Making the Cut: Deliberate Practice with Julienne Brunoise, Chiffonade Mirepoix, et al.

This started out as a New Year's resolution and its back story. The New Year is now 5 months old so this is just about the back story and its underlying theme, the relationship between motivation and creativity. In the final 4.5 months of finishing and defending my dissertation I lost 45 pounds by significantly changing my diet and adding resistance training to my existing exercise routine (OK, it was only playing basketball twice a week with 20-somethings). Over the next couple of years 20 more pounds came off and they have not returned. This change took some practice and there were periods of frustration, despair, and whining. The new eating and cooking habits amazingly helped my clarity of thought (no more carbo brain fog; this is not the space to discuss the nutritional and medical research that confirms my impressions), and I had more energy and very little in the way of cravings for items which fall into the realm of dietary folly. And when such gastronomic indiscretion occurred there was no floundering in despair or self-deprecation.

This was not a short-term change. Why did I decide to do this? In my research on
“How to Write Your Dissertation” I came across an online article that began by saying something like “If you can't control what you put in your mouth, how can you expect to write a dissertation?” Or do anything else except get fat and perpetually fatigued? It was not a resolution. It was a determination; a commitment; a mission; an epiphany.  I was tired of underachieving. Yes, I had made commercial recordings, published a few small articles (in peer-reviewed publications), and had been asked to submit a book proposal. And people were still hiring me to play concerts in different places around the country. I have always seen myself as a creative person but have often wondered what motivates me. With this discovery I felt things could be better, more efficient, creative, and enjoyable.

In the past 10 months I have gone from obese to overweight to within normal limits. This happened through mindful eating and an increase in exercise (aerobics added to the weight training). Dietary folly occurs, to be sure, but in controlled and planned circumstances. The overall mindfulness and continued clarity has helped me in my meal planning and preparation and I don't punish myself for the occasional lapse in gastronomic judgment. “OK,” you ask, “but how is this related to music?”

For our purposes here this post is related to musicology and academic writing than the performance of music. I have discussed the benefits of deliberate practice here.This essay is about clearing your mind, removing inadvertent road blocks (the Carbo Brain Fog), and using the same creative, organized, and methodical techniques used in cooking, flute playing, and academic writing as motivation and how to enjoy it in the process. Yes, believe it or not, some professional musicians do not enjoy playing music. Some people do not like cooking dinner every night. For me, the jury is still out on whether or not musicologists actively enjoy writing or is it something they have to do. At this point in my life I do not have to do it. I want to do it. The dissertation was something that I had to do but it was not an onerous task and I received a lot of encouragement in the process. The book proposal was a validating process (when it got accepted for publication) and when I turned in the first complete draft of the manuscript I experienced euphoria (briefly; to be my own buzz kill I am now waiting on the second peer reviewer to send comments to the publisher/editor who will then pass them on to me and then I’ll do what they ask; thus, my excitement was tempered). But, as noted above, I do enjoy the process, especially now that the goal in my revisions is/will be to engage more of a story-telling narrative. To turn my propensity for writing in a mind-numbing laconic style into an interesting, florid, and captivating style, void of clichés, repetitive sentence structure and syntax, run-on sentences, and with little in the way of bovine discharge.

How do you get to this point? In cooking, if you want to eat something other than white rice or pre-packaged microwave meals you need to acquire some knowledge and skills; you need to step outside of your comfort zone (that’s not a cliché, is it?), expand the horizons of your taste buds, and commit to leaving behind the feeling of underachieving. You may not know how to prepare vegetables with the julienne, brunoise, chiffonade, mirepoix, macedoine, jardinière, chiffonade, or concasse cuts, but as you start to immerse yourself in your own inspiration and creativity you will probably want to do more than just pulverize produce with a cleaver. But you need to be motivated.

As with musicological writing the more you do something the better you get. “How do I become a better writer?” “Write more,” “write every day,” and “emulate writers you enjoy reading”. Same with cooking: more; frequently; copy recipes from cookbooks. After chopping a metric ton of onions, there is no way you won’t get better, and, hopefully you’ll be inspired to do more than dice them. The same with writing: If you call yourself a musicologist then you are already an expert in some area of music and music history. As you write about your subject try refining your mirepoix phrase with the writing parallel of the chiffonade. In conversation people are known to say, “Don’t mince words.” Well, sometimes you might have to give more detail than presented with the literary equivalent of a macedoine cut and dissect it into smaller parts, literally mincing your words to give more detail. And the only way to get better at all this is to do it more. Do it often. Do it in imitation of a well-known chef. Cooking, practicing, musicology; what’s the diff?