Ellison and the unkown

"First there are the things that you know you know - that's probably a small section, maybe 10 or 15 percent. Then there's a larger part, which is the things you know you don't know. Perhaps 30 or 35 percent. The biggest section is the things you don't know that you don't know. That's the darkest, and it can be the most frightening, but it's also where the greatest learning begins."

I'm paraphrasing from a masterclass given last week by Paul Ellison - no, that wasn't Donald Rumsfeld talking! Most of the time when Rummy talked about 'unknown unknowns' my eyes started glazing over, but the way Paul Ellison talked about it really made sense.

Ellison usually starts out a lesson by asking the student a question - how did that go, do you have any thoughts, what issues are you working on here? That just sheds some light on the known unknowns, those problems we're already however dimly aware of. Then he likes to steadily, and sometimes stealthily, open up the world of unknown unknowns. He'll ask a question about the phrase structure or the period performance practice - or he'll sneak around and adjust your arm and say, "Now try it like this!" It's all calculated to reveal some of the possibilities you hadn't even considered. I think of him as a yoga teacher on the double bass, always pushing his students into a deeper, more inspired, more flexible place.

I'd like to write a ton more about Ellison and my week at the ISB convention in Oklahoma City - oh no, you're saying, here comes an excuse! It was an amazing week, and I came home with a huge new assortment of known unknowns - and maybe an inkling of all the unknown unknowns that still await.

Unfortunately, I also came home to a colossally messy apartment, which I need to sort through and pack in the next week! So I'm crazily sifting through papers, books, and unclassifiable junk right now, hoping that all the great memories and sounds from Oklahoma City will live long enough for me to write about them.