sitting behind / beside the roses. I saw him, and seeing him made me feel happy. So I climbed in his lap. He started leaning over, towards the roses, because I hadn’t commented on them. He was leaning and leaning and leaning over. His head was very close to the roses now, and I still couldn’t see them - I was focused on him doing something unusual. I coudln’t figure out what he was doing.

He finally said, “look at what’s right next to my head!” So I pulled away a little, and looked next to his head - and behold - there were a dozen roses in a vase! They had been there the whole time and I had completely missed them!

We both started laughing, and I have to say I felt relieved - because it gave him a clear instance showing him that I cannot filter what I get to see or don’t see.

Last week, I walked in his house, and saw a Swiffer box sitting out of place. I thought that was a little weird. It turned out he had emptied a cabinet in his house & built shelving. He forgot to put the box back where it went!

He said to me, “so you can’t see roses 💐, but you see a Swiffer 🗳️ box?”

It makes no rhyme or reason what I can and cannot see. My brain 🧠 makes these choices without consulting me. 🤣

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

Well, I had a new experience this year in my second orchestra. I got sat in the last row of first violins, and I don’t have a stand partner this go-round, so I can’t follow my stand partner’s lead. And all the other violins in my section are in front of me, so I can’t hear them as well as I could when half of them were behind me. It’s taking a lot of effort just to follow the music and keep up with everyone.

In addition to all of this, they all got their music 4-5 weeks ahead of me, because they forgot to put my email on the list for getting told about practice & such. So I showed up for the first time 4 weeks into rehearsals, and my music still wasn’t ready, so I had to wait another week just to receive the music for practicing at home.

So, suffice it to say, I started out this season feeling lost and overwhelmed with the music. And - to top it off, the conductor’s SIDE is to me - and since I can’t see in 3D, I can’t tell where his “Down Beat” is. Conductors should swing their arms left and right. I can see it fine when I am sitting right in front of him or her, and their torso is facing me. But when it’s their side facing me, I can’t tell when their arms are swinging towards or away from me, or in the middle (where the downbeat is), and their arm’s size doesn’t vary enough for me to determine where the downbeat is if I try to judge by size.

I started studying him to see if I could determine if he did anything differently for the down beat. I realized: he flays his fingers out for almost every downbeat. It’s not every single time, but I was realizing it was almost consistent. I am not sure, though, that I have the eyesight to be able to determine this over the top of my music stand while I’m also trying to play music and listen to everyone and keep my bow going in the correct direction. It’s just a lot to keep track of and I can only do so much. A hand with splayed fingers isn’t enough of a difference for me to notice in these circumstances. But it was still interesting to see and notice.

I tried to follow for a few weeks, and then gave up. I finally asked for a few moments to talk with the conductor and told him, “I can’t see in 3D. Everything around me looks like a flat postcard.” He looked a little surprised when I told him this. I know, it’s unexpected.

I asked him if I could just rotate my seat a bit, and sit next to the first violins (instead of behind them) and also next to the 2nd violins. My conductor, mercifully, said, “yes!”

And then I told him that I had noticed that he splays his hand sometimes on the downbeat. He told me he was mimicking another conductor he admires. (I forget who, though he did tell me.) And then he showed me another move he does that he got from a different conductor.

And I just think it’s cool that he watches conductors and adopts things they do to use in his own conducting repertoire.

It’s made me think of how a lot of us choose to emulate folks that we like. I know I love the colors and Impressionist style of the artist, Claude Monet. His works influenced my own paintings when I was in middle school. And I still like to think my work has a similar color palette to his, and with my vision issues, my paintings are more impressionistic style than realist style. 🎨

My sword-swallower 🗡️ friend of yore, Johnny Fox, used to watch his audiences for another sword-swallower he knew. This guy would sit in Johnny Fox’s audience and ostensibly steal his jokes and routines to use in his own show. I heard tales that Johnny Fox would shut down his show if he saw the guy in the audience. 🎪

What kinds of things do you like to do? Do you have other folks in that industry or art style who also do the same things? Do you like to emulate anyone? 📝