'This Beautiful Fantastic'

The picture is of a camelia in dad's garden that I took to show him in hospital ten days before he died.  If only we had known.  He was delighted.  He loved gardens and flowers and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to take you around his garden, to share his delight and ideally have you admire his plants, many of which had come from me, my neighbour or other people. He seemed thrilled by the idea that you could transplant something from elsewhere and it might still do so well. 

Nothing like the experience of death, the sudden, incontrovertible and permanent absence of someone or perhaps having a near-death experience yourself, teaches you the preciousness of the present moment, of joy, love, compassion and giving pleasure.

*  

The mentor's job is similar to the parent's in the sense of developing metaphorical wings.  They bring autonomy and with that, usually insight. 

Experience teaches the rest.  Experience will teach you anyway.  The mentor just makes that experience better. 

The mentor challenges the learner's statements, knows when to push and when to stop. It is one of the great joys of the relationship because of the complexities involved, because of the dynamics, because of the immanent growth.  This and more is explored in the delightful film 'This Beautiful Fantastic'. 

They mentor has to know the subject.  In this case, he is, fittingly for a film about growth, in oneself, in relationships, a horticulturalist.  If the subject is life, the mentor must have wisdom.  The best mentors know a subject and have wisdom too.  It is sometimes assumed that only professionals can be mentors. A professional may have knowledge and experience.  But that isn't wisdom.  

The mentor will know the mentee, and how they will respond, better yet, know how to respond well when unexpected things happen. It is a relationship that has been practised for millennia.  It predates modern professionalism, which can be faked without too much trouble.  

In the film an oddball woman with fears of the unpredictability of nature has to establish a garden by a deadline or face eviction.  It turns out this was a setup by her curmudgeonly neighbour, the horticulturalist, who, unbeknown to her is also the landlord.  He wants her to sort out the disarray of the garden that goes with her flat next door to his house.  

He is stern and demanding: "Don't think, just do" 

He keeps pushing and prodding her:

- Miss Brown!
- Yes?
- Just dig.

Or,

- Are you kicking me, Mr. Stephenson?
- No. I'm encouraging you to get up. If you ignore my encouragement, then I'll start kicking you.

They gradually form a relationship in which he sees in her the vigour and promise of the young wife he lost young.  Through their odd friendship he is able share the gardening knowledge and wisdom of his life while she finds security and confidence in his firm direction and support.  In the film, he is mistakenly called her 'grandfather'. A mentor is indeed somewhere between parent and teacher and friend.   

By the end of the film Bella, of course, has found her confidence and her way and achieved her dream. 

After her friend's death, she opens the letter he left for her:

You were a wonderful pupil and a dearly treasured friend. 

Because they choose each other, real mentors and mentees are friends, which isn't something you get with members hired or allocated through an organisation.

He adds,

You helped me remember the good things.

He had become ill and crotchety.  She reminds him of the joy in life that he still gets from the garden that helped him heal after the death of his wife.

He had told Bella, 

When I was younger, I did a lot of travelling. I collected seeds from the most spectacular plants.Each one is from a different country. A different color, a different smell and most importantly, different memory.

A few weeks before dad died.  I brought him the photo albums and asked him about some of the trips he did with friends.  After a while he said, with his eyes fixed on the past, in a tone of wonder, All those memories.  They just come flooding back. 

Music, for him apart from the inherent pleasure of it, did the same.

Wings

Good support helps grow wings and wings mean independence, adventure, perspective.  

 I don't have any flying videos but one of the next best things to flying is a flying fox  / zipline and those I have.  A flying fox, especially one with a puddle is about speed and unpredictability, fearlessness and adventure,  My son was not quite four. I am amazed how calm he is but then I suppose he felt safe. 

Years later we found a swing in some nearby beech woods. The swing itself was well built, if basic.  It was just a solid stick well tied to a long rope.  You launched from the top of a steep bank and sailed over the void.  It was so much fun. 

But eventually something went wrong and my son fell from quite a height, landing on his back in patch of nettles. But that is what happens with adventure and exploration.  You take risks, sometimes you have great times and sometimes it goes wrong.  You learn whether the joy is worth the danger and how to better manage risk.

So, nowadays, sometimes people think, 'Well, I'd better get professional advice'.  But professionals can sometimes make things worse than if you'd tried on your own.

And sometimes if you just keep showing up and practising, amazing things happen, even at an advanced age [swing man and handstand lady] 

A parent's job seems complicated but really it is just to love.  Luckily, for the most part, that comes inbuilt with parenthood though it is hardly risk-free. Smother the child with love and they will feel insecure in the world. Love them insufficiently or make them feel inadequate and they will develop strategies to cope with neglect or poor self esteem. They need confidence for exploration and independence.   

Initiative

My son was seven when he made us a bacon and eggs camping breakfast on his own. I remember being impressed (and grateful) at the time.  

Ten years on, while I was caring for mum and dad, the same son was preparing for his Highers.  I was hardly around to help him with English, the one subject I could have helped him with and the one subject in which he needed help. He had got 'A's across the board at National 5 level the previous year and suddenly, two or three months before his exams he was predicted a B, in English, with a current working grade of C.  I immediately wrote to the school about the gap. Here's what I was doing (buying books, getting a tutor, which turned out not to be value for money, getting him to attend study support).  What was their plan to address the gap?  I said he needed a minimum of a B in English to get into medical school.  

The school is average, no great shakes.  They are lucky to have a high achiever.  So it was a shock, but not a surprise when the letter was ignored.  I wrote again.  Ignored again.  Right before the exams parents got another update.  Now my son's grade was predicted as a C.  I was dismayed but didn't bother writing a third time. It was too late anyway, the exam was weeks away.  He had done so well at school, best student in third year out of hundreds.  He was a prefect, a house captain at a young age, hardworking, polite, responsible, liked and respected. I felt he had been ignored and betrayed. He had had reservations about his English teacher.  Apparently she just wasn't that helpful. 

It's not the end of the world I said.  We don't know what will happen.  There are many routes to a goal. 

The evening of the day after dad died we pushed the sofas together to make a nest and got in with our blankets.  We watched The Shawshank Redemption, together, one of the subjects of his exam. I spent the next few days doing essay questions with him.    

After the exam I asked him, What are the lessons in this? But he was too demoralised to come up with much.  There are a few I said.  But the key one is, take responsibility for your own learning.  I had tried to explicitly teach them this much younger, but I hadn't realised then that kids do that anyway, through play and exploration. If your teacher isn't interested find another way to ask your questions. There are so many resources now, online.  Don't put all your faith in teachers.  They are random.  Randomly good, randomly bad and not altogether reliable. Take responsibility and see anything teachers bring as a bonus.

You can say these thing, but sometimes, unfortunately, they find out the hard way. 

Trouble in school

August Heyn

In a class, generally, you sit back and are told, you are mere receptacles. You do as you're told. Questions tend to be awkward or a threat unless the teacher has had them before and knows how to 'deal' with them. And it is often "deal with" as opposed to "answer".

Mentees probably aren't much good in an environment of formal education. They have too much independence of mine, they are anarchists, renegades, rebels, in a word dangerous. 

2014

A: know we like and dislike different tracks which I think is as it should be or the world would be less interesting, but if you think a track isn't good and I haven't spotted it I don't like not knowing! This is why I always want to know.

B: Goodness, what nuisance you must have been at school :)

                                                                                     *

I went back to school at the end of 2021 to see about a Spanish qualification.   I was thinking of teaching French at the time.  Someone said, You'll need a Higher (like the first year of A-level) in a second language.  Do Spanish.  I already had some Spanish and the school had previously said they would let adults do certain courses. 

At first I was occasionally sitting in with a class of 16 years olds preparing Highers.  I was bored to tears and eventually came in just for the double periods.  The teacher was correct, polite.  But I was dogged by a feeling, not from the students, who just tend to accept things, that I was weird, out of place, a problem. 

The teacher talked and talked.  They were experienced, liked by students, respected by colleagues. But there was no interaction, or only when the teacher picked people to answer short questions.  

I appreciated the school accommodating me but the time in that class was so dull, limiting, miserable, demoralising and scary.  I felt intimidated because in some way I never quite understood, despite being the student, I felt like a threat.  Then I felt ridiculous for thinking so because I was practically silent the whole time.  

There is a song by George Brassens called Je me suis fait tout petit (I made myself small [unthreatening). It was like that.  I used to wait outside the class, for the teacher to arrive or to let us in, like a teenager instead of going in, in case I presumed too much.  And then felt stupid when the actual teenagers arrived and walked in.  My face wore a bland, impassive mask, so I supposed.  

I felt guilty asking a question and usually did so privately.  I felt hampered, clipped, suppressed. I didn't learn much. The tragedy was the students thought that learning environment was normal, therefore probably good.  

When I realised there was an  'Advanced higher' level, (never suggested) I asked to change level.  I never actually did anything wrong that I knew of.  But ultimately, in early 2022 when we were coming out of Covid, the school asked me to stay home.  Apparently my attendance increased the Covid risk, though the teens got to stay.  Although they had accepted me on the course, I became a sort of optional.  I felt discriminated against but said nothing and was relieved anyway. It was an excuse to get out but still do the exam.  I got the Advanced Higher by doing my own prep and taking the exam in school. 

What was the prep? The school gave me a link to an online bug-ridden programme designed by the University of Edinburgh.  When I got too frustrated by the bugs I set up online conversation exchanges with Spanish speakers in other countries, usually, in the Spanish part with something specific I wanted help with. Most people didn't do that, they just wanted to chat.  Everyone was different.  You had to be adaptable. Contrast with the one-size-fits-all of school. I know you are meant to teach all abilities, I forget the current buzzword, but when there are thirty kids in a class, that is going to be limited. I think most people teach the main core, let the advanced ones do their own thing and try to give extra help those with more challenges. 

Really, though, I learned fairly fluent Spanish by doing DIY with my Spanish speaking friend.  While I sought out ways to immerse myself in Spanish, he, to make his own life easier, sought out people who spoke Spanish to avoid speaking English.  

I found out there was another level I could do by accident  - just by seeing harder papers on the teacher's desk.  I asked to change level and thank goodness because I got an 'A'.  If I hadn't asked the most I would have got was an 'A' at the level below!  Most students can't and don't ask.  It doesn't occur to them. They are corralled in a class to learn certain material at a certain pace and they think it's normal. 

That flexibility could be designed into learning so people learn at the right pace for them, that idea has been put on a high shelf, well out of sight.   There is no concept of skipping a level, spreading  wings. Why?  Is it dangerous?

Provocation

Sting, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

When, in 'The Apology', Socrates said,

"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think," he was referring to the process not the content. 

I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me."

He warns that there may be pain and discomfort before there is the pleasure of insight. Sometimes we need to be provoked into self examination and reflection. But Athens didn't like the challenge, the uncomfortable questions, the instability and sense of insecurity they cause. The Athenians did kill Socrates and soon after Athenian democracy did enter a period of decline and turmoil.

Questions

A mentor doesn't suppress questions or worry about them, they encourage them. They provoke you with their own questions. 

*

A question can lead you to far away places, in the world and inside your heart and your mind.  A mentor's suggestion took me to Buenos Aires, for instance. Ten years ago I reached out by email to a stranger with an enquiry not knowing how much it would alter my life in terms of thought and the effect thought has on actions and destiny. Almost the entire relationship, which lasted years, was conducted by correspondence.  

I didn't know this quotation at the time:

“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

    - Lao Tzu

Exploration II

Exploration, fosters curiosity and discovery, maybe because these can take you off-piste on adventures outside the ambit of control. 

Teachers have templates or sequences to build a particular move which rely on one-size-fits-all. When you explore you realise immediately that isn't true. People are different. I remember a woman who wanted to learn the cross but couldn't do it with her partner and wanted help. She, like many people had restricted movement so the move needed adapting. People are also different heights, sizes, have different balance. In short, there is no size fits all. Everything needs to be adapted, often radically adapted, by exploring.

The best dancing is not routine, but exploratory.

Demos, practice, humility

A teacher who shows you something physical or manual can be helpful, to give you an idea of what to aim for. 

I had huge admiration for this lady, who got children involved in ancient crafts at the Crannog centre on Loch Tay.  In the case above she didn't even demo, she just got them doing it. She was kind and clear and patient and fun. 

If you are up on Loch Tay with children Biscuit of Wee Adventures has a great reputation and a famously upbeat.  He gets children doing adventurous stuff outdoors.

Making fire without matches or a lighter is something else that is usefully demonstrated first.  There are various ways and they all have a knack to them. 

In this example  from Callendar House near Falkirk, the guy in charge heated the liquid metal and poured it into the cuttlefish casts.  But the children shaped the casts and blew on the bellows and saw the whole process. It was a big day of exploring involving an adventure by train and bike to get there, a flying fox, art art exhibition and hot chocolate in the cafe. 

   

Dance demos in class go much further and are not as useful.  They become a spotlight for the teacher to show off.  For a big fish in a small pond it is like a mini performance, feeding the ego, marvellously.  It consolidate power and lends authority.  

A  demo is not helpful if from that you are supposed to break down the mechanics of something, unless you have the kind of mind that can just figure it out,   You have to do it through trial and error or the teacher doing it directly with you.

Delightful and confusing in a mentor was surety combined with a lack of ego.  Surety needs self-awareness, to avoid complacency.

Mentors and instruction

Sometimes a mentor has to instruct. It depends on the topic, the character, their existing skills and experience.  Manual tasks can be tricky. Installing a lock, is not easy. Changing a sash cord on the fourth floor, can be fraught. It depends on the subject.  

But dance and thought and need space to explore. The good mentor in these areas doesn't fall into the trap of instruction whereas your average joe on the dance floor can't hold back from lecturing a newbie. Generally, the worse the dancer, the greater the drive to instruct.

Conformity v initiative

Duncan Cumming

In dance you can explore different partners, different music, try things out, try new places, other cultures.  Even if you stick with teachers, explore the different ones.  I remember an early teacher banging on about teacher loyalty.  Another take on that is "clipped wings". That's what schools do, too.  Brand loyalty, ambassadorship... Ostensibly it's about pride. It's really about conformity and being easy to manage. 

Why do schools tell you what values to have? They all do, with their mottos and expectations. Most children are vastly nicer, more sensitive, more observant, more respectful and better mannered than most adults.  Where they aren't, they seem to have had terrible examples. Why don't  schools foster an exploration of different values and let children find their own? They seem to do pretty well on their own.

*

I asked my sons about this.  

What are your school values?  

Ambition, respect, equity, he said, pat. 

Right, well, ambition, that's all about striving, isn't it.  Maybe trying to have stuff and be stuff is at the root of  a lot of society's problems....

It's good to have stuff.  You can have money and then you can eat. 

Fair point, but, you know, to excess... How do you know when to stop?  All I'm trying to say is other cultures, other people don't have ambition as a value.

What do they have? 

Being? 

You're going to be a Buddhist, aren't you?  he said, sceptically and sloped off, grinning, to conduct his own explorations doing I don't know what.

Why not?, I called up the stairs.  

The other son was a bit more aggressive in his defence of ambition, comparing a lack of ambition to being a homeless person.  I didn't think bringing up Diogenes in his barrel was going to advance my case at this point.

You don't have ambition, do you? he said, brutally, also grinning.

Not really. I used to. I was very ambitious up until I was about 34. 

I don't believe it, he said. He's the tough one.

Good jobs, always on to the next thing, bigger salaries, better perks. I was horribly materialistic. 

So why is being told what to do is better than figuring things out?

My son, a scientist to the core, likes structure, hates the vagueness of English. 

Because if you don't know something how are you supposed to start?

Initiative? Exploration? Tell me a science topic (I am hopeless at science).

Why?

To see if I can explore it.

OK...relativity.

Really? I said, slightly shocked. Did you study that?  At Higher?

Yep.

Did you have any background.

Nope. 

How long did you spend on it in school.

About a week?

Er, well hang on, you had three years of physics before that.  I stopped physics at about thirteen.

I though this was about initiative?

Yes, but you know, it's physics, I said, uncomfortable. Are there calculations?

Of course there are calculations, it's physics! 

I'll tell you what, he said, generously, to make it properly about exploration I'll give you a choice.

OK, I said, relieved.

Trends in electro-negativity going across a period and down a group.

Uh-huh.....  What subject is that?

Chemistry.

Right. And the other?

The three stages of aerobic respiration in animals, glycolysis, citric acid cycle and the electron transport chain. 

Fascinating.    I'll stick with relativity.  At least that's made into mainstream interest. And so it's fair, how are you expecting this - an essay, a presentation, a test? 

A presentation.

And how do you I know your're not going to move the goalposts when I present?

As long as it has the content of my Higher notes. 

So, homework this week.

Exploration vs tuition

Andrew Scott

The Guardian ran an article yesterday about how students don't find university value for money.  It has been like that for decades!  None of my three degrees and two half degrees were worth the time and money.  In the nineties it was as much about "the experience".  I always thought that was great.  I'd lived away from home, I'd had jobs since I was 15.  By nineteen I had, comparatively, quite a lot experience.  

The idea of lectures was always rubbish.  Read a book!  How much more convenient and better expressed.   Then find someone to ask your questions.  Pace some comics and musicians, few people with something serious worth listening to talk better or as well as they write.  

Academia was full of egos and perspectives, especially in literature. There weren't the right and wrong answers of science and, coaching my son last minute for his Highers, seeing the marking schemes, I see how wrong that is now.  You had to figure out what would appeal most to each tutor just as you still have to guess more what the examiner wants than try to give a good answers.  But you never did figure it out because the reading lists were so absurdly long and the lack of clarity and standards was disheartening. You were talked at, as with teachers and then just left.  It was less exploration, more like being mapless in a barren land. 

Thirty years on, things are no better.  Last year, I cannot describe how poor were the quality of most Scottish teacher training lectures, incorrect referencing and political brainwashing being two of the more egregious problems, not to mention the boredom. Yes, the materials were available via modern technology but that same technology was also used to check your attendance. Adults, with free choice who had jumped through many hoops and much competition to get there were penalised if they didn't turn up. 

So students are, no surprise, finally finding uni a box-ticking exercise.  Why has it taken so long? There are new elements now that are causing dissatisfaction.  One, universities in England charge steeply for tuition now.  Two, the cost squeeze on students is higher and they often have to work alongside study.  Three, advances in communication and technology mean that there are other and better ways to get the same information.  So students can do their own exploration and much more efficiently.  

The problem is, they are right, it is a box ticking exercise. The system is profoundly unfair.  You often need a degree for a decent job. There is a stranglehold, partly commercial on degrees.  There should be other ways.  The brand new medical doctor apprenticeship trials, where you are paid to learn on the job and thereby achieve your qualification, has several obvious advantages. A degree provides a minimum standard and is useful if you want to research.  But why aren't all degree professions apprenticeships - law, archaeology, social work, engineering?  Students would work, study and be paid. Their study would be directly relevant to the real world, it would be a direct and relevant exploration of the  working world, incorporating study. They would make useful connections for future work.  My worry is that any such new degrees might have the ludicrous bureaucracy, ridiculous workload and toxic culture of "it's supposed to be hard" that characterised my teacher-training.

Lastly there is finally, with technology, more awareness of this problem, more similarly-minded people finding each other, more chat and so more of a sense that this is a general problem, not something experienced by one or two isolated individuals.  As such it could be fixed.

Exploration

How much do classes let you explore?  When my kids were in one of their several primary schools I was forever frustrated, especially by the last one attended by my youngest.  Recently, no surprise, it was given one of the worst ratings in Scotland.  The school was on one side of a park and we are on the other.  The children should have been learning outside all the time.  

Learning outside is not just exploring the physical area, it is testing your limits, following curiosity, exploration in all its senses.  

Even though we only home schooled for a year and flexi-schooled for six months or so all through the primary years we were out a lot. It wasn't that they roamed the way kids did in the seventies and earlier, We just went places, often with friends and explored, after school, weekends, holidays. Mostly local, once or twice to England, camping, nothing flash.  

Holidays in Egypt or Turkey seem to be normal now but the most exotic we got (and that only eventually) was Spain. The things they remember are not some luxury resort with could-be-anywhere international entertainment, but the small, weird stuff  which is what exploring is. Getting buses in foreign cities, asking for things in Spanish, trying churros or callos [tripe].   

I can't get them off their screens and out of their bedrooms these days but even if all that time spent outdoors has no lasting effect, for that time that it lasted, it was wonderful.  I have zero regrets choosing to do this. to grab all the (dryish!) opportunities there were, instead of prioritising paid work and was grateful to be able to do so. 

There is a whole movement now, ludicrously still considered alternative about how wrong it is to coop kids, especially primary age children up in classrooms. Sometimes we are still so limiting as a society I want to cry with frustration. Physical exploration so suited to children is just one aspect of exploration, which is also intellectual, psychological, emotional, spiritual. 

Space

You yourself must strive.

The Buddhas only point the way.

                                             Dhammapada

Talking to someone about getting new dancers started by taking them to milongas he said "You don't actually need to take them, you know.  They can make their own way.  It was a lesson in holding back.  

*

While a teacher talks at a class, a mentor doesn't tell you.  They certainly don't tell you everything at once.  A few great leaders are able to connect with a group of people, to inspire them, to stir emotions that lead them to achieve or to join in some common goal.  But not everyone wants to be part of a group, even a group with a laudable aim.  In contrast, it is hard not to connect with someone who listens.  A mentor probably listens more than they speak.

I wish Instagram had been around when my kids were younger.  There are so many good parenting tips there.  

But something I did consistently, when my kids asked me how to spell something, was say "How do you think?" In fact, just after writing this, my now seventeen year old, whose forte is not spelling, wanted to know how to spell 'umlaut', for a crossword we were doing.  I still used the same approach.

Primary age, they would say, always with their eye on me  A...C...C.... and I would say nothing, so they continued. 

O.....M....A.....  whereupon I would shake my head, once but say nothing.  

U.....Another shake

E....The same again

A....and again

They would start to get frustrated but this passes as they apply thought.  They always got there. There were two lessons and the most important one was not how to spell accommodate.

*

A mentor makes space for a curious mind.  

*

   

It is a light touch that is needed, to help someone find their way, a guiding touch. Though I only saw it in action over one evening, Colin, who was a sensitive guy, had this.

"Life's longing"

 A good mentor holds back. 

Many teachers, and some parents, try to get kids to do it their way but the loveliest thing in any primary school display is the diversity of the art work, the individuality.  Knowing when not to help is probably more important than helping.

A good mentor doesn't help you discover because that would not be the light touch.  It is more someone who shows you where to look but doesn't tell you what to think.  They just point you in the right direction.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

                                                                                        - Khalil Gibran, The Prophet (1923)

It is a captivating image. But maybe a mentor is not even the bow.  The bow implies a goal, chosen in advance and an aim, from experience.  But each person's goal should be their own and aim comes with practice.  The greater the independence, the greater the joy of discovery.  The guide tries to ensure there are no serious injuries. They step in when discouragement threatens abandonment.  They might share a hint when repeated attempts come to naught. 

They observe in the background, anticipating problems, stepping in if danger threatens, or discouragement.

Mentors and mentees

Telemachus and Mentor
National Gallery of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The difference between friend and mentor is not clear but good mentors are also friends although that's not quite how Daumier saw it a couple of centuries ago. Age makes a difference to the relationship. 

It's not just that the mentor has to understand the mentee, it works both ways.

One mentor has gifts of patience, humour, much tact and reserve.   We will get to a point where he, with all the experience, has his way of doing things and I want to do it another. Rather than force his way through we wait, negotiate, try to understand where and why the point of difference is. I have come to understand him well. Sometimes I know he feels pressure to come up with a solution there and then. I have come to sense when it may not be the right one. I will suggest we work on something else for a bit or have a beer or a bite to eat. He will go home and his mind will gnaw away at the problem. The next day he will invariably have a better solution. 

 He has a tendency to take over, unless I specifically ask to try, which he always allows.  

The dynamic took months, years to understand.  Mutual patience, tolerance and a focus on the other's strengths rather than weaknesses was key. 

A mentor needs plenty of life experience, patience in spades and sometimes an ability to manage boundaries. 

Trust is key in the mentor - mentee relationship. A new mentee will make mistakes, to find things hard, feel stupid and insecure. The mentor knows all this because they have been there and have likely seen it many times before. A mentor is a rock of security in a roiling sea in which the mentee would otherwise drown or wash up drenched and half dead. 

Dawn French talks about feeling stupid, but safe with people we trust. Telling the story of something foolish we did or something hard that happened to us, in a funny way, to people we trust, because we know they will enjoy it, is probably a form of therapy.  The mentor is one of those people. It converts the experience from something bad to something good that we share and in doing so, learn from. 

While there is usually an external focus, the thing being learned, the best lessons are not necessarily about that. A purely utilitarian relationship is a dead and rotten thing. The most valuable thing is the relationship and the epiphenomena, the incidental experiences and insights. It is a profound experience.

Be, don't tell

Marcus Aurelius, Louvre Museum
CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons

A good mentor is the model, not the pointer

"Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as you ought.""For sheep don't throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk. Thus, therefore, do you likewise not show theorems to the unlearned, but the actions produced by them after they have been digested."

Epictetus, The Enchiridion"

"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.16

Finding mentors

Longhofer

Based on a draft about mentors: 25.1.19

Unless you are resourceful and resilient enough to learn something new entirely alone, and perhaps those people might want to question their relationship skills, the mentor  - mentee relationship is the best path to independence, compared, to say, a class. A mentor is the same as a guide but mentor I think suggests more commitment.  Guides are maybe more free.

I guess you are either allocated a mentor, you sign up to one you see advertised or maybe one is recommended.  I can't imagine that I would pay for a mentor except out of curiosity.  It smacks of prostitution.  I don't think you can buy a good mentor.

Corporate mentorship is a curious animal.  I knew, briefly, a guy who was a corporate mentor.  We hit it off straight away.  I liked him, respected him.  He was interesting.  He admitted he boned up on a topic in order to respond to what a client wanted.  I understood, but that ain't wisdom. I suppose corporate wisdom is very different to traditional sense of the word. He seemed to me like the kid standing in the middle of a seesaw, trying to keep the balance.  He wasn't glib but I sometimes wondered if his profession was.  He was deep and light hearted, fun-loving, serious, observant, patient, a learner and a teacher. 

I once tried to discuss the integrity of 'buying a mentor'.  How can that really work? I understood, to an extent, but there has always to be an element of self-interest, of sales potentially at the expense of, well, something else.  It was a difficult topic and he skated right off it.  

He was also, I came to discover, serially unreliable in our meetings, being busy and not so organised. We had begun in roles of reciprocity, learning from each other.  Soon, he invited me to be hired by him to deliver a service.  I wasn't sure.  I liked the way things were and suggested a professional I knew instead but he wanted me.  I was new to that role and eventually, after being messed around for the nth time put in clear boundaries. He understood, responded well and respected these but the relationship faded away and not on bad terms. The whole experience was interesting and instructive.

In terms of finding a real, personal mentor, the other way is you come across them by accident, occasionally you are thrown together by circumstance or your shared interests bring you together. You discover that they have more knowledge, experience, skills or some combination of these and they are willing to help and to share.

Perhaps you sense them out in a way, although this, in my case, has been an unconscious process. It's not that you sniff one out and set them up as your mentor. That isn't how it works. You just  come to realise that this person you have connected with now seems to be your mentor.  The realisation, at least for me, is later, after the fact.  The luck involved in finding a good mentor is phenomenal.  If society were differently organised, these relationships would be at the heart of it and gratitude to the universe would feature strongly.

I think mentors tend to be older than mentees, perhaps by at least ten years. In my case, all my mentors have been men. I have chatted to many new people in the milongas but a mentor isn't quite chat and is there over time, there is an endurance to it. 

In my mid twenties I knew someone from whom I learned a lot. But love was involved. That isn't a mentor.  A love affair on its own is complicated enough. Something between the two is bound to end in shipwreck.

Also in my twenties, I had one of those rare creatures, a relaxed, intelligent boss who let you get on with the job. He assigned an experienced laid back and good-natured colleague as a mentor at work. This man helped me, with infinite patience, even inviting me to dinner at his house to meet his wife and child.

At another job a more experienced colleague evolved, unspoken into my mentor and became an invaluable support, defending me at a politically motivated internal trial, but he was primarily a free spirit in all senses - and he had his own work to do.

Later again I came to know a neighbour with many talents who was kind and anarchic and helpful and from whom I have learned many things mostly to do power and politics. I saw him in the street the other day and introduced him to my mum.  This is my neighbour, P_____, I said. 

And friend, he said, pointedly, gently.      

Renegade hearts

Magdalan Saiyantoa

Back in 2015 a friend was demoralised about the local tango dancing scene. A survey had come out showing that the city's milongas, controlled by a shadowy, unelected cartel, was unfriendly and discouraging. The friend was all "one tango" love and positivity vibes and had tried to set up another. Kissinger they were not. 

A: But one milonga for all...it doesn't work like that.

B: No it doesn't work at all. I tried to change it and failed. I don't have the time or energy. I just don't go now.  I got the feeling when I was trying to plan my milonga that I was not allowed since I wasn't one of them. I had to help [the incumbent organiser] or make it a student event. I would have gone renegade but I think many people would have avoided it for fear of controversy.

A: Well, you asked permission of the incumbents. Of course they would say that! How is asking permission of the the competition going to work? You didn't need permission.

B:  Yes but they hold the marketing monopoly. If they don't support something no one goes.

A: They don't hold a marketing monopoly. Look at Milonga Popular in Berlin. Hardly advertised & mobbed.Perhaps you need a different strategy.

B:  But Berlin has TONS more people dancing. Several times this summer there were less than 30 people at the milonga.

A:  Proves my point. The need for a different offering. Don't try to integrate with the incumbents! You'll be treated like shit.

B: And be given the information that it would NOT be okay?

A:  I get your tango love positivity thing, But one milonga for all...it doesn't work like that.

B:  I don't want to be the renegade [Marsyas]. I get tired of that role. That person is always metaphorically killed in the end. I need to focus on other things, not changing our dysfunctional tango scene. I will leave that to a better person than myself!

A: Renegade or hero is just a question of perspective. You could be the saviour of the scene...

B: No, I need to use my energy creating awareness of the toxicity of socially constructed gender expectations. Dancing is just....dancing! I'll leave being the saviour to you. ;)

A: Ha! Dancing tango is nothing if not about "socially constructed gender expectations". But it does seem to be about everything! I'm already the renegade, hardly the saviour. It's my one talent.

B: That's why I love you! Your renegade heart speaks to mine!

But a renegade persists.  The lover of freedom flies away.

Some years later someone else did set up an alternative.  By that time, the original had made some efforts to change. They started advertising other events in the city  - provided people stayed onside.  It was hard to know if that was changing or tightening control, the way a media company has  power to disseminate the things it wants to and to suppress what it doesn't.

But it was too late and you can't hold a monopoly forever.  Organisers of healthy milongas don't aim for control, they want to foster diversity and independence, because that's how things grow.  If you want to know the character of a milonga host, just dance with them, or watch them dance.  

In the real world, few people are so well intentioned as to want to do their job so well they are no longer needed, or to foster diversity and independence if there is a risk to themselves.  They do what serves their interest, be it independence, freedom, money or control. 

Tango advertising - the giveaways

A now edited draft from 20.8.15, also about giveaways.

One of the biggest giveaways of people teaching performance dancing in place of social dancing is the picture or video in the advertisement.  This piece had links to a lot of pages now dead but some photos I had archived.

Edinburgh University Tango society at the time had some slick video footage of performers, which no doubt draws people in, but to what?  I am sure people join the society primarily because they want to learn the social dance, not to watch shows or to become performers.

The piece than compared it to a link from Thames Valley Tango, probably meant something like this (new venue).  I felt at the time that this was one Britain's best milongas for good music, excellent and careful floorcraft on what is usually a very busy floor and good dancing.  This picture shows it less busy than when I have usually been.  From the photo you can tell there will be tables, chairs, atmospheric lighting, busy but not overfull. The suggestion is, enough tables and seating for the attendees.  Actually, there is insufficient seating on busy days - both at the old venue and the new, at least at the special events.

Tango West Midlands no longer seems to have the website I had linked to where there was apparently a great example of the tango dancing they're selling. So I don't know if the good image I archived for their milonga was meant to be an ironic contrast to the advert, or not.   As far as the physical conditions for dancing, apart from the show pictures on the wall, it looks pretty much ideal.

It is surprisingly hard, certainly then and even now to to find a social dance advertised with a picture of the venue, especially with the dancers rather than a stylised photo of a performance dance. Marketing 101, the photo emphasises what they are selling, their focus. You can have a pretty good idea of the kind of dancing there will be at events advertised with a performance pose. There will be guys trying to pull performance style moves girls, or shoving them into ochos pushing them over a sandwich, pistoning them in and out of ocho cortado, whipping them into voleos, demanding they do ganchos and dropping them off axis into volcados that make the stomach feel as though it's in an elevator and give the woman no choice. 

It's 'island tango' where you go from one move to the next with dead sea between.  There's a harsh, dry wind blowing there and no music.

Let's take a 2024 example.  Belgrade encuentro - you can tell from the home page it is about a lot of people, teachers and performers. Come to think of it, an encuentro typically didn't use to have teachers and performers - that's why they call them festivals instead. Anyone who has attended an event that looks like this knows the dancing can be very hit and miss and trying invite or be invited is a nightmare in such a big venue. They claim "big yet cosy" but I've got no idea how they are going to pull that one off.  

Their Youtube video preview shouts, You wanna real party? You you get the picture and thank goodness.

Belgrade must have done a lot of work on prioritising their results because their images are all the first ones to come up in a search of tango encuentros.

There's a very different vibe in the Hobart encuentro photo for 2024.  It's an odd, stylized picture that on the one hand detracts from reality, which is always a worry, but at the same time gives it a retro feel, meaning traditional, which could be good.  The suggestion is olde-worlde glamour, elegance, respectful. There are tables and chairs.  It seems like the men are expected to wear suits, again suggesting a traditional, Buenos Aires formality and yet the seating is not separated.  The floor looks good. If it has all these good elements, I'm asking myself, why don't they show the real photo, instead of manipulating one?

There is an interesting photo of Tango Secreto Encuentro Milonguero from 2016 which may or may not have been used for advertising. All you see are women's legs.  But you can tell it's dressy, it looks like segregated seating for men and women, hence traditional.  The women are looking and chatting.  What about?  Probably the men.  It suggests femininity which attracts the guys and the bonding of female intrigue and the dressing up draw in the women. 

A local one to finish.  The headline photo is one I took inside Paisley tango's recent festival.  The venue looks quite glam - it was in a new, elegant venue and that was a draw for curious local dancers.  As such it was quite expensive.  They had performers, but it was a festival so that's what you expect.  The floor was good. It was dark, so it was hard to invite, the space was big, so, ditto, and same again because the tables were huge, not intimate as in a BA milonga. You had to prowl or dance with people on your table. Or sit and wait for ages in the hope of a prowling leader. 

How does that compare to the advert?  When you land on the festival you get a popup with photo of the organisers thanking you for visiting.  On the one hand it's a personal touch, and they are very much the face of the festival, well known for working hard to build up Paisley tango from nothing, overcoming personal setbacks on the way. Make of the vibe in that photo what you will. The festival home page is all about the performers and a singer they brought in.  They want people to be, or think their target audience will be attracted by the workshops and performances rather than the dancing. And my goodness, I don't know if that's the way festivals are nowadays, but both this and the Barcelona Queer Tango festival had performances that lasted about an hour. 

Luckily, it was the opportunity for that great chat about breath.

Choosing your own teacher

From years ago, maybe 2015

Many teachers can dance and well.  I like to see them in the ronda. You see then if they can really dance and, much less commonly, how many dance unconsciously without thinking who is watching. 

Fascinatingly, some people who cannot dance at all, whose dancing is somewhere between embarrassingly atrocious and just mediocre set themselves up for reasons of income, pocket money, status or who  knows why and astonishingly, persuade people not only that they can dance but that they are well qualified to show someone else how to dance. What cocky self-aggrandisement on the one hand, what credulousness on the other. 

Women just pick up dance by dancing with good dancers and some of these dance superbly. But they are less common for guys because they don't currently, typically get to pick up dance the same way.

When I wonder, will, if understandably scared of just hanging out in less-than-welcoming milongas and practicas more people choose their own teachers? When will those who, seeing good dancers and hoping to be noticed, go up to someone they don't know or barely know and say: I love how you dance, could you show me sometime how to dance like that? I have never heard of that. Not once. Why is that? What are we so scared of?  What might come of it?

Or at least, I hadn't until I decided to ask one of the most experienced dancers I know, one of that small group who give real dances.  From the the way they dance guys like this seem to just understand women, and what we like.

- I want to ask, did anyone ever say to you, along the lines of: I love how you dance, could you show me sometime how to dance like that? Or did you ever hear of that?

- Yes. :-)

- A guy or a girl? 

- Both. 

- And then what happened?

- I usually would answer e.g. I show you only by dancing with you. Some take the offer, some don't.

- That's what I guessed. Thanks. 

Is it common?

- No.

- So what do you do if they ask questions?

- About how they should dance? Usually I just smile :-)

It made perfect sense. What else would you do? Tell them to dance like you, like a teacher, to enact some figure, to twist your body this way or that, to put your hand here, your foot there, to think about your posture, to stop listening to the music?  That doesn't sound like much of a dance to me.  If you find someone you like to dance with and listen to what their body tells you, why would you break that spell?

Besides, people who can really dance can't, I notice actually tell you what they do. They can show you, that's all and then you find your own way.