there but for the grace of music lessons go

Only Daughter had her first “orchestra concert” tonight. She actually asked me not to go. She took some violin lessons as younger youngster, and feels that the exertions of the 6th grade ensemble are, in a way, beneath her.

I went anyway.

(As a pointed aside, they’re not. Beneath her, that is. She had 5 teachers in 4 years because they kept moving away or graduating from college or taking so many out-of-town gigs she would have one lesson a month so she learned 1/4 what she should have, and absolutely nothing about how to read music much less how to understand what she was hearing.)

The orchestra did a fine job, all things considered. It was noted that there were approximately 75 musicians “on stage” and approximately 65 versions of any given note at any given time, but what’s a person to do?

One of the directors stood up at the end to thank all of the parents for going that extra mile (really? it’s “extra” now? shouldn’t it just be part of what everyone should be expected to do if they want to be a living, breathing, feeling member of the universe?) to support their children’s efforts to learn to play a musical instrument.

Okay, fine. Thanks are good. I’m fine. Really, I am.

Then he talks about the benefits — to the brain, to the person, to society, to the importance of students learning to communicate that which cannot be said in words; I start to think, okay, so he’s not a total doofus. But no, I “forgave” him too soon.

Wait for it. . .

“Maybe if more children learn to be thinking, feeling members of society, fewer of them would be flying airplanes into buildings.”

Oh. I had no idea. If only the terrorists had had music lessons.

=

 

Idiot.

 

alone vs. lonely

You can spend a lifetime surrounded by busy-ness and noise and people and feel completely alone.

Husband left yesterday (with the cappuccino machine, which just seems to me to be the Last Straw) and I won’t see him until Friday.

I have so much to do, and I’m busy busy busy doing it, but I know, every minute, that he is 160 miles and 5 days away. Some part of me knows.

Your absence goes through me
like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with is color.

(Merwin, not me. I wish.)

Second Son is in the basement playing his guitar, Only Daughter is at her father’s until tomorrow night, Dexter the Dancing dog is in his “house” for the evening.

I watched Juno and cried, in the usual spot. Can’t find a clip. You’ll have to watch it and see if you can figure out where.

Sigh.

 

Cool!

But how does it work?

pamelia_kurstin_plays_the_theremin.html

I can’t decide

Whether I like this (the original, I believe):

or the cover by Jayme Dee:

better.

I do know that I have a new favorite song. For this week, anyway, during which I will listen to it way too many times and by July wish I hadn’t. Like eating too much cake, that’s what I (always) do.

Goldberg, Variation 1, Take 1

After taking Dex to the vet for his ahem gender revision surgery, spent the morning doing yoga

I will do this. I don't know when, but I will. I'll be sure to let you know

and being Martha Flipping Stewart making Roman blinds for my front windows.

I have some group classes starting soon, so thought I’d calm myself down preemptively get in the mood by practicing a little Bach.

Recorded this on my iPhone on the first take. A little rushed in a couple of places, a little sloppy here and there, but not bad for the first run.

Recording quality isn’t the greatest. . .but I’m going to put it up anyway to try to get me off to a good start.

And, in addition to the order from chaos, it just seems so darn joyful.

Hope you like!

Goldberg variation 1

untangling the tangles

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was going to start a new project — one Goldberg Variation a week until the whole piece is learned.

Yesterday I started the first Variation.

But let me digress for a moment.

I’ve noticed over the past several months that when I’m feeling emotionally turmoiled (isthataword?) I turn to Bach. At the end of a particularly long day or in the middle of a stressful week or after a difficult or disappointing conversation or encounter, I find myself sitting at the piano, working my way through a Prelude or Fugue; musical Valium, if you will.

The past couple of days were particularly trying.

To spare you all of the gruesome details, let’s just say that a student of a colleague of mine at “my” college misinterpreted and/or misrepresented a very brief and casual exchange and the colleague, someone I like very much, and thought liked, trusted, and admired me, assumed the worst. And, rather than asking me what had happened, wrote me an email telling me how unprofessional and insensitive I was, and then blithely went about the rest of his evening, not getting my phone message, not reading my email. I, being the I-must-be-the-crappiest-person-in-the-world type, was awake until 3 a.m., and awake again at 6:30, and had a generally overwhelmed and in-the-overtired-induced-ozone all day Friday.

We exchanged a few emails after he FINALLY returned my call at 9:30 the next morning (15 hours after his message), and he apologized for jumping to the wrong conclusion, and for not asking me about it first, but I still generally felt like crap about the whole thing, but for gradually evolving reasons.

After I got over the self-loathing stage, I was angry, and had a few questions.

Why did this person so easily assume the worst? This isn’t the first time this has happened to me; it seems to be my superpower; I’d rather have another. I’ve always worked really hard, I’m fairly good at what I do, I’m organized and responsible and conscientious. This seems to have hurt me rather than helped me. I’ve actually been told that, as an adjunct, I “didn’t know my place.”

Anyway. . .

Even if things had happened as the student seems to have portrayed them, why is this automatically a bad thing? We coddle students too much, we treat them like customers rather than students; our job seems to be more about patting them on the head and making sure they feel good about themselves than about actually pushing them to achieve their best or challenging them when they don’t. This can’t be good for them, nor for society in general.

And, finally, why do I ALWAYS go so easily to self-critical, self-loathing, even when righteous indignation or outright anger is what’s called for? I think it’s a woman thing. I’m not sure, however, that it’s a good thing. Husband points out that he goes right to anger; he is much more efficient that way. I think it’s a guy thing, and I’m not sure that’s such a good thing either.

I always end up feeling like this: (from thisisnotthatblog.com)

when I should probably be feeling like this

So, back to Bach. . .(remember Bach?)

His music often seems like a tangle. It can take days to work out fingerings that allow you to navigate the passagework; and often there seems to only be one fingering that actually works. The melodic lines can be easily identified and unraveled when listening to a good recording, or even just by looking at the score, but making them audible can feel like trying to untangle a large skein of yarn after the cat has spent a night “playing” with it. A forest of whirls and knots and undergrowth. And then, often seemingly suddenly, the order is revealed, and everything clicks into place.

Maybe that’s why. Order from chaos, eventually, but always ultimately, revealed.

In a not-completely unrelated story, we were without power for around 18 hours because of “bad weather.” (We’re not really sure what it was, although it was a little windy and we live in the forest, and apparently 74,000 Consumers Energy customers were without power in Michigan today, so I guess we’re lucky that it’s back on “already.”) Anyway, nothing restores a sense of order like coming home from good Thai food and Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in the same movie, to lights and heat and finally being able to clean up the kitchen.

Husband says that the clean kitchen is a sign of hope.

That makes sense to me, although I think the order-from-chaos thing helps.

I would post a recording of me playing the first Variation, but Husband thinks that recording it at 11:52 p.m. after a glass of scotch might not be a good idea.

He’s probably right.

Another time, then.

ah, Bach!

Am thinking I need a project, so have decided to try to learn one of the Goldberg variations every week until I’ve learned them all.

But first, what I really want to know, is whether Bach might have actually had 12 fingers on each hand; or maybe a third arm?

It would really shed some light on the whole thing.

Christmas music that won’t require a follow-up insulin injection

 

 

this year’s gratitude

For finding my way through the darkness,
For flashes of insight and joy,
For sadness, and hope from unexpected places.
For strength and struggle, disappointment and pain,
For the reprieves of sunsets,
and beautiful meals and that perfect unoaked Chardonnay.
For the people who enrich my life,
for being heard, and being known.
For yesterday, and today, and,
as far as I know,
tomorrow.
Thank you.

what we’ve lost

I mourn, often repeatedly, when the world I know loses someone who still has a lot to offer.

Jeff Buckley comes to mind.

07 Lover, You Should Have Come Over

Going a bit further back, Robert Kennedy.

And now Steve Jobs.

I know I’m “late,” his death “old news,” but I had a busy day, and this is the first chance I’ve had to really sit and think and write.

I’m typing this on a MacBook; I just checked my Twitter account on my iPad. I used my iPhone for email and texting and phone calls at least 15 times today. It’s not even the devices themselves, but the elegance and synergy they provide and represent. My contacts and calendar files scroll like a rolodex, my “files” go into file folders, when I send a text to my son I can read every text, in consecutive order, (amusingly, in little speech-bubbles like those in cartoons), that we’ve exchanged since the last time I emptied the file. The virtual world he has created works the way the real world does, which makes things intuitive and easy and fun.

And then there’s the aesthetic. Things are clean, sleek, clever; from the way the power cord wraps around it’s own self-contained brackets to the way the pages in the iBook “fold” and “turn” the way a real page turns. The keys click just enough when you type on them, resolution is crisp and rich and realistic.

It’s been said all along, and especially today — he was a visionary, a genius, not for the grade point he didn’t earn at the college he dropped out of, but for his ability to learn from mistakes, make new opportunities for himself, and judge well what the world wanted/needed next.

You’ve probably all watched it/read it/heard it today, but today I heard his 2005 commencement address to the graduate class at Stanford (an audience apparently quite amused by his confession that he never graduated from college, and that quitting college was one of the “smartest” things he ever did), and a few things really hit home for me.

Especially these:

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

and

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

If the measure of a successful life is what I seem to think it is: that you have done what you loved, and done something good for the world, you have been a resounding success.

Good-bye Steve. We thank you, and we’ll miss you.