When I was in grad school I played in dozens of masterclasses. A masterclass consists of a public lesson in which a student performs for a master teacher and the audience, and then the teacher gives him/her a lesson based on what he has just heard. It is really a good opportunity to play in these classes. Often it is a quite famous, revered, or magnificent player who is playing the role of master teacher, and to get a lesson from such a person is a rare treat. Combined with that is the performance opportunity that is extra helpful because added to the normal audience induced stress is the fact that you're sitting on stage being scrutinized by a professional, respected, master of the instrument. Over time though, I began to notice a few consistent things about masterclasses. Though not always, often, the class seemed to be more about the teacher than the student. Often it was quite obvious that the teacher was not equipped to notice what was missing from a student's performance, but would merely observe what the student WAS doing and suggest that he do that. The student, no doubt, would think to himself, "but I thought I was doing that already, or at least I was aware of it and was trying." But the audience wouldn't be so tuned in to the student's performance until the teacher began to point things out. So the teacher would make his suggestion (that the student was already doing) and the student would play the passage with the supposed goal of incorporating what the teacher had just suggested. Because the student had already been doing it, he was quite successful in doing it again at the request of the teacher. But this time it had been brought to the attention of the audience who now thought that the teacher had just extracted brilliant artistry from a struggling, undirected student. This would go on for 45 minutes and the student would leave the stage as the audience cheered for the teacher and his uncanny ability to find the diamond beneath a pile of rocks.
Other teachers would not even be able to notice what the students WERE doing, and so would simply mask their inability to help by talking about themselves, or dropping names of famous guys as "friends", or playing fancy passages while having a casual conversation with the audience while the student sat patiently beside him onstage. I was once in the audience when my friend gave a dazzling performance of the prelude from Bach's "Prelude, fugue and allegro", BWV, 998. The teacher took most of his lesson time talking about how odd it was that not only was he a
black classical guitarist (how often do you see that?) But he was a left-handed
black classical guitarist. Take a good look, you may never see this combination again.
But I digress.
Probably one of the most common uninformed mistakes I heard teachers make in these classes, was to make a statement, especially of technical philosophy, that was just not good for the lesser developed students in the audience. These statements were usually completely different from what students were hearing week after week from their regular teachers. The students struggled along a slow, steep path and then heard this "completely different" statement from this famous guy. Surely this must be the secret that has eluded me. "It's the prayer of Jabez, but for guitar. I've been doing it all wrong, led down the wrong path, wasting my time, but now I can focus my efforts on something that will make a difference." What everyone involved could fail to realize is that no matter how true it might have been for the teacher, who had been playing for decades and was obviously in a different league than the student, that didn't make it true for the student who was struggling to play in tune and keep a steady tempo, and not damage his hands in the process.
When we find ourselves in a place where other people would like to be, it is very easy to just invite them to be there too, but not bother to show them how to get there. Sometimes we find ourselves in a place and have no idea how to tell someone else to get there. Sometimes we remember how we got here, but upon arrival begin to lose some of the humility that brought us here and immediately reckon that we could have gotten here by a different route. So we go about telling people about the different route, rather than the one we took ourselves. Consequently, folks who look to us for directions, never get there. Sometimes we enjoy the elevated, revered, elite feeling we have being where other people want to be, and so we intentionally give them bogus directions to keep ourselves above or beyond them.
I used to be very suspect of people who give bad directions to a place they claimed to have been or claimed to be. I would hear the bad directions and think, obviously they've never been there, or they'd know that you can't get there by those directions.
Once, a famous recording artist visited our school and gave a concert. During lunch with a member of our community, it was discovered that this famous recording artist had been a music major in college. The famous recording artist was asked how this course of study had helped prepare for this career. You already guessed the answer. "Not at all," was the reply. My initial response to hearing this was, "what kind of arrogance allows someone to study something for four years, go into a career directly connected to that course of study, and then say it did nothing to help them?" What student can assess how badly they sang out-of-tune, or how bad their sense of rhythm was, etc. four years ago? It is so easy to view yourself where you are and assume that you have always been there and obviously you didn't need the people who thought they'd helped you arrive.
But my second response was to all the current or potential music students who thought they were preparing for the same career as this famous recording artist. The artist has arrived and didn't need the training that she received, I, then, will not waste my time on such pursuits. Bad directions. Followers don't arrive.
I've heard Christians teaching methodological approaches to spiritual growth, salvation, effective leadership, etc. I suspected the reality of their own spirituality because of the misguided way they try to lead others to that place. Often after I get to know them, I see that they are for real, but that they've just confused the path they took. In sincerity, they've tried to codify a method to a mystery that has no method. They've tried to make relationship into something you can have by following some rules, or saying some words, doing some things, or going some places. Probably because once they themselves had a relationship, they began to follow some rules and say some words and do some things and go some places. But those weren't what began the relationship. And they've forgotten. The sad thing is that the next generation follows the method and having never had the relationship, don't recognize that it is missing. They must think, "I did everything right, so this must be it." The bad directions get perpetuated and nobody ever gets there because they don't know where they're going. The directions have become the point and the destination has been lost.
