With Bartok - it's personal

I would not be a Hungarian musician if I did not write a few lines on one of my favourite composer's birthday, who is also Hungarian and had a lot of connection with him through my music teachers and lecturers. However, the most connection I had with him as a composer and as a human being is through his music. But not just the very known music of his but those compositions he wrote for children, for children's voices. The pieces that are still not accessible to foreigners because they are so intimate, so human, so Hungarian and so private that most foreigners simply don't get it.

They are my treasures. They are the pieces I grew up singing in my school choir and performed abroad. They are the ones we sang in duets or trios with my friends and recorded for CD-s and performed at TV broadcasts. They are the ones I want my friends to play at my memorial after being cremated and my ashes scattered in the sea if and when I pass away.

This book of short choral pieces are incredibly beautiful and sometimes strange and ahead of its time type of compositions that are the real gift of Bartok Bela to the nation and to the world.

On these pictures you see my pages from Bartok score that is worn. This is not my first book I had. Many times we had to write out our parts by hand in those times. We had extra choir rehearsals at 7am in the morning. We had choir rehearsals during the day as part of the timetable a few times a week. We loved choir. Adored some of our conductors. Choral singing allowed us to travel the world from a very early age. In times when most Hungarians were not allowed or could not cross the boarders. We were like the singing birds flying everywhere.
On the right is the score of Ne hagy itt by Bartok - Don't leave me here by Bartok on this recording with the additional orchestra accompaniment.

As I looked for this Bartok score and I found it on the bookshelf together with Kodaly's choral compositions, I saw the old paper cover that was a Hungarian Christmas wrapping paper. Torn and scrambled. This book is from 1988. This was the book that I used to pass on the traditions to my own students, to my own fabulous children's choir. For them choir meant the same. Incredible musical experiences, travel and fun. We did it together. Incredible years, unforgettable memories.

Sadly, a thought comes into my mind as I am writing. How little attention we are paying to the Arts in general in our education. How little mention the Arts is getting in Australia by our politicians. How little of our resources is spent on arts. In the end, there is nothing else left to mention when everything else is gone. But the books, the paintings, the sculptures and music. They make us human. They are the ones that deserve preserving. So Arts is the one our children and students should be cultivating.

I look at the elderly, the retired. Once they finish working they reach out for creative activities to fulfil their old yearnings of writing, reading, dancing, yoga, painting, doing pottery, go back to sing in a choir, play in a band and orchestra. There is no life without the Arts. Until we breath we want to create.

Some people have more talent than others. Some, like Bartok, can give gifts to the world that have transformational power and the recipients carry all in their lives.

Happy birthday Bartok Bela! The world is a better place because of your music.




The photo was taken at the Acropolis of Athens, Greece in August 1989 during the 9th International Kodaly Symposium and the inauguration of the Kodaly Conservatory. Although I have never met Bartok himself, he died earlier than I was born, I was lucky enough to have met his son, Bela Bartok Jr. On this picture I am in very famous company, with Bela Bartok Jr in the middle and Professor Peter Erdei on the right.

The following picture is from Bartok's score of 27 choral compositions for equal voices. 27 diamonds.

Canon by Bartok

Heart or brain - who is your decision maker?

I am the type pf person who thinks with her heart. Always had very good intuitions, strong gut feelings and made decisions quickly, based on the impulse I felt from inside. I hardly ever regretted decisions and I don't change them easily. As a performing musician, yoga and meditation lover, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to explore areas of our mind and heart where not many people dare to go. It can be an exhilarating and out of body experience to go so deep in existence. I could not even write: into our heart, into our soul, into our body or into our mind because this is something else. It is truly the essence of who we are as human beings. When we are in that place, we are centered, we fly, we are light, we know what is right and we follow our dreams and anything is possible. The energy and the charge we have is unbelievable and is unlimited source, we don't know normally. Once you experience this feeling and get to this place in yourself, you know that in our normal, daily life we run on a fraction of our potentials. Just as we know that we only use a fraction of our brain capacity.
During the years I have refined these intuitions and used them in so many situations that I perfectly can rely on them in any situations, under any circumstances. I have tested them in no risk situations and with people where I went against my gut feelings so that I can really see if they were right. Just to double check my feelings I went through the thinking procedure and reasoned for and against a certain decision. The end result was always the same because I have already made my decision. 
Your mind is a TOOL you can choose to use any way you wish. The thoughts you use create the experiences you have. However, you are much more than your mind. You may think  that your mind is running the show but that is only because we have been conditioned and trained to think in this way. You can also un-train and re-train this tool of yours.

One of the primary researchers in the field of heart and brain connection is Rollin McCraty, Ph.D., Director of Research at The Institute of HeartMath, located in Boulder Creek, California. McCraty found compelling evidence to suggest that the heart’s energy field (energetic heart) is coupled to a field of information that is not bound by the classical limits of time and space. This evidence comes from several rigorous experimental studies that investigated the proposition that the body receives and processes information about a future event before the event actually happens. One of these studies, conducted at the HeartMath laboratories, showed that both the heart and brain receive and respond to pre-stimulus information about a future event. But even more surprising is the finding that the heart seems to receive the intuitive information before the brain. They also found that study participants in a positive, emotion-driven, coherent state prior to the experimental protocols proved to be significantly more attuned to the information from the heart than those who were not in such a state. This suggests to McCraty that the heart is directly coupled to a subtle energetic field of information that is entangled and interacts with the multiplicity of energetic fields in which the body is embedded—including the quantum vacuum.
After deep reflection, McCraty’s continuously evolving vision took the concept of coherence and energetic fields to the macro level of the planet—and the very edge of science. “Coherence,” he says, “is a state of energetic alignment and cooperation between heart, mind, body, and spirit. In coherence, energy is accumulated, not wasted, leaving you more energy to manifest intention and harmonious outcomes.”
Enjoy this amazing video on the connection between the heart and the brain.

HOW A PASSWORD CHANGED ONE MAN'S LIFE FOR THE BETTER

I had to share with my readers this, I loved it so much! It might work for you too!

“How could she do something like this to me?” said the voice in my head, over and over.

It was 2011 and I was stuck in middle of a pretty bad depression due to my divorce.

Thankfully, I think I was smart enough (and had great people around me) so I managed my way out.

One day I walk into the office, and my computer screen showed me the following message:

“Your password has expired. Click ‘Change password’ to change your password.”

I read this dumb message in my mind with angry grandpa voice:The darn password has expired.

At my workplace, the Microsoft Exchange server is configured to ask thousands of employees around the planet to change their passwords. Every 30 days.

Here what’s annoying: The server forces us to use at least one UPPERCASE character, at least one lowercase alphabetic character, at least one symbol and at least one number. Oh, and the whole thing can’t be less than 8 characters. And I can’t use any of the same passwords I’ve used in the last 3 months.

I was furious that morning. A sizzling hot Tuesday, it was 9:40 a.m and I was late to work. I was still wearing my bike helmet and had forgotten to eat breakfast. I needed to get things done before a 10 a.m. meeting and changing passwords was going to be a huge waste of time.

As the input field with the pulsating cursor was waiting for me to type a password — something I’d use many times during every day — I remembered a tip I heard from my former boss.

And I decided: I’m gonna use a password to change my life.

It was obvious that I couldn’t focus on getting things done with my current lifestyle and mood. Of course, there were clear indicators of what I needed to do — or what I had to achieve — in order to regain control of my life, but we often don’t pay attention to these clues.

The author, who changed his password...and his life.

Mauricio Estrella

The author, who changed his password...and his life.

My password became the indicator. My password reminded me that I shouldn’t let myself be victim of my recent break up, and that I’m strong enough to do something about it.

My password became: “Forgive@h3r”

I had to type this statement several times a day. Each time my computer would lock. Each time my screensaver with her photo would appear. Each time I would come back from eating lunch alone.

In my mind, I went with the mantra that I didn’t type a password. In my mind, I wrote “Forgive her” every day, for one month.

That simple action changed the way I looked at my ex wife. That constant reminder that I should forgive her led me to accept the way things happened at the end of my marriage, and embrace a new way of dealing with the depression that I was drowning into.

In the following days, my mood improved drastically. By the end of the second week, I noticed that this password became less powerful, and it started to lose its effect. A quick refresh of this ‘mantra’ helped me. I thought to myself “I forgive her” as I typed it, every time. The healing effect of it came back almost immediately.

Can password therapy really improve your life?

One month later, my dear exchange server asked me again to renew my password. I thought about the next thing I had to get done.

My password became: Quit@smoking4ever

And guess what happened. I quit smoking overnight. This password was a painful one to type during that month, but doing it helped me to yell at myself in my mind, as I typed that statement. It motivated me to follow my monthly goal.

One month later, my password became: Save4trip@thailand

Guess where I went 3 months later. Thailand. With savings.

So, I learned that I can truly change my life if I play it right. I kept doing this repeatedly month after month, with great results.

Here are some of my passwords from the last 2 years, so you get an idea of how my life has changed, thanks to this method:

Forgive@her (to my ex-wife, who started it all.)

Quit@smoking4ever (It worked.)

Save4trip@thailand (It worked.)

Eat2times@day (It never worked, still fat.)

Sleep@before12 (It worked.)

Ask@her4date (It worked. I fell in love again.)

No@drinking2months (It worked. I feel better.)

Get@c4t! (It worked. I have a beautiful cat.)

Facetime2mom@sunday (It worked. I talk with my mom every week.)

And the one for last month:

Save4@ring (Yep. Life is gonna change again, soon.)

I still anxiously await each month so I can change my password into something that I need to get done.

This method has consistently worked for me for the last 2 years, and I have shared it with a few close friends and relatives. I didn’t think it was a breakthrough in tiny-habits but it did have a great impact in my life, so that's why I'm sharing it with you. If you try it with the right mindset and attitude, maybe it could help change your life, too.

Oh, and remember: for added security, try to be a bit more complex with the words. Add symbols or numbers, or scramble a bit the beginning or the ending of your password string. S4f3ty_f1rst!

Mauricio Estrella

TODAY contributor