The emperor has no clothes.

It's a rainy Sunday. While I have plenty I should do--I have noted the piano in 10 days, I have dozen of half-finished projects lying around, I am wrestling with an essay that won't find a shape--instead, I read the paper, knit a little, roast some red peppers. I stare at the computer and run out for a brownie. When my husband returns in the late afternoon, I have no idea what I have done with the last eight hours.

These kinds of days are the opposite of my usual pace. Normally, I have a tendency to gulp life. I eat too many meals in a rush, swallowing entire bites whole as I shovel food in between lessons or on my way out the door. I am constantly in a hurry, feeling unable to cram all that I want into every hour. Many days it is a real struggle just to fit in the essentials: practicing, teaching, writing and the general life maintenance of eating, bathing and brushing my teeth. Each lesson I teach goes by in a flash.

With five minutes left, I frantically race through final instructions, trying to explain a new concept, urging the students to "quickly play...." Never should one say the phrase "quickly play ..." to a child; they play too quickly as it is. And yet, I catch myself saying just that, 10 times a day.

Every day when I sit down at the piano, I warm up and orient myself to this grand instrument by playing very softly and slowly up and down the length of the keyboard. I am testing the piano's action and response and waking up my ears to listen critically. But many days, I am still in prestissimo tempo. My slow is not slow; my soft is not soft. Too often, my tendency is to just play faster, to hurry through the exercise so I can get on to the next "real" thing, rather than to stop and listen carefully and make myself accountable to the sound.

It occurs to me that this predisposition to gulp life whole makes it challenging to live an authentically honest life, because in my hurriedness I get fuzzy about the details. And details make me honest.

Some days the truth seems awfully bare, skeletal even, and I want to cover it up: dress it in fine silk, accessorize it a bit with stunning shoes and a chic hat. At the end of days like today, I want to present tangible evidence of my worthiness to my husband when he gets home from work, or to my mother when she calls for our Sunday afternoon chat and asks, "So, what are you up to?"--I don't want to admit that I am not up to a thing.

I also don't want to admit that I might ask of my students what I won't do myself, but just this week I am brought face to face with my own lack of honesty. I have a small performance on Sunday, and while there is no particular reason I need to play from memory for this event, I have the pieces memorized because they are part of a future solo program. I don't often play from memory anymore, due to years of collaborative and chamber playing, and I would love not to risk it. Six-year-old Matt has the same opinion about an upcoming recital. Even though his piece has been memorized for weeks, every lesson he says, "Miss Amy, I want to take my music with me." I have been telling him that it is unnecessary, that he knows his music and that pianists memorize. Even as I say this, I know if I play with my score on Sunday then I have no authority not to allow Matt to do the same.

In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer writes, "Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life. Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain self-knowledge--and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject." (1)

If my students are my mirror, then I don't always like what I see. Luke won't sit up straight, but how do I sit in his lessons? Audrey never holds the last note for its full value, but don't I always jump in with my criticisms before the last note is finished? Henry doesn't seem to be listening to his playing carefully, but am I always listening attentively? Even when I am not stupidly saying, "quickly play ...," my students speed up and scurry through passages where their memory is shaky or where they are not actually playing all the notes. It is hard to stop and force them to be accountable, to be honest about the music and their playing. In my own practicing, it is just as difficult to make myself stop and examine my holes: the gaping places where I don't really know the notes, the places my left hand doesn't keep up with the right. Deep inside, I know what I should do: I know the Bach needs the metronome desperately; I know if I sat down with the Barber away from the piano, I could make sense of it; I know if I practiced the Debussy mentally I could get that strange passage in the middle memorized more securely. But I don't want to face up to this stuff: it is easier to keep playing and call it practicing.

When I am really honest with myself, there are plenty of clues about what I should and shouldn't be doing. I know if I take on one more professional obligation, I will begin to unravel :it the seams. I know that for all of my musical and pedagogical gifts, i can't fake anything, and hours and hours of unseen and unpaid preparation goes into everything I do. I know that while I would like to imagine I am a superwoman, I am not, and I need lots of downtime to even function normally.

The truth is, yesterday i taught the lesson I most need to take. When a singer arrived for her weekly coaching, she was exhausted and stressed. I gave her a lesson on embracing the "now" of her life--even when those "now" places are difficult and don't lead to stellar music making. Often, I told her, when things are especially tough, we are forced to find creative ways of practicing and thinking--and in the end, experience real growth. We spent an hour practicing very slowly, using the music to massage her voice and her tired vocal cords, allowing the sound vibrations to relax her tension and stress. She left visually relaxed, breathing deeper, centered and grounded. Afterwards, pouring myself a cup of coffee, I stopped. If I can do this for another musician, why can't I do this for myself? Over and over again, I prove to be a wiser and more intuitive teacher with my students, even on my worst days, than I ever am with myself. Instead, I am a slave-driver, impatient and hurried, wondering why I can't manage to get this music up to tempo or that essay formed correctly, instead of accepting that maybe things are progressing exactly as they should. I tell my students that technical limitations can be holy signs to our personal authentic boundaries--the places and spaces that we are supposed to embrace to stay true to ourselves. And yet, the words are hardly out of my mouth before I return to beating my head against the wall of my own boundaries, endlessly frustrated by my limitations.

I wonder what would happen if every day I practiced from the truest, most honest place I could find. I wonder what would happen to my playing if I stopped and honestly asked, "Okay, what really needs to be done here?" and then did it, instead of imposing my predetermined practice schedule. I wonder what would happen if I taught this way--if with each lesson, students and I grappled with what really needed to be done to best serve the music, instead of me merely giving instructions. I wonder what would happen if I acknowledged that there were plenty of times when my life was not following any kind of straight upward trajectory, and that, instead, I experienced stretches when my playing, my teaching, my writing all hit the rocks. What if I admitted, that like that singer, I needed a lesson in embracing the "now" of my life?

Several years ago, I headed the piano department at a big community music school near Boston, where we had some 350 piano students and 20 piano faculty members. In addition to my full teaching schedule, other faculty and staff members looked to me for guidance and direction: when should little Brittany begin piano lessons? Which teacher was right for Dylan? How should we deal with this difficult parent or that situation? I loved that job, but after awhile I grew tired of the dishonesty that occurred within the professional relationships both in and out of the school. I lied, they lied, everyone lied; all of us fabricating how wonderful our careers and students were and what successful teachers and performers we had become. While I had many of the best students in the school, I also had students that never, ever practiced. I had students that practiced, but couldn't count rhythms, no matter how much I fussed, nagged or analyzed the situation. I had parents that I would do anything to avoid and phone calls I couldn't bring myself to make. There were too many times I thought to myself, "I have just taught the worst lesson of my life." Instead of glossing over these facts with my colleagues, I wished for the courage to focus the details and admit my frustrations about my Saturday morning 9 o'clock lesson. I wanted to shout from the rooftops that I was not the pianist I thought I would be. I wanted to bare my soul and my mistakes instead of hiding behind tides, degrees and awards.

I am not the only one hiding. I have witnessed people who carried formidable reputations. Their students were said to be brilliant players, their own artistry was lauded far and wide. But sometimes, up dose, the picture was less pretty. Often, these same people had egos that were too big for any room. While their students may have played well, they didn't bother to mentor these students or help them foster any kind of career. Sometimes these artists had personal lives that were in shambles, and while their playing might have been technically stunning, it lacked warmth or any kind of soul. To me, their reputations were nothing but smoke and mirrors. "The emperor has no clothes!" I found myself wanting to shout.

I have also been witness to situations where criticisms flew far and wide without merit. I have sometimes found myself joining in such bashings, just for something to say, just for the chance to build up my own ego--own sense of self, just for the chance to show that I, too, was perceptive and intelligent. But, many times, such situations left me sick inside and not only because of my participation. Too often, we are so busy giving worship to the reputations and egos of those who demand our attention that we forget to listen to the authentic voices around us, wherever we may encounter them. Sitting in on a jury one semester, I heard a young non-major play a beautiful, vulnerable performance. "That was truly lovely," I had just thought to myself, when a hardened juror beside me scoffed, "Good thing she isn't a music major, she'd never make it." Are we so afraid to acknowledge these small acts of greatness and courage in one another? What are we afraid of risking?

Every day the news tells us of another politician who has spent his or her career standing for family values, but suddenly is revealed to have had multiple affairs. We learn of the Olympic athlete who has broken a world record while using an illegal substance or the baseball manger who spent years gambling on the game. But here's the thing: I think the truth matters. And I think the issue of truth-telling matters a great deal to musicians everyday. Maybe when we are honest about the holes in our playing, it gives us courage to be honest about the holes in our teaching and in our professional relationships, instead of looking the other way. Maybe if, in spite of our advanced degrees, we admitted that we did not have all the answers, and we wished we were better at what we did, we would learn to be more supportive colleagues of one another. Maybe it is actually my job to risk my image as the wise and all-knowing teacher and tell Matt the truth: I don't want to play without my music either.

I am afraid if I am not honest about my playing, about my teaching, about how I live and work, that in spite of isolated moments of brilliance, these holes will show up. I know that my playing improves when I get honest with myself and admit that I need to get out the metronome, or that I have to get serious about learning the left hand of the Brahms instead of faking it. I know that my teaching improves when I stop looking around for places to lay the blame for my students' problems, and start looking within for ways my body language, my attitude, my state of mind, might be contributing to the problems. I know that my professional and personal relationships improve when I am honest about what I think and how I live, instead of hiding behind my exaggerated sense of self, my desire to have all the answers or my need to prove my worth and rack up points with my colleagues. I know that when I am honest about the little details of my life, instead of being fuzzy with the facts, I may feel more vulnerable, but I sleep better at night. "If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see...." The emperor may have no clothes, but when I hold up a mirror to my soul, I want to be wearing some.

NOTE

(1.) Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach (Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998): 2.

Amy Greer lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is an active performer and teacher. She has maintained piano studios in Boston, Texas and Missouri. Greer received a master of music degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a bachelor of music degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia.