At the end of the summer, I hired carpenter (and fellow tango-dancer) P. to finish up the downstairs apartment. I also hired P. to be my partner and assistant at an upcoming TML gig, where I will also be teaching a dance lesson. P. and I agreed that we should get together on Thursday and dance a bit, since we've hardly danced together since May. Playing all the time with TML means I don't dance much at milongas anymore!
Well, Thursday came and I was into day 4 of The Plague that has been sweeping the schools and I really needed to sleep, not dance, but when I came home late from school and saw that P. had painted both of the downstairs living rooms while I was at school and that I had to leave right then anyway in order to meet him on time...I went. We danced for 2 hours. We agreed today that it was great--we both felt like we'd accomplished a lot. For the first time in a long time, I missed dancing tango regularly.
Back at home, I opened one of the 9 books on teaching the creative process that I had gotten out of the library on Wednesday and almost immediately found a section about how difficult it is to switch from the left brain to the right brain. I have this problem all the time when teaching violin--it's hard to feel something and simultaneously describe it logically, and after I've taught for a few hours I have to get myself back into "The Forehead" --maybe that is the right brain?--before I can really play well.
I had a nice 2 hours of right-brain dancing on Thursday night. I've missed that, and I've missed violin now that school is in full swing and I have hardly any time to feed myself, let alone practice. Now I'm thinking about a book I read a while back on ADD and how some people with ADD have to do art every day to keep themselves relaxed. I feel the same way about playing the violin, and I'm suddenly wondering whether I can exercise the brains of my high school students with art. Next week I was planning to start doing exercises from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, anyway. Now I am doubly resolved to do so.
Maybe I'm on the right side of the brain right now, because my left brain just took a look at this post that was supposed to be about how much faster my feet are, even since May, even when I'm tired and sick. But look what happened! I'm talking about brains and art instead. Hrmph. :-)
It did fleetingly cross my mind that probably playing video games is also a right-brain activity, but for my students that's a slippery slope.