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.
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