If you’ve played the harp for any length of time you might have heard of Random Acts of Harping. Joanna Mell started it years ago. It used to be a specific day that people would randomly go out and play – in a park, at a nursing home, wherever. The idea was to make a generous contribution of your music to the world and post it to social media. Nowadays we would call it a pop-up concert!
This year she called for it to be any time in the month of June, which is a great idea, because of course there’s no one day that’s good for everyone all over the world to have the opportunity to go out and play. And I’m sure it hasn’t escaped you that it is, in fact, already June.
While I’m good for popping up unannounced and randomly to play for passersby, complete strangers, and even-stranger strangers, I’ve never been good about the social media part (doubt me? check out my social media pages – very thin).* Frankly, when I’m playing, I’m not thinking about posting or even getting photos or video. Yes, I’m just not great at having an influencer presence, it’s true. But that’s ok, because I’d rather be playing anyway.
The best things about Random Acts of Harping are that they encourage us to get out of our way, get out of our own heads, and get out into the real world. They also give us something to look forward to and an opportunity to share, even those of us who don’t have many of those come up that often.
If you’ve not done this before (or even if you have), while you’re playing be sure to look at the faces of the people that hear you. You might be surprised and delighted to see the surprise and delight on their faces and the happiness in their eyes. And, even if you typically only play for the cat and the curtains, it is truly wonderful to share music to receive that response. That alone will help you to see that it’s not about you – and how appreciative people are of the gift you make for them.
I’d like to encourage you to take part in Random Acts of Harping this year. You have the entire month remaining. It really is freestyle – the only rules are that you’re not meant to announce that will happen, just make it happen. Joanna’s facetwigram post exhorts you to “take your harp out into the world and delight the general public with its magical music!”
If you would like to be included in the Folk Harp Journal article she’ll write, snap a pic and send it with a paragraph about your random harp adventure by July 30 through her website www.joannamell.com. Remember: this is RANDOM acts of harping! And if you want to do it but don’t want to go through that rigmarole, I’d love to hear about your adventure (with or without photos!). Just send me a comment!
* It occurred to me upon editing that you might take me seriously, so https://www.facebook.com/CreativeJeniusHarp or https://www.instagram.com/jentheharper/