Stephanie shares how encouraging messages from David Darling at the workshops helped her musical self-expression.
Stephanie Hirschmann: Hi, my name is Stephanie Hirschmann. I came into contact with Music for People and David Darling when I was pursuing Chungliang Al Huang. Chungliang and David were doing a workshop called “Dancing Tao, Dancing Cello.” I love music. It’s always been part of my life. I’ve always been able to sing when things are crazy. There’s still music. So I learned how to dance. And one day I had a free weekend, and it was Music for People. So I went to Omega. Poor Julie Weber. [Me saying] “I don’t know where I’m going to be 2 years from now. I might be retiring. I can commit for a year. I’m…” And Julie said, “Okay,” and I became part of the program.
One of the biggest attractions to the program aside from the music and the people is the things that David would say: “Laughing… There’s no wrong note… Sing what you play, play what you sing… Silence is your friend.” The list goes on. “I’m not greater than you. I’m not better than you. I just have more experience.”
So a lot of these things spoke to the broken person inside of me on the humanistic level. That here I could be in a safe place. Forget about the music. Let’s just talk about plain emotional and the trials of life that we all get. Our issues and our tissues. And here somebody was saying: “You’re great! There’s no wrong note… Silence is your friend….” And how wonderful is that to have that environment constantly being told you, to me by David in the group situation. [Laughing…] It’s not the end of the world. It feels like it, but you’re great. And so between the dance and the singing and the music, now I play with rubber duckies and rubber pigs. It’s a wonderful journey, and the world is an instrument starting with your heart and the heart beat.