ABSTRACT

It is important to give a dry and matter-of-fact description of the DbD, in order to appreciate, as we go into details, the astonishing power of the experience. I have hesitated to write about it for decades because I realized the difficulty of translating that experience into language. Language is not a part of the DbD method, except for a few words allowed on Sunday. To deprive people of language is to unlock the floods of body-centered knowledge and action that often defers to words. Words can be crutches, and using none forces imagination, energy, and invention that lie dormant when language is allowed to take over. Rehashing the past in any form bores me. It also invites reliving the anxiety that haunted me for such a long time. I hate to talk about what “happened”, I love what “is happening”. I teach as if channeling, reacting and dealing with what is before me. I absorb the moment of experiencing a student or a piece, work with that tangible fragment of time, with what a student is expressing and sending out, responding and reacting to that student as a cause and effect phenomenon. I don’t use knowledge acquired yesterday. Or lessons learned. I must be able to sense the ways in which the student is different and unique and help the individual shape and sculpt that persona, that personal artistry, to become a better artist. I can’t do that on my own, or self-consciously. I can only be effective when I let knowledge and wisdom flow through me.