Mod. 4.2 - Ritual of Regard; Relational Transformation

Please reflect on the following prompts —

• Have you ever had a transformational experience that shifted your worldview?

• If so, what was it? What facilitated this evolution? How did it feel? What do these insights offer you as a leader of transformational change?

• If you have not had this kind of experience, how might you seek one out?

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I suppose this reflection would be the appropriate moment to share more about the train crash I survived on May 12, 2015. I mentioned it during my last reflection, but chose not to dwell on the details as I wanted to speak to other elements in that assignment. To say surviving the crash was a transformational experience that shifted my worldview would be an understatement. It completely upended my entire life and catapulted me forward in numerous ways. While I certainly don’t wish for anyone to have a near death experience (NDE) it is a very visceral way by which one can experience a very real transformation. One of the many byproducts of “cheating death” is that many who do feel a very real need to live life to the fullest. I can recall for months after the crash feeling like all I wanted to do was eat, drink, workout, and fuck. It was as if my brain had suddenly realized its own mortality and sent out all kinds of signals to accomplish all of its objectives before time ran out. Of course, this was not a permanent feeling, thank goodness. But it had a tremendous impact on me in many ways.

First, it crystalized within me many of the values and goals I’d been experimenting with and pursuing. Shortly after the train crash I was inspired to begin writing my own values because I realized that my inherited values were just that, inherited, and didn’t reflect the world I saw and life I was living. It also cemented my desire to pursue a career in arts administration. It was during this time that I started using an adapted idiom in different cover letters to say, “We are led to believe that life is ‘One Size Fits All’ but we know in reality that life is actually ‘One Size Fits One.’” This principle was reinforced by my belief that the power of the arts to transform just one life makes the entire process worthwhile. Certainly there are many economic and practical reasons for why that approach isn’t adopted by arts organizations, but I truly believe the pursuit provides an excellent foundation for times when the going gets tough.

Incorporating some of what we’ve been discussing in M.J. Kaplan’s course, I am reminded of our assignment in which we learned about Teach For All and one of their leaders, Khadija Bakhtiar, shared the importance of their teachers in Pakistan making a personal commitment to the work and viewing themselves as part of the group who will be positively impacted and benefit from their work, instead of existing from outside of it. In the same way, I was that kid who went to the opera and the symphony and found a place of belonging, identity, and higher purpose that I knew I wanted to spend my life pursuing. Now in my first role as an Executive Director, I have the chance to establish new programs and relationships that will allow numerous people the chance to hear and see a classical music concert and perhaps find inspiration from the experience.

Building on the values I started to assemble after the train crash, in the subsequent years I started to see the importance of representation in and on classical music stages and marketing materials. Reviewing my current company’s past soloists, I can only find one performance by a Black soloist in almost 40 years in a town that has a majority Black population. Looking ahead to our next season, I am hopeful I can leverage my position to find a Black soloist to perform with our Orchestra to begin changing that statistic one performance and soloist at a time. It reminds me that transformational change looks different for everyone. It might be a train crash, but it could also be a moment where a soloist of color has a chance to shine and realize the dream of so many musicians to perform with an Orchestra. It occurs to me now that while my framing for a transformational change was negative, as a leader, I have an opportunity to create space for transformational change that is positive, just as I was inspired by classical music concerts as a child.