Final Gig (They All Saw a Cat)

This morning was my final gig in New York, and my last hugs to some of my favorite students that came to see it.  It was also goodbye to some of my colleagues and friends.  And now we have a horizon of packing and loading and driving, and new, new, new.  Soon I will have to return Manhattan......

Breathing Away

I woke up this morning with a new kind of realization about the coming move, that it means not only leaving behind people, but also this city.  I don't take advantage of all the walks and museums, and parks that I could, but knowing that they are there is a somehow comforting.  A person could be thinking in any language, something unrepeatable happening at any moment in any square inch of the city.  It's condensed living, potent and powerful and often overbearing.  And to be able to step away from it, ever so slightly, allows the breath it needs to become wonderful and humane.  Would it be possible to have both?

Rehearsals and Boxes

I happened to be on the same train as my friend and fellow musician this morning and after meeting on the other side of the turn style, we went up the 66th St. subway stairs together.  After walking half a block, a young voice got our attention, asking us if we went to Juilliard.  No, my friend had, but we were headed to a rehearsal a block away.  But that was enough.  Her mother an orchestra teacher from Georgia, asked if her daughter could have a picture with us.  She had beautiful red hair, and apparently plays the accordion and piano, and maybe sings.  They were looking for an opera singer next, probably a bit harder to identify unless you have the right nose for those things.....

Across the street we entered the LDS Church on 65th St and made our way upstairs for our exciting rehearsal.  The flute player has been smuggling coffee in for these morning rehearsals.  We admire her self-assuredness, something unbreakable, neither capable of injury or sanctity, but unapologetically and transparently offering.

Rehearsal for 2.5 hours, cleaning things, understanding more of the piece and the people playing it, bringing greater clarity to the new work based on a beautiful children's book.   And following that, a creative composition that will be created by the audience at the performance.

Strawberries, a walk to the edge of Central Park with a Brooklyn friend that I don't get to see enough (because it takes 1-2 hours to get to Brooklyn), and then a return home to pack and email potential participants in the next chapter of life.  The boxes are piling up, the cabinets are opening, the closets are spilling out, the book shelves are becoming more vacant and lonely.

Goodbye to Westport

Another last day, this one in Westport.  Although it was an ending, today was a novel teaching experience for me, one that I hope will dovetail into the next chapter of my life.

And afterwards I visited the home of a wonderful student and family, was treated to freshly cut mango, and enjoyed a long lesson with her on scales.  I spoke with her mother about Indian cooking, and how much I've loved working with her and her daughter.

And then the sunset on the train ride home, which I only glimpsed as I crammed in score study for a piece that I'm rehearsing tomorrow.  It's been a good few days of score study for the sake of teaching and playing.

Tomorrow, my final final lessons.

Late June

After the last two moves being overseas, this is going to be a piece of cake.  We finally started today, a week away from departure.  We could have easily put it off for a few more days.

More pressing are the things I need to be doing to be ready for the week.  The lesson plans for Dalcroze-inspired classes, the score study for a friend's new composition, and then another piece that I haven't even cracked yet.  It will all happen, and all of it is very exciting.  It's an exciting week to be alive.

And despite the planning and packing that needs to be done, I couldn't turn down an invitation to join Andrew for an evening run along the river and through Riverside Park.  What a beautiful time this is.

Walking in Small Towns

I'm in the beautiful old German town of Bethlehem, PA for a 3-day Suzuki workshop.  After dinner this evening, I went for a walk on the brick sidewalks, in the untamed green coming up through the cracks and over the fences, guarding the centuries old buildings.  I walked through Lexinginton, KY my first home away from home, and I walked through Madison, WI, my second and slightly more distant one.  I remembered the expansiveness of finally living in a different city, the curiosity of finding all its nooks and crannies and quirks.  And how quiet it was.  

Walking felt like stepping out of a cocoon that had been holding me in place and molding me.  Freedom maybe, but discomfort, too.  Without the constraints of a city and millions of people, what's to keep me from drifting away in a place like this?  When I moved to those smaller towns 10 years ago, I was happily drifting, and happy to be taken away on some new adventure.  And now, for some reason, I have this adult idea that I should be building something, and I'm busying myself with searching for the materials.

 I'm curious to make a move to a place similar from my past, and yet for the time that I've covered, now very different.  I walked to the edge of a park, found the local library, ventured to peak at the Japanese Serenity Garden.  Perhaps that curiosity is still there, just a little stretching needed in a bigger space.  

In Real Life...

In real life, I played a house concert last night and failed to accurately reckon with the amount of rehearsal needed for my particular combination of composition and colleague.  I've grown so used to playing with my husband and I guess I learned what an asset that familiarity is.  I've also grown over-confident in my abilities in chamber music and reading under pressure.

In short, it was not a satisfying performance, for me or for the audience.  In prescient anticipation of it (why didn't I listen to the hints I was sending myself??),  I catalogued ambivalent performances as more odious than the accounting class I once took.  In fact, I had a hard time coming up with anything more uncomfortable.  Maybe poorly timed flatulence in an elevator is the most accurate comparison.

It was passible, but not enjoyable and certainly not the transcendent message that Beethoven deserved it to be.  Luckily, I've done those performances.  They are in me.  And I've done far worse, they are there, too.  It's a reality check and as much as I hate bad performances, I love reality checks.  So things balance out.

But in my dreams last night, I lost my value.  The various narratives and juxtapositions converged on an underlying nagging feeling that ate away at my self-esteem.  And as much as I hate bad dreams, I appreciate when there can be clarity in their origin.  Rarely is this so, but given real life, it was there.

It's left me wondering what value a life has or can have.  And this is especially poignant as I cast off from a life of co-dependence with my students and venture into an unknown network of new possibilities.   What is valuable in a person?  Is it in what they give, or share, or do, or collect?  What gives a person greater value?  And maybe most perplexing at the moment:  what motivates the search?

Stepping away from students here has also led me to reflect on the nature of the bonds that are created between people.  As a teacher, do I need or want my students to need me?   The practical part of me says no, and in fact I'm thrilled when students are reading and start to learn things more independently.  I try to get them to hear concerts, watch videos, play in ensembles, go to workshops, and programs, so that they can learn things from other people- it's less work that way!  But on the other hand, realizing that I will not be needed anymore is surprisingly difficult to accept.  Do I still have value if I'm not needed?  And in creating these bonds and relationships, have I been planting an impure element of dependence?   Or is that another way of looking at trust?  Where would our relationships be without it?  When things dissolve, sometimes I think they do so unevenly, and the residues emerge in interesting way.

In real life, the weather has been warm and dry, although humid, and my days have been fairly open.  I've ventured to the huge soccer field in Riverside Park at 106th Street to do Tae Kwon Do.  I try to get there before late afternoon, because around 3:30, the individuals, and pairs, and groups of soccer players (and baseball, and football....) start to pepper it more densely.  I dodged a soccer ball from a nearby group many times today, and by the time I started to close my workout, there were several dozen spread out on the field, and probably half as many balls flying all over the place.  I did my final stretches and sat for the final breathing and reflection, but after a minute or so, opened my eyes.  It was partly for safety, but as I sat there I realized that I could stare straight ahead at a small speck in the field, and still see all the balls bouncing around me.  The one I had been dodging flew by again, and again, and needed no reaction.  None of them did.

The real world spun around and remained unmoved.  

Morning Run in Morningside Park

It's been a long time since I've done my morning run through Morningside Park.  It's a great run for winters, when the sun comes up a little later, rising over the east side of Manhattan.  So the summer shadows this morning were very disorienting, nearly perpendicular to the last time I saw their slanted angle.  Where is the sun, what time and planet were we on?  The sun didn't even rise from the east, it seemed to emerge from the north.

I awoke from a dream of sleeping in a silver-dewed canopy of trees.  Another world, beckoning me to get up, to start the day, to worry about the needed worries of the coming two weeks.  There is much ahead.  With or without me the tulips became primrose bushes, loyal gardeners pulled hoses and carts stacked with gallon water jugs to perpetuate the preferred growths.  One season to another, one early hour to a later one, with or without me, until my eyes are open and making it real.

Goodbye to Charlotte

Another long day of teaching and checking off goodbyes.  Some are very hard to believe, but they are happening bit by bit.  The unpeeling progresses.

One of my students gave me a picture of her practicing.  She is absorbed in her space, surrounded by sheets of music that are falling off the sofa on which she's sitting.  In the time that I have known her she has grown so much, both as a person and as a musician.  She is coming to own this space, it is growing in her and through her, something still young, but which I think will be unstoppable very soon.

It's so powerful to be a part of this.  Teaching is an art in which I can see great pleasure in being virtuosic.  I have so much to learn, and am so thankful for my students for being so patient and respectful of me.  Thank you.

Genera of Perfection

A variety of perfect day: low 70s, sunny with intermittent clouds, a slight breeze.  One students in the morning, a committed Tae Kwon Do practice on the field, a long walk in the park with a friend and mentor, practice session, a potluck dinner with extraordinarily well-balanced and delicious offerings.
Tomorrow another variety, and perhaps another the day after.  Counting down the hours on this order of perfection.

Last Day of Lessons at Westport (and other endings)

We've hosted, and dined out, and been hosted, and overall eaten very well.  And the week is rolling on into next week and the week after....

Goodbyes are passing beneath us like railroad ties.   One rung and then another and another and the momentum is moving along along along.

Lessons like any other, trying to move up the ladder one more step and then another, trying to get closer to touching heaven and helping others find their footing along the way.  We are there together, breathing together, miles and countries and likely years or lifetimes apart.  There are no goodbyes.  Our presence changes little from what it was or will be.

It's so easy to lose track of the days when reflection abuts the future.  Such a strange time of measuring.  Quantities of lessons, of evenings, of people, of dollars per mile, of dinners, of cards, of truck footage, of elevator rides, of bottles of wine unconsumed.

It's hypnotizing and beautiful to see so many souls gathered in one packaged epoch of life, soon to be departed and viewed as a single sparkling galaxy of the past.

Lunch and Lessons

We are walking statues among walking statues.  Sometimes we must squint at those familiar friends in the distance, sometimes we feel the eyelashes of a new acquaintance upon us.

How do we walk among ourselves?  Are we open to those we see?  Do we move closer, or shy away?  Or are we pulled and pushed by a current that only vaguely resembles reason?  Perhaps it wears a deceptive dye.  Perhaps we are actually dancing on our own two feet, flying with our own wings.

Orchestral Perspectives

Roughly 150 years ago a Polish Prince decided to compose a mass and called it, "Mass in F."  He had hoped to bring it to America, but sadly fell ill and it never made it.  Until now.....

Tonight's concert was the first performance of the piece in New York, orchestrated from the original organ score for a small ensemble.

But what to do with those squirrelly sextuplets in the 5th movement?  They move along so quickly, voraciously devouring B-flat minor and everything around it.  The searching spotlight, scanned each member, the timpanist, the bassist, the trumpet, the horn, and fell upon.....the poor bassoon.  An extremely accomplished musician, she was certainly up for the task, but in the middle of so many projects, the unending string of deedledeeedleees was just really not fun.

So she called me, and we devised a plan of passing off the unwanteds, hopefully in a beautiful graceful arch.  We cut and pasted the measures, practiced in and outside of rehearsal, and things were going to be ok.

But somehow in the concert, there was confusion about which measures belonged to whom.  It seems that she had penciled and repenciled so many times, that the "play here" and the "don't play here" all fell together.  Some measure left hanging.

It's funny to be on the leaving side of things, to have nothing I need to prove in this group or to these people because I'm not climbing anywhere here.  To make a mistake is not terribly troubling.  And it is noticeably easier to be compassionate to those around me because of this security.  I'm willing to take a risk, to work it through.  And it is so natural to let things fall away and dissipate.  Again, there is nothing to lose.  I'm leaving.  This is the last gig, things will be forgotten.

And the funny thing is, that is always the case.  Yes, it matters to play well overall, but the stress and insecurity that result in orchestral musicians is fanatic and eats away at some of the more important parts of music making- the people we are sharing it with.  It's a fortunate thing to be able to have this perspective.  And also to have been able to play with this great group of people.

Bidden or Unbidden

The sound of the orchestra and the chorus seemed to echo all the way to China.  The huge arches went up as though past the Himalayas, the hard stone reflecting all it was given.  Surely it was impossible that Times Square was less than a block away; the reality of its existence denied our seemingly infinite expansion.  How can a church this huge be "tucked" away, hidden under all the lights, obscured by scaffolding?  And yet it is, and so many others are the same in this city.  It is an undeniable and strange quality of New York, that churches maintain pockets of peace and sanctity, in plain sight, but hidden from the pace of quick footsteps, myopic smart phones, hurried and important schedules.  Their doors are magical portals to other worlds, squeezed within all the other things that are New York.

Meetings

There is a lot of joy in being able to introduce two people that I care about to one another.  I woke up this morning excited that I would get to introduce two of my students that live far away from one another.  They both had to travel over an hour to get here and then again to get home, but from different directions, so no wonder they've never met!  Any day that I get to teach either one is exciting, but both of them, one after another, was a real treat.  

Last Lessons (I)

Today was the first in a series of last lessons.  Last, the end, no more.  For some, we've put it off and will have a last lesson in the not so distant future.  But it's coming.

There are so many waves of realization, of adjustment, of acceptance, of appreciation especially as we have to say goodbye.  To see a face, to interact with a body, to hear a voice, a sound, a way of moving, and to honor it as a human being, unique and beautiful, worthy of love.  To kiss every moment as we release it to the next.

Anniversary Weekend

It's been 1 year since we got married and this weekend we went away for a wonderful 24 hours, a suspension in responsibilities and routines.  And I came home, took a shower, and answered a knock on the door to find a student that didn't realize we didn't have a lesson.  They come from Queens, so.....

Life has a way of asking so much.  How flexible should we be?  On what level?  How many points do I have to spend in a day, in an hour, in a minute?

The air was green, we lay in an open field by the river, watching a peregrine falcon circle above, ate pie and ice cream, had a nice dinner as the sunset on the Hudson River.  This morning we woke up and enjoyed the breakfast part of our BnB, went for a long hike with lots of other suspiciously New York City people, and collapsed on a train ride home.

It doesn't matter what it is, what is done, how the time is spent.  I feel so lucky to be able to spend it with this person.

Behind the Scenes

It was loud and chaotic and hot and sweaty in the downstairs gym/cafeteria.  Upstairs the first group was slowly, too slowly, getting set at the front of the church to play.  Up there is was cool, and calm, and the sounds of strings and applause.  But down below the kids were chasing each other with their bows and violins, jumping over cellos, stealing water bottles and throwing them.

Slowly, too slowly, one group got called to go up, and there were fewer kids; and then another; and then finally the last, the performance wending its way through the smell of wax and stale incense.  I found a place in the middle of the cool stone pillars and listened as the whole group played Twinkle Variations together.  The sounds echoed and got lost, the beat blurred, but how miraculous these young beings, all together, playing together.  Who could remember that space downstairs, where minds and bodies begged for freedom?   Here, the sound echoing to heaven in the tall arches, without the baggage mere minutes before.