You don’t have to be a musician to have heard this phrase more than a million times: “Music is the universal language.” Right?? This is something you and I have heard so, so, so often. Because of that frequency, we’ve been led to believe that it’s one of those “absolute” truths that we all just agree with and assume it’s logic as ours without truly thinking about it.
As a professional musician and music educator I’ve always been careful when I mention that phrase and I make it a point, as I will do here, to explain it in the way I see/hear it in my head/heart/soul as a performer, artist and hired band member. And, you guessed it, it’s very similar to women’s football and my love for Arsenal. Hear me out and stick with me…
Most people think of music as the universal language because you could find yourself in a jam session, a gig, a bar, a party, on the street or basically anywhere and NOT speak the same language as the other people and you can still communicate, and it can be done rather effectively. This can be due to a whole set of reasons. There’s the music knowledge component where people can all be from different parts of the world and only speak in their native tongues but they all know “Space Oddity” and it’s gonna sound just as good as every member being from the same place and speak the same language.
There’s also a scenario where people are playing instrumental music or jamming, just sitting in (which means basically being asked to jump in on the stop without prior rehearsal), and they have to let their music knowledge, wether based in theory or feel, carry them through the situation. So for instance, a bar band in Tokyo is jamming on A minor blues, and you walk in, and don’t speak a lick on Japanese, you’ve never played or heard that song, but it’s just a blues jam and you know what to play on guitar. It’s gonna sound great. More examples could be made but I’m sure you get the idea at first glance.
If music is a language then it’s main purpose is communication. When most people think of communication they think about talking, speaking and saying what they want to say because they need something or they need to be heard.
The true key to communication, to music, to music as communication and to communicate via music is listening. And moreover, to get even deeper you need to LISTEN to understand the speaker, not just hear them with the purpose of replying. The goal is to truly have the intention and make the effort to understand them. Connection is the natural outcome.
You gotta listen to what kind of groove they’re playing, what key they’re in, which tempo the song is at, what the other instruments are doing to actually assimilate the information and then figure out how you can best serve the music and musicians. This of course is fluid and many variables exist but if we just listen intently, we’ll start seeing the bigger picture, and much more importantly, we will take OURSELVES out of the equation and make it about the other musicians and about a entity that is both something separate from us and something inside us all at the same time. It’s musical empathy.
This is where I feel there’s an intersection with women’s football: EMPATHY. I have learned to listen, to pay attention and to open my heart and soul through empathy.
I recently spoke about this as it relates to injuries and how trying to put ourselves in the player’s shoes should come more naturally to us than only thinking about how it affects our club and OUR feelings and lives, because that really doesn’t matter as much.
We can and should extend this to many areas within the women’s game: transfers, retirement, mental health, their personal relationships, motherhood, marriage, branding, divorce, finances and many more.
We need to listen to the players in many ways. But what if they don’t do interviews? what if they don’t address X topic if they do do interviews? Well at the very least we need to try to put ourselves in their shoes for more than the amount of time that it takes you to tweet about the topic.
Try to feel what they would feel.
Try to understand them.
Try to understand what series of circumstances would lead them to choose to leave Arsenal.
Try to understand how they would feel if they didn’t make that choice but it was made for them.
Try to understand when their bodies are telling them to stop playing and why.
Try to understand how things not being in their control could affect their performance on the pitch.
Try to understand how they would feel reading tweets about their relationships, which aren’t anyone’s business, especially not yours.
Try to understand why a player chooses to have a child and how much that means to them and their partner.
Try to understand how easy or difficult divorce is and everything in entails financially, logistically and more.
Try to understand how little money there is in women’s football, why and how it affects players and their people.
But… as the great Ballon D’or Winner Yoda once said:
“Do or do not… there is no try.”
d ❤
Listen to THAT ARSENAL WOMEN PODCAST on:
A very subjective look into AWFC 
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