Raúl Santos
Sometimes people ask me why I consider my study of Gong Fu such an important part of my life. I usually reply that it’s not just a sport, it’s something more, something much bigger, something that I can’t really explain. It teaches me a lot more than just fighting and that’s what’s more important to me but I was never able to give people an example of what I learn from it.
Well, tonight I found one.
I was watching an open air concert on the television. It was fabulous! It was taking place in a beautiful location, close to a forest, in something that resembled a natural stadium carved into a hill, with the stage at the bottom.
The whole performance was absolutely beautiful but the pianist was the one that amazed me the most. As I was watching him, I recalled my piano lessons from when I was a kid and all the rules I had to follow in order to play “correctly” - keeping my back straight, my arms horizontal, not letting my wrists get lower than my fingers, etc, etc, etc.
What I found curious about the pianist was that he was using his hands however he felt like. He was almost dancing on his bench, bowing, straightening up, crossing his arms one over the other, tapping the piano keys with his fingers, all this while making really funny faces (which showed that he was really feeling the music)… If one was to watch him without listening to him play, one would think he had never studied piano at all, given his “no-rules” style and way of playing. And yet, he was totally in control of what he was doing and he was playing superbly well.
That’s when I recalled something Master Yang once said to us in a Taijiquan seminar: “you must understand the ‘matrix’ in order to break free from it; when you do, you’ll be able to get off of it and manipulate it as you want.”
At the time I didn’t fully understand the meaning of Master Yang’s words (although I thought I did) but as time passed and I started to associate those words with the practice, I realized there was more to it than I thought at first.
And I realized this also applied to the pianist. He had already mastered his matrix. He was in total control of the piano. He knew the rules, he understood them, he knew when he could break them, why he could break them and how he could break them.
I thought that just like Gong Fu, playing the piano is an art, so it’s no wonder the “matrix” theory applies to it.
But then it hit me: this doesn’t apply just to art. It applies to everything!
If there’s a rule for something, people usually just follow it blindly. But if they understand that rule, know why it exists and know what it is supposed to prevent or enforce, then they’ll probably be able to tell when, why and how that rule can be broken - without destroying it’s original purpose.
I learned this from studying Gong Fu but I’m sure that pianist learned it from studying the piano. It’s not the art that counts but the way you look at it and how seriously you study it. I’m sure that whichever art someone chooses to study, that someone will learn a lot beside the specifics of the art, things that can be applied to our everyday life, things that can make us better in several ways, things that can help us understand life and how to live it.
This is not something new for me but in a way, it is. I re-discovered it while watching this concert and the pianist in particular and it became clearer in my mind. I now understand that this is what makes great artists - their comprehension of their art, their domination of its matrix.
And even more, the duality of it - the artist learns from the art but the art also benefits from the artist reaching the highest level, because that’s when a beautiful symbiotic relationship can take place: the artist evolves and in doing so, keeps the art alive!
So here it is, an example of something I’ve learned from my Gong Fu study. I hope it inspires others to think about what they do and how it affects their life.