Border Crossings and Boundary Processes

As I work toward a conception of expanded music, I realize that our class readings, discussions, and introductions to contact improvisation are really pushing me to consider how my own personal borders are demarcated, and why.

Etienne Wenger's scholarly work in Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems defines boundaries as places where "competence and experience tend to diverge," noting the tension between these two elements is where the greatest potential for learning takes place.  He argues, "Radically new insights often arise at the boundaries between communities" (Wenger, 2000, pp. 233-234). 

Wenger goes on to mention the importance of people acting as brokers to negotiating the boundaries between different social learning systems (2000, p. 235).  The success of an overarching social system depends on the strength of the bridge between each community of practice.

One stellar example of such a broker is Dr. Richard Kogan, a Juilliard-trained concert pianist and a Harvard-trained psychiatrist.  He walks the line between music and medicine to explore how creativity and well being intersect within the output of some of the world's most celebrated classical composers. 

I had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Kogan last Tuesday before his presentation on George Gershwin at Molloy College.  We had an interesting conversation about the practice of medicine as an art, the challenges imposed by a move toward hyper specialization within disciplines, and expanding the boundaries of conventional music education to encompass adult learning, which is a research interest of mine.  He believes, as do I, in the value and power of interdisciplinary boundary crossing. 

This notion for is well-supported by Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, who warns "...technique can get too solid- we can become so used to knowing how it should be done that we become distanced from the freshness of today's situation" (p. 67).  Nachmanovitch further inspires with the observation, "The only road to strength is vulnerability" (p. 64). It is essential that we all examine our own positions on the vulnerability scale and see how we can find the freshness in our own present.