Unprepared for popularity

Before I finished setting the play-house table, the girls in my kindergarten class tutted and shook their heads.

Moving the spoon from lying crosswise above the plate to resting beside the knife and then turning the fork tines toward the ceiling, one of them said, “That’s not how we do it.”

The message was clear. I didn’t fit in.

Long before the TV show The Big Bang Theory made nerds cool, I won the reading contest every summer. I got picked last in gym class. I never played on a sports team or marched in the band. Instead, I was in the theater club and honor society. In short, nothing in my childhood prepared me for my current popularity.

Let me explain.

As part of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America’s Fall Feldenkrais festivities last week, I taught an online lesson. To make it accessible to colleagues and members of the public, I offered it at two different times last weekend. As part of my current project to promote working with students while they sit and my lifelong aim to help them take learning beyond the lesson, I taught “Sit Backward, Move Forward,” a lesson in which the student sits facing the back of a chair with their legs astride it. Just like setting the kindergarten table in an unconventional way, this simple pivot scrambles our habitual orientation. It sets the stage for an intriguing adventure in unraveling automatic patterns, softening the chronic tensions that hold us back, and finding new options and comfort in how we move every day.

The course description stated that my Zoom account is limited to 100 participants and explained that once participation reached capacity, no one would be able to access the meeting.

“Sit Backward, Move Forward” was listed on the Guild’s purpose-built web page. I wrote a blog post about the event and my classes, promoted them on my website, and emailed a reminder last Tuesday. When I checked the enrollment on Wednesday, I was pleasantly surprised to see that 118 people had signed up for Saturday and somewhat stunned that 173 were on the list for Sunday.

From previous experience, I have learned that not everyone who signs up shows up. Usually, a third to a half of the people enrolled attend. In every class announcement, I stated that this would be a live event and that I would not make the recordings available. I didn’t know how this would affect enrollment.

Because I hadn’t done any further promotion, I also didn't expect enrollment to keep growing. So you can understand why, when I checked the registration numbers again, I was shocked:

I clearly underestimated all y’all’s collective enthusiasm.

On Saturday, less than half of those who signed up — 65 people to be precise — were logged in when the class started and, as is the norm, several more showed up over the next 10 minutes.

However, Sunday was another story. There were already 100 people online right before the scheduled start of the class.

To those of you who found the digital door locked, you have my sincerest apologies. It turns out that while "limited capacity" is easy enough to read and dismiss, perhaps even to ignore altogether, it is hard to accept when you arrive after the meeting is full. Thanks to the emails, texts, support tickets, and other messages I received, I heard and felt your frustration. I understand — there is nothing quite as annoying as anticipating a party and arriving only to be told the house is full.

Which leads us to the question I have received recently in my inboxes more times than I can count: "Can you send the recordings?"

I understand the request. Truly, I do.

The thing is, not only had I offered the lessons as one of the most ephemeral and precious events — a live experience — but I mentioned in every announcement that I would not be providing the recordings.

There are several reasons for that.

From my perspective, each ATM lesson I teach is not necessarily a single event, but can potentially become two distinct creative projects:

• First, there is every aspect of a live performance: preparing, practicing, polishing, and presenting.
  
  The live performance is fleeting, unpredictable, profoundly individual, and therefore precious. It is valuable precisely because it is temporary; once it's over, all that remains are its traces, the personal experience and private memory of each student.
  
  
• Then, there is the audio recording of the lesson.
  
  A recording is a different endeavor entirely. It is an object you can revisit, multiple times if you so desire. A joke that lands perfectly in the heat of the moment is rarely remotely amusing the third or fourth time you hear it; if it fell flat at first, repetition is even less entertaining. An aside or minor misstep, even a major mistake, fades from the listener's memory, but it lives on and returns repeatedly, unendingly, on a digital track.Furthermore, there is the matter of my voice. As you may know, for me, talking has changed profoundly since being diagnosed with throat cancer in the spring of 2019, undergoing surgery later that year, and receiving radiation the next. When I speak now, I make clicks and pops, clear my throat loudly and often, and often make noises when I swallow or breathe. These acoustic artifacts of my current physical reality go by unnoticed in the moment for nearly everyone, but in a recording, they become static. Even if they go unnoticed, the sounds change the signal-to-noise ratio, muddying the water and introducing distractions that can detract from the listener's experience and comprehension.

Out of respect for you, the listener, and for the material itself, I no longer simply "upload" a session to experience. Instead, I edit the recording methodically and meticulously. I clean up the sound quality and hone the content, sculpting the recording closer to the lesson I hoped to teach. That said, lest it take forever or lose any sense of chance or liveliness, I also resist the urge to make it perfect.

Admittedly, this attention to detail and commitment to the listener’s experience make for a slow, painstaking process. Consequently, I find myself in a state of 'creative debt,' owing the participants of previous courses the recordings they are awaiting. I cannot rationalize processing the latest lesson until I have honored those previous commitments with the same level of care.

Since so many of you who signed up didn’t get to participate, once I finish the past-due projects, I will select the better “Sit Backward, Move Forward” recording and edit it. I don’t know how long the editing will take, but once it’s done and I have uploaded the recording to the Mind in Motion Online Library, I promise to let you know.

Thank you for your patience, your enthusiasm, and for making me feel — for one brief, wild weekend — like the kid who finally gets picked first for the team.

If you want to listen to one of my ATM classes without waiting, you will find many recordings available at no charge whatsoever in your Mind in Motion Online account. Simply log in, go to the My Account section, click on Library, and scroll to the Free ATM section. Many of the recordings were made before surgery and treatment, so you will be able to experience unedited recordings there. (If you have yet to claim your free account, please click here to sign up now.)