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The encouraging conductor helped turn her "worst nightmare" scenario into a viral, magnificent feat.
You know that nightmare where you show up to the final day of class and there's a huge test and you panic as you realize you've missed the whole semester and haven't studied at all? Or how about the one where you have to give a big presentation at work and you show up totally unprepared—no notes, no visuals, no speech—and you have to wing it?
For musicians, the equivalent is showing up on stage to perform without preparation or rehearsal, which is exactly what happened to Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires when she was on stage in front of an audience of 2,000 people in Amsterdam in 1999. As the orchestra started to play, she quickly realized she was in trouble—she had prepared the wrong concerto. As the musicians played the two-and-a-half-minute intro to Mozart's Piano Concerto No.20, Pires sat at the piano in terror. She had not practiced that piece and she didn't even have the sheet music for it.
Painting is a skill honed over time but everyone has to start at the beginning before they become a master at the craft. But when someone's starting out they're bound to have a lot of questions. What kind of paints are best for canvas, which paper should you use for water colors, how do you turn a brown blob into something that resembles a dog?
Questions abound when you're just picking up a paintbrush, which is exactly what Bethany Kehoe turned to the art community for when her mysteriously dark blue painting didn't turn out like she had hoped. Online communities are generally extremely helpful when someone is seeking meaningful advice but like any community, you're bound to get varying answers.
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There's something really magical about what music does to our brains. Have you ever found yourself remembering a commercial jingle you haven't heard in decades? Or have you ever wondered why you can't remember what you ate yesterday but you can recite the lyrics of thousands of songs on-demand without even thinking?
If you've ever seen the end of the 2017 Disney movie Coco, you also know that music can trigger memories, emotions, a boost of energy, and even joy in people who are otherwise nearly unresponsive or have lost much of their will to go on. And if you're thinking that was just an incredibly emotional moment in a sweet movie, it's true; science backs it up. That makes it an amazing and mysterious therapeutic tool in medical settings, and an incredible way to comfort people who may be scared or confused.
While many parents today try to free their children from the burden of being perfectly obedient 24/7—and the people pleasing tendencies that instills—they obviously still want their children to be generally well behaved, to truly understand right from wrong, and to develop good habits.
And let’s face it—with all the nebulous advice being given (often unsolicited) via social media and online parenting forums, teaching kids to be polite can feel really…complicated. A lot of this comes down to the truism that parenting is not a one-size-fits all process. But according to board-certified behavioral analyst Amanda, @bcba_amanda on TikTok, having a well behaved child might be boiled down into a pretty simple approach, one that’s really centered on how you, the parent, are treating your kiddos.