FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

Fresh morning.

## Attachment project

<https://www.attachmentproject.com/>

A project aiming at tackling the attachment disturbances in people. I think this is indeed very valuable and important.

> ## Let’s end the pain and suffering caused by attachment disorders

> When we heal our own pain, we can heal the next generation after us. > Pain from an attachment disorder is passed on through the family line > until someone is ready to heal it.

> Issues are intergenerational, and can often be shared across several > generations of families.

My own thoughts over the last months are indeed along these lines. Most suffering in relationships is caused by people being messed up from their childhood by their family circumstances, typically by the messed up psychology of their parents. This leads to a self-perpetuating cycle of suffering in relationships. People don't even know what it is, on their own, they just think it's that everybody is screwed up. They are not. It's each of us who needs some healing. Sometimes. The thing is, these are perfectly fixable issues. One just needs to be open to listening to this stuff, identify what's the issue, understand what's at stake and fix themselves. It's easier to say than do.

> **Love and hate are not opposites.**
> The opposite of loving something is being indifferent to it.
> Because loving and hating implies that you care about it. In one direction or another.
> -- Shawn Crowder

In a video by Adam Neely on [The Music You Hate](https://youtu.be/AZMpU-7YcgA?t=442).

> I have a saying: I reject your reality and assert my own.”
> -- Wesley Snipes/<https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/02/wesley-snipes-on-art-excellence-and-life-after-prison-i-hope-i-came-out-a-better-person>

<https://electricliterature.com/whats-keeping-stephen-king-up-at-night/>

> _“We live in a society where many believe that libraries and other cultural endeavours… are of minor importance. As if learning to think is a thing that just happens naturally, like learning to walk. Believe me, it’s not. **Learning to think is the result of hard work and steady effort**.”_
> -- Stephen King/from a speech Stephen King at 2016 National Book Festival: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRD7JJLPeIM.> He says it at 34:00+

# What is the tempo of minuet?

I am learning to play Leopold Mozart's Minuet in D-minor. Examples of the music can be found here:
- https://soundcloud.com/hudson-shires/minuet-in-d-minor-by-leopold
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na4f9ltv2Fk

Regardless of the recordings, the question I have is _how fast should one play a minuet?_

Clearly, this is a baroque dance music. So the answer to the question will be the same as the answer to "how fast is minuet dance?"

It turns out, it's quite fast: **about 112 metronome beats per minute**.

Sources:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPYCuzcJioU - an excerpt of a BBC documentary where a historic dances historian counts to demonstrate the dance steps. It's rather fast. Matching that speed to the metronome of my piano turns out at arounf 110 bpm.
- http://www.janvanbiezen.nl/frenchbarok.html Jan van Biezen's analysis of historical literature shows that minuet tempo is about 106-112 bpm. The article is generally a solid source for tempos for French baroque dances. Useful for future reference.

> Seriously: you want to train me to fight, to do all this stuff, but my guardian angel should be Bambi?
> ...
> I can do rather more than that. My hiding place is an old Resolution-class submarine, 425 feet long.
> ...
> these boats were part of United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent programme armed with sixteen UGM-27 Polaris A3 nuclear missiles.
> _From here, I can burn cities._ Let's see Bambi do that.
> -- Nick Harkaway/Gnomon

This guy's writing is really good.

@kattascha Thanks a lot for a very good interview at https://dennikn.sk/2332154/konspiracie-mozu-rozdelit-rodiny-a-znicit-priatelstva-potrebujeme-podporne-organizacie-vravi-autorka-knihy-falsovana-pravda/. Made a good job to attract me to check out your book. Good luck there!

@skells No, just checked your link at Amazon and quickly skimmed the relevant fragments to see what I need to know and don't know yet 😉 .

@skells Indeed, there's a whole body of teachings on this in martial arts. Now I guess I need to figure out how to translate that to piano playing :-).

BTW, relevant piece from the book:

# Playing piano with body weight and martial arts

Yesterday my piano teacher showed me how to play piano with body weight. The idea is that to achieve a full and colourful tone, one should not play just with arms and fingers, but rather with the full body weight as if leaning with the upper body on one's fingertips resting relaxed on the piano keyboard. I do not fully internalised the concept, nor can I perform the technique (that's exactly the point of learning, right?), but I do understand what it means.

## Weight transfer in piano play & exercises

Later in the evening I looked some articles and YouTube videos explaining the concept. There's plenty of materials explaining what it's all about: <https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=piano+play+with+body+weight>

The take-away is that this is called weight transfer and there are many exercises to train it. The idea is to create a suspense bridge (feeling) between the upper torso and fingertip, use free-fall drop to play keys and effectively learn to transfer weight between fingers, instead of using force of finger muscles or arms.

This will of course take (probably long) time to develop.

But the concept is not unfamiliar, actually it very much resembles the use of body core to enact movement in Japanese martial arts.

## Using your body efficiently in Japanese martial arts & sports

I am only familiar with some (beginner level) swordsmanship-related techniques from Iaido, Kendo, Aikido and Bojutsu. I also know that what I am going to say applies to Karate too. One of the things they teach, is that to deliver a really powerful, controlled and effective strike (be it with hand, or sword), you should use your _hara_, that is, the power of the hips, the body core. Simple interpretation without all the esoteric garbage is that it is the hips which generate body powerful rotations and thus generally provide momentum in body movements (hara-centric methods). My subjective understanding of this is that the rest is the question of transferring that momentum into useful energy delivered by another body part, typically limbs (strikes using arms, kicks using legs, or throws using the upper torso).

Similar techniques can be found at the core of many sports/moving body experiences. Another thing I am familiar with is running: again the proper technique is all about body core and hips as the engine providing the momentum, legs are to deliver it to the ground. The rest is structural, or dynamic support. Or take gymnastics and especially aerobatic gymnastics. Use of body core and hips everywhere. And so on...

## Putting it together

So if I know (to an extent) the experience of using body core for martial arts, how can I transfer that same feeling into piano play?

And in turns out, I am of course not the first one to figure out the connection between weight-based piano play/weight transfer and martial arts. There is this marvelous site <pianodao.com>, where the author makes the same point in <https://pianodao.com/2015/10/31/piano-technique-weight-in-motion-boxing-taichichuan-and-the-cherry-tomato/>. Specifically:

> maximum efficiency with minimum effort.
> -- Kanō Jigorōi about judo/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kan%C5%8D_Jigor%C5%8D

- the slow/fast judo throw video shows very well (if you are attentive) the use of hips during the throw.

> The role of the muscles is to help the body maintain an efficient structure – so we can use and apply body-weight-in-motion.

This will need more elaboration till I get this right...

@z428 This would make a very nice phone background.

Ha! And a lovely first comment at HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644423

<https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/1376985854229504007>

Open and very useful twitter thread on how a guy built a product (a to-do app) and then lost competition with a well funded VC-backed competitor (who told them in advance).

The crux of the story is perhaps: "to start something is one thing, the difficult part is to know/determine when to stop".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUGsLoZYXb4

Pure joy to watch!


#music #dance #rockandroll

@hellquist Somehow mundane, yet poetic.

@marathon very nice. I enjoyed it a lot! thanks.

@jwildeboer Be careful what you wish for. My brain is literally being fried since a couple of months by all the children running around with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf5TsNZuFtY. They actually think this is the "only true right original".