Multifunctional Hemispherectomy

Defenders of the Literal, Unite!

2007-09-26T20:36:00.000+02:00

The problem with words is their unceasing and often misleading connotations. How many perfectly good words are ruined this way.

Falling on my own deaf ears

2007-09-12T02:55:00.001+02:00

"Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth." ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Last weekend here: a modified email

2007-09-02T20:38:00.000+02:00

I went to a concert at the Philharmonie with C last night, part of MusikFest Berlin - he had an extra ticket. The Concertgebouw Orchestra from Amsterdam played a program of Wagner and Debussy, some of my favorite music. Chromatic, hesitant, full of interesting orchestral colors and instrumentation. We also went to an exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt beforehand. Last night was also the "open door night" at the Staatsoper on Unter den Linden; the opera house was open to the public past midnight to watch rehearsals and small concerts of the Oper singers and instrumentalists, held at different venues and areas of the opera house and surrounding buildings. Amazing, such a great idea. We stopped by after the Philharmonie, since it's on the way (on bikes). We saw part of a rehearsal on the main stage (the most gorgeous hall, quite small but tiered with 5 balconies, straight up) of a big opera, some singers in the downstairs bar (a large hall, really a work of art), some clarinetists, and then 4 cellists playing their own arrangement of pop songs in the huge, warehouse-like storage magazine - that especially was great. Lots of people were there to hear all the music.

A good way to enjoy Berlin before I leave for the fall.

I had the typical Sunday Berlin brunch this morning with A at a decadent Russian restaurant. The weather was lovely, perfect brunch weather, and everyone sat outside; the food was even lovelier, and A and I stuffed ourselves for nearly 3 hours. A is British; she works here in translation but, ready to get out, is looking for new programs and other countries to live in. But it's hard because she's been here 10 years. C and D had a booth at the big flea market at Mauerpark today - I guess it's a yearly thing for them, getting rid of stuff they don't want anymore - so I went over and watched weird Berlin people looking through all sorts of junk and not-junk (a lot of East German communist memorabilia) and goofed around and had a nice afternoon. I don't know D as well, but she's nice; her English is ok but not great, heavy accent, and she speaks so fast that sometimes I only catch half of what she says.

I don't miss many people in general, which is kind of mean, I guess; I don't do it purposely. But I will miss C and A. And I miss R. Three of the best people I've ever met. Absolute gems.

Two Paragraphs

2007-08-22T14:01:00.000+02:00

When I think of New York, I’m back at Lincoln Center surrounded by screeching yellow cabs hurdling around street corners and honking at pedestrians, dazed silhouettes against the gray slabs of sheetrock and metal, portrait-stills in the swirling vortex of necrotic fumes, gas, hotdogs, and roasted peanuts wafting across Broadway, almost poetic in this shaken snow-globe of cement. I can nearly glimpse the exploding chandeliers in the Metropolitan Opera beyond the square office buildings, promising something golden and spectacular to the ones lucky enough to escape the pelting rain or oppressive heat--opera or ballet, depending on the season, cool and velvet crimson, submerged in swells of sound, a place to go and dream. And dream I did.

Why my mind conjures up the colliding streets at 66th and Broadway is unclear. I didn’t live or study there, save for one summer of Fordham University classes, nor did I attend as many concerts as a New York musician should. Tourists imagine Times Square with its massive commercial impact, a slap in the face of one’s sensibilities, shoppers fantasize about 5th Avenue’s sleek glass windows and smooth facades, hipsters mourn the high rents of the Village and lost days of soul-brother boozing in the Bowery, but I think of Lincoln Center for no particular reason, maybe just to slight my nameless uptown college and my closet apartment as if they had feelings and could be offended by my trying not to remember them. Few things in Manhattan have feelings; the skyscrapers and turbulent crowds of passersby effectively smother any inner life, a little love-fern starved to death in the desert, strangled by a thorny briar which takes root in the soul and emits, from time to time, a high-pitched scream of rage.

Different State of Mind

2007-08-19T18:17:00.000+02:00

My new scheme is to visit countries that don't exist.

Life is hard.

2007-08-08T22:17:00.000+02:00

Yep, that just about sums it up.

I've read a few books lately, though, which shall be mentioned now:

Herzog - Saul Bellow
an academic work of great philosophic proportions (ok, sort of) - my friend - Cornell University Press, to be published 2008
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (incredible novel)

One must find an escape somewhere. Frankly, though, it doesn't work very well.

Quoting a world traveler

2007-07-27T16:06:00.000+02:00

I just read this on somebody else's blog. He gets it and says it exactly right.

"I'm sick of saying goodbye. It's beginning to jade me. You have the best times with the most fascinating world travelers and then you must always say goodbye. goodbye. goodbye. goodbye. I need more hellos, which end in tomorrows."

A Different Kind of Morning Sickness

2007-07-11T11:42:00.000+02:00

What am I going to do with my life?

A Rainy 4th

2007-07-05T11:40:00.000+02:00

The wintry weather in Berlin did not make 4th of July very festive for any Americans seeking sunny summer fun. I got rather drenched in a few downpours and ate dinner at a Spanish tapas restaurant. Star-Spangled Banner indeed!

In sad news: 3 of my (um, like 8?) friends in Berlin moved away this week, two to London, one to Chile. :(

A Good Reminder (Listen up, boys!)

2007-07-02T21:41:00.001+02:00

This comment today on the PostSecret website from a 33-year-old father:

"True good guys are good guys for a reason: they walk the walk and are kind and considerate. They might be dicks once in a while (I still am), but at the end of the day, they call, they listen, they love."

Brandi Carlile lyrics - now go listen to the eponymous album! (2005)

2007-06-30T21:13:00.000+02:00

Hold out, I know you feel it getting cold out
Without the blanket for your soul now
Before you know it you'll be frozen
You have to see this through
There's no one here but you

Don't go to sleep and cry because tomorrow
If you let it, it will swallow
You up and none of this will matter
Will matter anymore
---

Tracks 2, 4, and 6 are my favorite, but I also like 1 and 3 a lot.

Assaying Religion, People, Metal

2007-06-28T08:35:00.000+02:00

A very brave woman on Al-Jazeera, "discussing" Islam. Watch this before the link is disabled.

http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null

---

From Die Tageszeitung 28.06.2007, as posted on signandsight.com:

Filmmaker Werner Herzog, to whom the Munich Film Festival is currently dedicating a retrospective, talks in an interview about the quality he looks for an actor: "It's really only when someone is under extreme pressure, because for example they have to fight for their life, that you recognise what they're made of. It's similar with materials that physicists analyse. You have to expose a metal alloy to extreme pressure and extreme heat to find out about its composition. The same's true of people who're put to the test. Just like an ore that's assayed and refined in the forge."

---

Quote of the day:

Sarah: I'll be an old maid before you.
Me: How is that possible? I'm 6 months older.

Dear...

2007-06-26T10:19:00.000+02:00

I hope you enjoy the:

1. sunshine while it lasts
2. bike riding
3. brown-bagged lunch
4. library browsing
5. frantic reading

because life could be a whole lot worse, and someday you might look back and think "Those FU Berlin days weren't really so bad - kind of relaxing, idyllic" in the split second before your pregnant 15-year-old daughter starts screaming about the empty refrigerator, your 7-year-old boy throws the remote control at the TV, missing and smashing a hole through the living room window, and your second ex-wife's new boyfriend, who is over to collect the 3-year-old, crashes, in his drunken stupor, into the glass case containing your mother's precious porcelain dishes handed down four generations, and just as the shelves start tipping, a cascade of painted white bone china like a mountain avalanche, your 3-year-old, momentarily dropped by the startled ex-wife's boyfriend, projectile vomits all over the newly polished hardwood floors, and as this cacophony is turning you into a Moses Herzog figure, a cocktail of paralyzing self-pity and enraged insanity, you glance out the window to see your ex-wife impatiently glaring at you from the passenger seat of the shiny blue Mustang parked in your shabby driveway, and you jolt into action, run to the door, and shout, "How dare you let this RAVING DRUNK MADMAN drive with little Bobby in the back seat!"

This is why all of you, dear readers, would be lucky to maintain email communication with me: I'm known to send wishes, possible predictions, and very long sentences at 10 in the morning, to unsuspecting homo sapiens.

Moments That Expose My Apathy and Laziness

2007-06-22T17:54:00.000+02:00

This man utterly puts me and my aspirations to shame. Some people are unbelievable.

3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/06/getting-better-.html
www.gawande.com/bio.htm

Writes a friend in response: "Yes, you should be utterly ashamed of your pathetic, inactive, lethargic, useless, careless, spiritless existence."

I know, I know.

One of the Worst

2007-06-21T00:18:00.000+02:00

Today was a really bad day.

A really really bad day.

I want to go home. Where is home?

The Piano Problem

2007-06-18T16:30:00.003+02:00

There's only one solution: record record record. Otherwise, I'll sound bad forever.

Today's count:
--Prelude: 11
--Fugue: 6

Father's Day

2007-06-16T19:10:00.000+02:00

TWO POEMS AND A REFLECTION**

I. "HE SPEAKS IN YOUR VOICE, AMERICAN"

I understand
my father
more
after reading DeLillo's account
of Bobby Thomson's 1951 homer
than I ever did
living in the same house
for 18 years

How could I have been
so blind?

II. "AND THERE'S A SHINE IN HIS EYE THAT'S HALFWAY HOPEFUL"

At my age,
23,
my father had already survived
the bug-infested
snake-swarmed
lonely
damp
dangerous
jungles
of Vietnam

What right have I
to give up?

--

**In the cool pallid summer dusk,
I saw my dad weep over his dad
and realized that someday
I'll be the one in the twilight,
weeping

(posted also on medusaskitchen.blogspot.com, June 16)

"He was thinking continually, but nothing clear resulted."

2007-06-12T12:26:00.000+02:00

I don't know what to do. I can't concentrate on anything, not even my book when I was trying to read at a cafe this morning. I'm completely immobilized. What am I going to do?

"Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity." - from Herzog

--

What they really think. From Dutch magazine Trouw, as posted on signandsight.com, European Feuilletons:

Trouw dedicates its culture section to "The power of the image." There's a excerpt from Al Gore's new book, "Assault on Reason" as well as a pointed critique of it by Henri Beunders, a history professor from Rotterdam. "An American book must naturally have an alarming beginning and an optimistic end, otherwise it won't sell. His understanding of 'the old media' is just as narrow as his grasp of the Internet is naive. He writes, 'Web democracy is arming itself. You can feel it. We, the people, are still the key to the survival of democracy in America.' What naivety! As if 'the people' always want what's best. In 1914, 1982 (the Falklands War) and 1991 (the Gulf War) 'the people' marched joyfully into war. In the thirties the Germans begged Hitler: 'Free us from freedom.'"

Poetic Reponses to "Riding Bitch"

2007-06-10T15:14:00.000+02:00

(click to read)

Riding Bitch

2007-06-08T11:02:00.000+02:00

Last night I dreamt
of slick black streets
reflecting the glittering fluorescents
of New York,
a flaming tar mirror
over which we motorcycle-burned,
pillion style,
my body melting into yours

(medusaskitchen.blogspot.com, June 9, with photograph)

Glenn Gould

2007-06-05T22:36:00.001+02:00

Baby Steps

2007-06-05T16:01:00.000+02:00

Setting: Cafe in East Berlin, 10:30am, morning after the bombshell
Me: drawing; Friend: writing

[Silence; ambient cafe noises]

Me: (turning suddenly to friend in outburst of despair) OH F#&%! What am I going to do?!?
Friend: (ponders for a moment) Well, in a little while you'll eat lunch. It's not much, and beyond that I don't know. But it's something.

---

Epiphany: What is any relationship - be it friendship, marriage, or anything in between - if not a promise, spoken or unspoken, to catch you when you fall?

A Day I'd Like to Erase

2007-06-05T01:20:00.001+02:00

Today I practiced 7 hours straight. Then I had a not-lesson. Afterwards, I learned how to do a headstand, had a discussion about Snow White, and pondered my very vague future.

Basically, I'm f***ed. Totally, totally f***ed.

At least medusaskitchen.blogspot.com posted more poetry of mine today (along with a photo) - June 4.

Stress

2007-06-03T19:08:00.000+02:00

You know something's wrong when:

- your jaw is so tight from clenching that you can barely open it
- your knuckles are sore, creaky even
- you feel shooting pain in your back as each new knot begins to form
- you pop pain killers in vain hopes they'll relax you
- your friend, out of pity and alarm, starts demonstrating stretching exercises in the middle of a restaurant, over brunch
- in spite of all your efforts, 8 hours just isn't enough

Self-Destruction

2007-06-01T11:37:00.000+02:00

from Die Welt, 1 June 07, Feuilletons:

With German cyclists falling into disrepute, Uwe Wittstock puts them in noble company: "Writers and artists in particular are no strangers to the idea that total devotion to a passion, the struggle to fulfil a talent has very little to do with well-being but much more with self-destruction – and not uncommonly alleged or actual performance-enhancing drugs are involved. Novalis raved in his 'Hymns to the Night' about 'the brown juices of the poppy.' From absinth to opium, no hallucinogen was left un-sampled by Baudelaire and Verlaine. Georg Trakl followed suit and died from an overdose. Klaus Mann used to fire himself up with heroin and found it a hard habit to shake. Ernst Jünger experimented with mescalin and LSD, Walter Benjamin swore by hashish. 'The collapse of the ego, the sweetness, the deeply desired, all this you give me' Gottfried Benn wrote in praise of cocaine."

---

In other news:

CSVio: If I were there in person, I guarantee you'd be having a whole lot more fun than chatting on the internet
CSVio: It'd be the greatest ten minutes of your life....
CSVio: Or, at least, of mine

The Printable Me, In Two Mediums

2007-05-30T17:25:00.000+02:00

I've been published again on a poetry site (same one as before) along with a photograph I took in March.

medusaskitchen.blogspot.com - under May 30

Online Dating Tag Line

2007-05-27T22:54:00.000+02:00

While flipping through my journal, and I came upon this bit of nonsense written last June (I think I should be
embarassed, but it's just too funny...). It would make an excellent online dating profile sentence, no?

"I'm fat, ugly, anti-social, and enjoy being repulsed by close relationships."

Ah, the weird days of yore.

I've also decided that the word "dragoon" is one of the English language's hidden gems. Dragoon. Don't you dragoon me into that, you greasy skank. In my previous life, I galloped on horseback across the moors, musket at my side, war in my blood, courage binding me to my fellow infantrymen, my hearty regiment, my faithful dragoons. This here, children, is a dragoon - unlike his cunning, fiery cousin, the dragon, our little dragoon enjoys his evening pub crawl far too much to challenge any knights in battle.

May 25, 2007

2007-05-26T12:01:00.000+02:00

For three minutes today
I lost my cool
uttered nothing but expletives
thought only in screams
Then
I folded my sorrow
swallowed my dreams
and walked into the rain-washed street

After the Rain

2007-05-25T21:21:00.000+02:00

Somebody is blaring "Time after Time" from an open window.

It smells good outside, like damp aspens; I walked around a little. Damp aspens bring back so many memories of Colorado summer mountains. I miss those, all of those - aspens, mountains, memories.

So much for an exciting evening of being overbooked. I shouldn't have gotten so prideful about it. I single-handedly brought about that thunderstorm, punishment from the gods.

I feel like climbing out of my skin and trying on a different one, new and better.

---

Something Else Entirely

If only you knew
how I sit up at night
weaving words into phrases
spinning thoughts into dreams
you might realize
that these lines
and others like them
aren't poems at all
but rather
the only way I know how
to love you

A First Time for Everything

2007-05-25T17:29:00.000+02:00

On Wednesday, my friend Flora (M's mother) invited me performance of something German and musical tonight (Friday). Naturally I agreed to go.

It's now Friday at 5:30pm, and since last night, I've been asked by FOUR other people to get together tonight. Four blond men, no less! Four blond men who don't know each other, all asking me to do different things tonight, wishing so desperately for my company.

Ok maybe that's an exaggeration. And maybe two of these guys are spoken for, and maybe one of them might be gay, and maybe the other one is, well, his own version of complicated.

But still. Who knew I'd become so popular!?!

(Post Script at 9:12pm: a sudden, violent thunder storm ruined all my potential evening plans! Rats)

One for the Ladies

2007-05-24T23:07:00.001+02:00

Also, I came across this poem today. You know it's real when it hurts, simple black words on blank white space.

HOW CAN YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT AND ONLY LOOK?
—Noel Kroeplin

I feel
your eyes
searing my skin
every time
we are together
until I am nothing
but a pile of ashes
that you feel the need
to repeatedly
blow away

Skinny Girls

2007-05-22T16:51:00.000+02:00

Setting: Tiergarten, Berlin
Time: 6pm, Sunday

Scene: Sitting on a picnic blanket with Boy M, Girl M, and Boy H after two hours of boys playing frisbee with some other young Germans.

Girl M: Ok guys, we're going to flip through this People Magazine, and you tell me which girls you'd date just by their picture.
Boys M&H: Ok!
Girl M: [points at everyone from Penelope Cruz to Jessica Simpson to Angelina Jolie to Katie Holmes]
Boy M: Yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes....(in other words, a mixture)
Boy H: No, no, no, no, no, no, maybe, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, no, no...(hard to please)
Girl M: [opening to swimsuit page] [to me] Look at her [someone famous and gorgeous] - she has fat thighs! Yay! Don't you feel better?
Me: Yes! I need to see these kinds of pictures....
Boy M: Yeah, she doesn't look so hot.
Boy H: Her shape is funny (Girl M: [interrupting] pear shaped?) but I don't like any of these other girls. They're too skinny. They all need a layer of fat. I don't like skinny girls.

I DON'T LIKE SKINNY GIRLS.

Me: [thinking: What? Really? Is this serious? Can it be true?]

This comment, coming from a 27-year-old guy, world-travelling, highly-educated, and very hot, someone I pegged at first sight to be rather arrogant, somewhat elitist, and out of my league....

For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable being me. Being normal. Being a size 6. Not being skinny.

The feeling was fleeting. But then I remember this conversation, and I feel good being real.

Quoting Nabokov

2007-05-16T13:08:00.001+02:00

"In a sense, we all are crashing to our death from the top story of our birth to the flat stones of the churchyard and wondering with an immortal Alice in Wonderland at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles--no matter the imminent peril--these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from commonsense and its logic, that we know the world to be good."

I Love...

2007-05-15T21:57:00.000+02:00

the Brahms Deutsches Requiem!

5th movement, people, and I die....

Recital 5

2007-05-11T22:35:00.000+02:00

Final recital in summary: There were 3 hearing aids going off THE ENTIRE RECITAL (that high-pitched whine) - I couldn't hear anything else, not what I was playing, nothing, just the incessant electrical screech. And then in Schumann, the piano began rolling away. Between every etude. I was adjusting the piano and bench constantly. But the audience was great and seemed to like everything. And in spite of these problems, I played mostly well, minus a couple spots in Schumann where I was so frantic about the piano being too far away to play that I kind of ignored what notes I was actually playing. They want me back next year for another recital.

I still have to blog about 3 and 4. Soon. Oh, and I got a review from Carmel, very short, which I'll post next time.

Tonight: Last Recital of the Trip

2007-05-11T16:34:00.000+02:00

I. Am. So. Exhausted.

Penning

2007-05-06T23:39:00.000+02:00

Tonight I'm sad
Hope fades
Or maybe it's the dog
getting old
I miss her already
even though she's downstairs
in the pantry
sleeping.
Unlike watercolors
oil paintings burn and bleed
Life exists until it doesn't
vibrant hues lost to black oblivion.

(as if in response...
I just found this)

HOPE
—Czeslaw Milosz

Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

2 down, 3 to go

2007-04-30T22:15:00.000+02:00

I'm bad about blogging regularly when I'm out of the country. That country. Deutschland.

Number 1: private recital on the Upper East Side, New York - I really enjoyed playing in this relaxed yet sophisticated atmosphere, surrounded by friends, fellow musicians, hosted by my favorite New York family in their lovely home with their lovely Steinway. And I got through the whole recital without falling off the bench, which considering my current program, is quite a feat.

Words: Kelly at JFK, brownstone, Madison Ave, guest room, apples, blue tile, practice practice practice, wintry Central Park, Greek Parade, MSM, John Williams, lying in the park, Dean Noon, scheduling office, Celeste, tagliatelle with cabbage, tea and Sara, cake at Mozart, former roommates, old friends, a very surprised ex, grapes, wine, home-cooked dinner for me, Lincoln Center, buses and subways, noise, smells, honking, taxis, shades of gray, Hungarian Pastry Shop, croissants, cool cement steps, warm spring night, heady bouquets, falling in love with a city I hate in so many ways, feeling like a New Yorker again - and liking the feeling.

Then: California. Studio class at the university. Interview with the newspaper. Big article printed in Friday's paper. Playing for my old teachers. Not being able to swear while practicing because of family in the house. Eroica Trio at Saratoga in the most beautiful villa situated in the coastal hills. Shostakovich and wine with Sara, schmoozing at the reception, talking to the girls.

Number 2: recital yesterday, audience of 300, Steinway D, packed hall, three standing ovations (after Schumann, Wagner, and encore), best performance to date, didn't feel so great though, family members coming from various surrounding cities, flowers and exhaustion, tired hands today. Timed it - 2 hours with intermission and encore. Serious business.

Tomorrow: practice practice practice. Yoga. My back is crunched these days.

Soon: recitals, competition, travelling, seeing more people (including my COUSINS and Joe!), feeling lonely still, wanting to talk, to have a real conversation with a real person that I'm really connected to.

Hey, you're alive, you're ALIVE, and I love it, I love being alive, together, breathing, feeling a gaze tingling on my skin, breathe in the night air and just be, quietly, separate, at the same time, words or no words, talking or not talking, makes no difference.

Schumann is a galaxy.
Epic, he said.
Best Beethoven 109 I've ever heard, in my life, all 60 years of them as a pianist.

Hey, sit by me tonight.

Five Minutes of Fame

2007-04-28T21:49:00.000+02:00

www.sacbee.com/172/story/161118.html

Recital Program

2007-04-26T22:00:00.000+02:00

For the morbidly curious.

How to attempt suicide in four simple (or not so simple) steps:

Bach Partita No. 4 in D Major
Beethoven Sonata in E Major, Op. 109
Schumann Etudes Symphoniques, Op. 13 (including all posthumous variations)
Wagner-Liszt Isoldens Liebestod

The French Vote

2007-04-19T15:12:00.000+02:00

The major European event of the week is the upcoming French election. How should you pick your candidate? Well, why not start with classical music?

As posted on the Alex Ross blog:

The French music site Altamusica has posed several questions to the French presidential candidates, including this one: "One often hears that classical music is elitist. What do you think?" Nicolas Sarkozy, of the conservative UMP party, says in response (my rough translation): "The music called 'classical' is by definition the most popular because it is that which has transcended time, fashion, and society to reach us. The music of Mozart and Beethoven was perhaps revolutionary, seen as elitist in the time of their contemporaries, but how can one pretend that it isn't popular? The number of people who have heard this music over several centuries is simply incalculable! Even the music that certain cultural functionaries call 'musiques actuelles', even the most contemporary rock groups, draw their harmonies from the tonal system invented by Bach and Rameau."

Bane of my Existence

2007-04-16T11:27:00.000+02:00

The Euro was $1.25 when I arrived in Berlin last September.

It's now $1.36.

This is some kind of evil cosmic joke.

In passing...

2007-04-11T00:01:00.000+02:00

CSVio: If you don't mind, I've started picturing your love life
CSVio: The first part involves you in the shower
CSVio: I never really get past that

Jeremy Denk Sings in Starbucks: A Coda, perhaps

2007-04-10T19:59:00.000+02:00

Pianist Jeremy Denk, a frequent chamber music partner of Joshua Bell, says it all.

jeremydenk.blogspot.com/2007/04/area-pianist-ignored-at-local-starbucks.html

SarahMarie puts in her two cents here (pun intended):
beingsarahmarie.blogspot.com/2007/04/joshua-bell-ignored.html

Joshua Bell Plays in the Subway: Four Responses

2007-04-09T12:22:00.001+02:00

If you say "response" too many times, it doesn't sound like a word anymore.

After sending the article (link in previous post) to a friend, I received this email. Never one to back down from a challenge, I replied back to my friend's response with a longer, more convoluted, less well written email, I'm sure, but posted, nonetheless, now on this blog for any of your comments or insights, dear readers. And after my reply, my friend wrote again, a response to my response to his response. And then I responded again, a long one, that maybe diverts from the point a little too frequently. The author of the first/third response is a writer and thinker for a living, whereas I only attempt these activities from time to time, blatently ignoring the "do not attempt at home" warning. Thus, the disparity. And the disclaimer.

Response to article:

This is very interesting; thanks for sending it. I wonder, though, what it shows. I suspect that I'm closer to Paul Guyer's opinion (reported in the article) than to thinking that it shows something something definitive about American society. I actually doubt Bell would get a much better audience in Paris or London (or Brazil, despite what that one woman claims). Rush hour mornings are not a good time anywhere in the western world (evenings would probably be better). And I wonder if it says anything about modernity. After all, more people listen to and study Bach today than at any other point in human history, since most people in human history labored in mines and on farms and in factories for 10 hours a day and didn't have the kind of time and training it requires to develop a sensitive ear. Some people, after all, stopped and recognized him. Sometimes people make analogous thought experiments with books and films, but I'm never sure what to think about them. As cynics always point out, lots of Nazis had fine taste in music and literature.

Now it's your turn to disagree with me :)

My response to this:

So you want me to disagree with you? I don't, actually, but I think there's a missing dimension to your argument.

I also doubt that Joshua Bell would've gotten a better audience in London or Paris (although since he's American, you'd like to think that Americans would at least notice they have produced great musicians), and I agree that morning commute was probably the worst time to have him play - the frantic rush and early morning stupor certainly didn't do any of the passersby justice.

However. What bothers me most is not that people didn't recognize him or that they didn't stop to watch for awhile -- but they didn't even notice. Most of them had absolutely no idea that a violinist was even playing there. The utter blindness to anything of substance, beauty, something different in the daily grind of cattle cars in the subway - they didn't even notice!

Art of out context is clearly a problem with this situation - stick Bell in a concert hall, tell these people who he is and what he does, and they'll probably listen. Spoon-feed them, yes, and they'll listen - that's why Bell plays to sold out audiences everywhere.

What's lacking here is the independent ability to make an aesthetic judgment. I find this article to be mostly a criticism of American modern society, a rat race to the finish line of every day, unable to see the surroundings, and thus unable to appreciate something outside themselves or make a decision about it. This isn't even their fault if the system they were raised in emphasized money and power (and therefore a complete self-saturation and inability to look beyond the daily battle for the cheese) instead of observation of a greater world around us.

Where is the awareness of tradition, of past and present beauty, of something that transcends the years and survives after we've all come and gone - not just music, but all art forms? And by art, I don't mean Britney Spears. Sadly they would've all recognized her had she been singing. They might have even thought that was quality worth listening to. Spoon-fed.

American society, and society in general, I think, is ill-equipped to think and reason independently, to continue self-education beyond the school years, and to recognize an experience that may expose them to something beyond their immediate comprehension. No sense of wonder.

Instead we have an appalling tendency to compartmentalize - work is one thing, home is another, personal life separate still. We eat up pop culture as an escape, delving into the petty lives of the rich and famous when our petty lives get boring. American society has lost the ability to allow other dimensions into their narrow world view, so focused on the little boxes they've so parsimoniously designated as "life" that they don't notice the rainbow overhead.

This line captures it for me:
"If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?"

The inability to stop for a minute, consider, listen, and on some level, understand - this is the modern tragedy.

Response to my response:

I don't disagree with you that our society is too rushed to notice people like Joshua Bell playing in a subway. But it's complicated. "Noticing", for instance, isn't a very clear action; there may have been people who listened without standing there studying him. In fact I think the guy who most appreciated him said he stood far away so as not to get in the violinist's space. Also, I'm sure a great many people pretended not to hear him because they didn't want to put money in the hat. It's rather embarrassing to outright reject a musician playing for money right in front of you. (It is sometimes for me, at least.)

But the larger point, more to you than to the ambiguously conceived experiment, is that there's nothing distinctively modern or American about ignorance of great art. Understanding art, like understanding many complicated activities, requires a great deal of training, and most people, today and in the past, haven't had the luxury. This is bad in some ways, but hardly all. Boorish engineers designed the computers that we're writing on now, and without the unimaginative busy-body bureacrats commuting to work that morning in D.C., many social institutions would be in a lot of trouble. Poets, thank God, aren't assigned to perform heart surgery. The question about "what else are we missing" is a good one, but some people might sincerely answer: not much. Living with people who think that may simply be part of living in a modern democracy. Disagreeing with them requires having, and maybe even imposing, a very strong theory about human flourishing.

My response to this response to my response:

You're tough! I don't disagree with you, but I don't exactly agree with you either. From my understanding of the article, it appears that many people didn't even register that a violinist was playing. It's one thing to shut something out but another thing to miss it altogether. And the people that purposely shut it out, either out of annoyance or personal preoccupation, demonstrate a deplorable lack of discernment, either willfully (categorizing subway music as transient noise) or due to a lack of education in music, specifically, and art, generally.

This is hardly an excuse, proved by the man with no musical education who stopped for 3 minutes before work because he realized, innately, utterly naturally, that this violinist was something special. He's quoted as saying he felt "at peace." Such is the power of music to break through all stereotypes, cultural and educational barriers. Something in the makeup of this man allowed Bell's music in, not only to his ears, but into a level much deeper. There's an art to discerning quality, but generally things of highest quality are apparent without scrutiny.

Those who passed Bell without noticing, whatever that might mean, is a failure of the senses, visual and auditory. This is not a conservatory kid playing in the corner, proficient but stiff, lacking perhaps stage presence and sawing away on a $20,000 violin. This is one of the most dynamic performers in the world, playing absolutely stunning music on one of the great violins of the world, $3.5 million, filling the space with a resonant, golden sound (as you can hear on the video) - the sound alone should make a person stop dead in his tracks. Add to this the total-body involvement characteristic of Bell, as well as his extreme good looks, and you've got aesthetic pleasure up the wazoo.

Had Joshua Bell tried this experiment in Europe, the results may have been different. Art is much more ingrained in the national consciousness of European countries as heritage, history, and contribution to the world. I've noticed a big difference between American audiences and Berlin audiences, for example: not only do concerts tend to frequently sell out here but also the percentage of audience members under age 40 is much higher than in the States. People are interested because they're raised to be interested, because it's part of being German, or French, or whatever nationality, raised to be proud of a great artistic history, even if they aren't necessarily aware of its finer aspects.

America, however, has made a formidable effort to erase classical art out of the culture. One is hard pressed to find an American church employing professional musicians playing a traditional liturgy (England's Anglican tradition, however, keeps this flourishing). No longer do households have pianos, a meeting point for the whole family, as was the norm 80-100 years ago. Music and art is no longer taught in schools. People used to be [insert profession here] as well as amateur musicians on the side because it was part of being a well-educated, well-rounded person. Einstein, they say, was an excellent violinist. This trend of profession-plus-musician has become increasingly rare, with one exception - many doctors these days happen to be amateur musicians, two fields that actually have more in common than what you might think, a rigorous attention to detail, intense concentration, long hours of study, and steel nerves under pressure.

Everything is, or should be, connected. But it appears that the chasm between aesthetics (beauty of all kinds, not just art from a certain period) and a technologically efficient but spiritually dead modernity continues to widen.

Joshua Bell Plays in the Subway: A Commentary on American Modernity

2007-04-09T00:00:00.000+02:00

This is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL reading.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html?hpid=topnews

Ostersonntag (Easter Sunday)

2007-04-08T17:36:00.000+02:00

The Chapel at King's College, Cambridge, broadcasts its Evensong services live over BBC Radio 3, accessible via internet. So I get to listen to the Easter Evensong, imagining I'm there, like I was last month, in the inky blue gloaming, surrounded by soft candlelight and dark carved wood, listening to one of the best choirs of the world, angelic boys voices hovering somewhere in the shimmering vaulted ceiling. There's also something to be said for listening to Scripture quoted in a British accent.

Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot wash it away.

Song of Solomon 8:7

After a reading of "Underworld"

2007-04-04T11:21:00.000+02:00

Before I went to bed last night, I read about Nick's complacent life and Esmerelda's murder, which turned out to be a bad decision.

All night I was tormented by the most joyless, hopeless dreams I've ever had, not nightmares, but dreams with everything good about life sucked out of them. I dreamt about Underworld, about you in New York, sick, and everything all mixed together, and I dreamt of my former life in New York, my school cafeteria, a former professor, New York at night in the winter, and I was running through the snowy streets barefoot, and it was so cold. I woke up so cold, not physically, but my chest was like ice, at 3 in the morning, and I felt all the desperation and loneliness and heartache of life, like I'd lived each individual, miserable life I've just read about but was still me on top of it, half a world away from home which doesn't even seem like my home anymore, just the house in which my parents live, and for a minute, I thought I wasn't even going to make it through the night, and when that passed, like I would surely be sick, and when that passed, just a throbbing grief.

Now it's morning, the sun is out, I made coffee, but I feel a remnant of that emptiness of the night, like somebody ripped a hole above my stomach.

From this week's PostSecret

2007-04-01T10:57:00.000+02:00

Death by Furniture

2007-03-30T23:41:00.000+02:00

IKEA and I are locked in the deathly throes of battle. Unfortunately IKEA currently has the upper hand (strong and firm and splintery, unlike my red, blistered hands). I'm losing this battle.

To be continued....

(Part 2 will be brought to you tomorrow by the HDBF Foundation - Humans Defeated By Furniture)

The Quotable Me

2007-03-28T11:15:00.000+02:00

I'm published. On a poetry site. Oh yes.

http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com

Under March 27.

Things That Make Me a Cranky Girl

2007-03-27T17:16:00.000+02:00

1. Pretty spring day outside that I can't enjoy because I have to practice.
2. Battles with IKEA people and German walls.
3. The fact I might be impaled in the dead of night by my curtain rod. It has a decorative spike at the end.

Say It's Possible

2007-03-26T21:01:00.000+02:00

I love finding new artists who, in one song, one chord change, one photograph, one poem, get it. Whatever is there, floating above our heads, between our bodies, through our hearts, only a few get it, capture it - part of it. Their part of it. So as a habitual gatherer of the human experience, I love finding these fragments, whole in themselves, putting them together, and making my world as it goes.

This singer/songwriter just won the YouTube best music video award, which doesn't say much, but her song certainly does. I listened to some of her other songs as well which, I have to admit, didn't do a lot for me. But this song is definitely worth a listen.

www.myspace.com/terranaomi
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHyRI9_NB4

Say It's Possible - Terra Naomi (on a personal note, what is up with these pop singers with two first names?)

I see the lights are turning and I look outside
The stars are burning through this changing time
It could have been anything we want
It's fine, salvation was just a passing thought
It was just a passing thought

Don't wait, act now
This amazing offer won't last long
It's only a chance to save the path we're on
I know there are more exciting things to talk about
And in time we'll sort it out

And though they say it's possible
To me, I don't see how it's probable
I see the course we're on spinning farther from what I know
I'll hold on
Tell me that you won't let go

And truth is such a funny thing
With all these people
Keep on telling me
They know what's best
And what to be frightened of
And all the rest are wrong
They know nothing about us

And though they say it's possible
To me, I don't see how it's probable
I see the course we're on spinning farther from what I know
I'll hold on
Tell me that you won't let go

I'm not alright

This could be something beautiful
Combine our love into something wonderful
But times are tough I know
And the pull of what we can't give up takes hold

Daylight what???

2007-03-25T03:59:00.000+02:00

March 25. European Daylight Savings. Nobody told me. On the one night I decide to go out salsa dancing in West Berlin, we lose an hour! Oh good gracious. I wouldn't even have known were it not for my beautiful computer automatically doing it for me. I'd be off kilter all week. I still might be with my utter lack of sleep due to shaking it with the rest of Berlin - and now this. In fact, this post will probably be illegible when I read it tomorrow, fully-rested.

An Unnecessary Exercise (in Frustration)

2007-03-22T12:02:00.000+01:00

Hallo IKEA,

Meine Möbel ist am Montag gekommen, aber es war kaputt. Die Männer
hat mir gesagt, dass sie wären die Möbel zu IKEA zurücknehmen und
wären am nächsten Tag mit neue Möbel kommen, aber die Männer sind
nicht gekommen. Heute ist Donnerstag - ich möchte meine Möbel, bitte!

Ich habe anrufen probieren, aber niemand beantwortet das Telefon.

Morgen (Freitag, März 23) ist am besten für mich, um 9 bis 14, für die
Möbel zu kommen.

Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut - ich hoffe, dass Sie können dieses
Email verstehen.

Danke,
A.
(Meine Muttersprache ist Englisch)

The innings before the shot heard round the world, 1951

2007-03-20T17:38:00.000+01:00

(for my dad, a true Giants fan)

"Lockman squares around to bunt.
"There's a man in the upper deck leafing through a copy of the current issue of Life. There's a man on 12th Street in Brooklyn who has attached a tape machine to his radio so he can record the voice of Russ Hodges broadcasting the game. The man doesn't know why he's doing this. It is just an impulse, a fancy, it is like hearing the game twice, it is like being young and being old, and this will turn out to be the only known recording of Russ' famous account of the final moments of the game. The game and its extensions. The woman cooking cabbage. The man who wishes he could be done with drink. These are the game's remoter soul. Connected by the pulsing voice on the radio, joined to the word-of-mouth that passes the score along the street and to the fans who call the special number and the crowd at the ballpark that becomes the picture on television, people the size of minute rice, and the game as rumor and conjecture and inner history. There's a sixteen-year-old in the Bronx who takes his radio up to the roof of his building so he can listen alone, a Dodger fan slouched in the gloaming, and he hears the account of the misplayed bunt and the fly ball that scores the tying run and he looks out over the rooftops, the tar beaches with their clotheslines and pigeon coops and splatted condoms, and he gets the cold creeps. The game doesn't change the way you sleep or wash your face or chew your food. It changes nothing but your life."

-Don DeLillo, Underworld

Lines after Neruda

2007-03-18T10:36:00.000+01:00

Play me a guitar
Mellow and tender
Strum me softly
Rippling waves on midnight sand

Sing me sweetly
Voice like summer wine
Under strong, gentle hands
I will blend your song

Cover me lightly
In orange blossomed breeze
No frenzied violin
Bleeding tears to the sea

So play me a guitar
Mellow and tender
Caress my evening stillness
And I will sing you moonlight

from Alex Ross's blog

2007-03-16T08:47:00.001+01:00

Proust predicts Messiaen

"Somewhere in one of the tall trees, making a stage in its height, an invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem shorter, was exploring with a long, continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly."

— Swann's Way

Street Art

2007-03-11T22:03:00.000+01:00

Detour

2007-03-07T23:12:00.000+01:00

I have a pile of German homework lying on the table, giving me the evil eye. I have 2 books-in-progress and 3 plays to read, books I can't wait to dive into. I curse my German homework for infringing on my reading time, and I curse my German class for eating up my practicing hours. I'm feeling guilty these days for neglecting my piano. The beauties of Schumann lie open on the music rack, twinkling stars, cerulean depths, a tender caress, a sigh, a caught breath, the inky blackness of an infinite galaxy glittering with warm, shimmering light - these are some of the images that his posthumous variations of the Symphonic Etudes evoke in me.

I should blog about my trip to England last week to visit my fantastic cousin in Cambridge and some friends in London, about the evensong at King's College (the most beautiful artistic/religious moment I've ever witnessed), about Equus, about speaking my own language again, about how I love England, about future schemes.

Sometimes, while following natural thought processes, you stumble upon a door that you've ignored in the past, a door you continue to ignore whenever you pass by it. I have many doors locked away in my mind, and I take care not to enter them. But tonight, conflicted by a mix of curiosity and sadness, I reached for the key and unlocked some old memories, things, as Keren Ann sings, "I always try not to remember rather than forget." Well, ok, it'd be easier just to forget many things, but it turns out that the most we can do, aside from completely blocking experiences out, is to not remember. Because the wound under the band-aid, behind that door, remains raw, unhealed. Because it still hurts. Maybe airing it out a little helps, cleaning the infection, drying it, covering it with a new bandage. And forgetting again.

Harry Potter can act!

2007-03-04T19:59:00.000+01:00

Yes kids, I was the lucky girl who took this photo just after seeing Daniel Radcliffe put in a TREMENDOUS performance as the tormented, violent main character Alan Strang in "Equus" on Friday night in London's West End.

(in the poster, his body turns into the head of a horse)

For anyone who is alarmed to hear that I saw nudity on a London stage, let me assure you that the artistic lighting, brilliant staging, and sheer intensity of this final scene rendered his nakedness as just that-- an integral, symbolic, physical metaphor for his vulnerability, sensitivity, fear, rage, and despair, and his ensuing horrific collision with nature.

This, my friends, was one of the finest performances I've ever seen. In anything. Ever.

Fantasies

2007-02-25T00:22:00.000+01:00

email:
Dear [insert name], I have been in love with you from the moment we met in the [insert place here]. From afar I write, hoping you will quench my thirst, ease my pain, and consent to marry me.

bio:
A California native, 22-year-old pianist Miss N. hopes her children can be joint German-American citizens. She has her eye on a certain German [insert profession here], and as soon as she nabs him, all will be invited to join in the endless festivities.

Seven Days

2007-02-21T23:18:00.000+01:00

A poem I remember from long ago, one ancient-sounding, shrouded in mystery.

Monday's child is fair of face.
Tuesday's child is full of grace.
Wednesday's child is full of woe.
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving.
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

For the record, I was born on a Thursday.

Also for the record, I hate ikea.de. The Germans have no idea how online shopping should be done.

A Make-Over

2007-02-15T21:22:00.000+01:00

So, kids, how do we feel about the new layout? I was skeptical at first, but I do enjoy the new lists on the left side. A bit more interactive.

Of course what I should've been doing this cold, rainy evening is:
1. cleaning my disaster of a flat - my mother is coming on Saturday. Oh the shock and dismay upon entrance!
2. filling up my head with literary pursuits instead of having bubble gum fun re-doing the template.
3. emailing people I've been meaning to write for weeks....
4. learning German.
5. watching Grey's Anatomy, my drug of choice.

Now I still might do the 5th item, if I'm feeling particularly productive, that is. It's also a bit ironic that my blog gets the make-over. You ought to see my hair.

"You know, they have hairdressers in Berlin."

"You're going to take a shower before the audition, right?"
"I took a shower this morning!"
"Well, you're going to wash your hair before the audition, right?"
"I washed my hair this morning!"
"You did?!?!"

Your favorite reject

2007-02-13T22:22:00.000+01:00

I think that would make a very good blog title. Perhaps when I get bored of this one....

Haven't been in the mood for blogging. Haven't been in the mood for much of anything. I prefer to sit around and mope. At least it's something I'm good at.

Morning After

2007-02-12T12:38:00.001+01:00

And I still feel like I'm going to throw up.

Me at 19

2007-02-09T21:32:00.000+01:00

While browsing the archives of a friend's blog, I came upon an October 2003 entry in which she quoted me saying this:

"The very few people I've ever really wanted to be like are the ones that look at the same world I look at but see something different. I don't all of a sudden see what they see, but I see the result of what they're seeing - the result is them, their hearts - it's really a beautiful thing."

Oh how cynical I've gotten in old age.

(note to the editing-crazed - I did correct my sloppy punctuation and put the whole bit in present tense, because in past, it sounds like I'm being quoted after the grave)

Learning the Hard Way

2007-02-06T17:55:00.000+01:00

So while at the grocery store this evening, I decided to take a walk down the cookie aisle. Usually I don't allow myself the temptation (the plethora of bakeries in this city is sinful enough), but this time, I thought, I'll just look.

And while just looking at the bags of yummy things, I ran into my neighbor, the one 5 floors up who has been a big anti-piano advocate to the building owners, the one who has complained from day 1 about my practicing, the one I haven't seen in two weeks and was hoping to continue the streak.

I've done everything possible to cut down on sound - mattresses against the wall, meters of thick acoustic foam inside the piano and stuck into all sorts of places underneath that you didn't even know existed, blankets heaped on top. In fact the piano is now so quiet that I can barely hear it when I play.

But he apparently still can.
And wants to meet again next week to discuss the "problem."

I should never have walked down the cookie aisle.
I may never go to the grocery store again.
After the food I bought today runs out, I'll probably never eat again.
I've learned my lesson.

McTräumerisch

2007-02-05T16:27:00.000+01:00

Heute habe ich in meine Schule geschreiben:

Mein Traummann ist Patrick Dempsey von Grey's Anatomy. Er ist Schauspieler, aber im Fernsehen ist er Arzt. Er ist groß, dünn, und hat glatte, dunklebraune Haar und schöne, blaue Augen.

It's good to know how to say important things in German.

It's also good to enjoy your mothertongue, as I did when I read this sentence in an email today:

"Apologies to those who came to last week’s first film and suffered through a horrific hour of start-stop-and-skip cinema. THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS is intended to be a difficult film to watch but not in the way it was realized last Tuesday."

That has to be one of the funniest things I've read in months.

If

2007-02-04T11:48:00.000+01:00

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

how Andy Warhol of you

2007-02-03T17:33:00.000+01:00

Live and let live - or, eat cake

2007-02-03T13:29:00.000+01:00

I love Saturday. I love the idea of Saturday. It's the perfect day, the ideal day, the day I look forward to all week (not true actually, I look forward most to Friday evenings when they finally post the new Grey's Anatomy episode on iTunes!). Saturday is a clean slate of endless opportunity.

And I ruin mine every weekend by sleeping in, being lazy, doing nothing. I talk myself into visiting the big market right outside my front door, and even that, with all its delicacies, bright colors, flowers, and people, does nothing to improve my wilting energy level. I promise myself a piece of cake if I go. It did occur to me today that outdoor markets would be so much more exciting with...um...a McDreamy. But it's a little hard to be romantic when my brain is yelling at me to practice.

It's 1:32pm, and I've done nothing. I glanced at the New York Times online (and I can't wait to hear the new piano concerto by Esa-Pekka Salonen, just premiered last night with the New York Philharmonic- at times like these, I'm really jealous of Matt), took a shower, drank some tea, ate cake, and haven't even begun practicing yet. It's a bit depressing.

I love mornings, early mornings, when everything is quiet and still, productive mornings when I get everything pressing done by 9am and have the rest of the day to practice, to read, to watch the rain, or the snow, or the sun.

Maybe I'll remember this next time.

My New Winter Coat

2007-02-02T16:06:00.000+01:00

for all you MSMers out there...

2007-01-31T21:01:00.000+01:00

Marcus at his finest. Just wait for the guitar solo.

http://fabienm.club.fr/paus/secret.mp3

AUGH.

2007-01-30T13:40:00.000+01:00

AUGH.

Ich habe meine braunen ledernen Handschuhe verloren. Sie waren ein Geschenk von Marcus. Scheiße!

My beautiful, warm, brown leather gloves given to me in an extreme act of generosity and kindness by Marcus whilst in New York are gone. I think I left them on the tram. Tomorrow I have to go to the transporation headquarters and look in the lost and found, but I'm sure they're gone forever. These were so nice and protected my hands so well. What will I do without gloves? My hands will never survive the winter.

Winter Warmth

2007-01-26T16:44:00.000+01:00

Somethings don't change - a voice, a feeling, a connection.

For everything else that does change and leaves you lost, worried, and lonely, there's Wagner. And Vaughan Williams. And tea. And a window overlooking a gray German sky and white German snow.

Let It Snow!

2007-01-25T08:52:00.000+01:00

That's right, folks, we here in the north of Deutschland have got our first dusting of snow. It continues as I type. Nothing like a bit of white to make everything seem a little better.

Rant

2007-01-22T20:22:00.000+01:00

(In case I ever run for President of something, I've decided to remove comments that I might regret later on, though I believe what I wrote is true - the following paragraph shall suffice in summarizing my feelings of last week.)

The Germans bask in their so-called European liberalism, and let me tell you, it is ANYTHING but liberal. Freedom of speech, of expression, of thought, they control it all. You don't toe the line, their line, their imaginary little line in the sand, and you're more than the black sheep. You're on the other side of the fence. And it ain't green on the other side of the fence. It's a swampy bog of crap. Underneath that shiny facade of recycle-by-glass-color bins, something is rotten, and it stinks.

Fortune Told

2007-01-17T20:43:00.000+01:00

Thus speaks my world famous pizza-maker uncle:

You will have Prince Charming sweep you off the piano and live happily in the south of France in a castle on a warm beach, performing for the masses and eating fresh baguettes and brie while sipping wine from your vineyards.

The Art of Critic

2007-01-15T12:04:00.001+01:00

Richard Aldrich of the New York Times reviews Sergei Prokofiev's local debut, on Nov. 20, 1918:

"It is for Prokofieff the mere breaking of a butterfly on a wheel to perform other men's music. But the gracious butterfly of Scriabine was metamorphosed into a gigantic prehistoric pterodactyl with horrid snout and crocodile wings which ominously whirred as they flew over the pianist. Ah! a Jabberwock, it was, not a butterfly!"

Best TV Quote of the Week

2007-01-13T20:25:00.000+01:00

Dr. Torres: So, what do you know about Shepherd?
Dr. Bailey: Has lots of hair, too many women, likes elevators and long walks on the beach.

Depth Perception: Poem and Analysis

2007-01-12T16:14:00.000+01:00

Inside the mirrors,
me, looking deeply:
frowns heavy at
scrutinized blemishes.
Without days of
reflections,
no more worry.
Freedom--
being just me.

(The writer clearly has issues with mirrors and is pleasantly surprised when, for some days, she doesn't look into one. This could be due to self-discipline and a strong desire to restrain from vanity. Or it could be because she doesn't have a mirror in her apartment. These Germans, you know - no kitchens, no shower rods, no bathroom mirrors.)

Me just being--
freedom.
Worry no more.
Reflections
of days without
blemishes scrutinized
at heavy frowns:
deeply looking, me,
mirrors the inside.

Not looking forward to it

2007-01-11T13:07:00.000+01:00

I had a brutal lesson yesterday. Then an audition. It's amazing how many teachers can't play the piano. My teacher, however, plays like a god.

I have another lesson today. He's going to yell at me again.

Lyrics to Live By

2007-01-07T20:44:00.000+01:00

"The sky is lit up
Day will be richer than night"

Sometimes, everything clicks.  The right circumstances, the right actions, the right people, the right time of year aligning with new beginnings.  Even the right music plays along as a soundtrack, new lyrics, new sounds that perfectly describe both inner feelings and external events.  Everything is lit up.  Nothing is simple, or simplified, but the complexities hiding in long shadows have been exposed to the radiance of day, and the intricacies, once so frightening, are shown to be part of a luxurious weave.  Sink your fingers in.

"You show me the world as it could be
Through your kaleidoscope, it's beautiful"

Joseph Conrad wrote, "The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world."  When the world expands, do our hearts expand too?  Whenever I see a new place, meet a new person, or have a new experience, extra dimensions are added to an already multi-dimensional world.  Just over this holiday, I travelled to another country, met many new people, delved into the past, and celebrated traditions in new ways.  I explored Amsterdam with a Dutch family, spent Christmas with a supermodel, toured Rembrandt's house and studio, made the pilgrimage to Anne Frank's secret annex, celebrated New Year's in a truly Berlinesque fashion, set off fireworks, watched night melt into day, heard a first-hand account of journalism in Africa from a journalist not much older than me, moved into a new apartment, read a book about the White Rose, and discovered a brilliant new singer/songwriter (real musician) whose songs add vibrant colors to my expanding world.  Oh, also, my severe stomach flu and I spent an entire night throwing up into my former professor's toilet.  There's nothing like being sick all over somebody else's bathroom.  And then having that same professor standing over you in your misery, holding a glass of water and Tylenol, and with an evil gleam in his eye, saying, "Now you have to take back all the mean things you ever said about me, or I wont give you this!"

And I can't forget the Herring Sandwich Deal.  I'm lucky to know such generous, genuine, caring people.  And after all those essays too.  Well, it's clear who the bigger person is.  Which wouldn't be me.

"But I'm sure you're on your way
Yes I'm sure you're on the road"

A very exciting life I know of: Ivory Coast, England, Ireland, Berlin, Amsterdam, England, Congo

Me (I try): New York, California, Berlin, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, Berlin

Amsterdam: winter evening, dark shiny sky, people everywhere, walking, biking, driving, lights reflecting in the water, in the river, in the canals, shimmering a glow of welcome, bells ringing, cobblestones and pavement, my suitcase in the basket, my professor on the bike, me perched on metal bars over the rear tire, hanging on for dear life as we swerve through traffic, puff over bridges, and catapult down the other side into inky blackness.

"And I've always known you're like a feather
You go where wind and fire melt together"

(land of wind and fire....)

Then: a wild (Wild) New Year's Eve party, full of English speaking Germans and half-Germans only a couple years older than me, a reunion of classmates from nearly 10 years ago - the camaraderie, the fondness, the continuance of shared experience was sweet, and I felt a little sad that I have nothing like that.  But the hosts made me feel welcome and wanted in the celebration.  From the 6th floor balcony, the night sky exploded with furious bangs and nebulae of flame for hours.  I burnt my finger on a fire-cracker, but hey, you gotta live.  Champagne, bubbly bubbles, overflowed glasses and spouted geysers over exuberant, intoxicated partiers.  This was no polite hello to 2007.  This was AWESOME.

And then, from a window, I saw the birth of the first day of 2007.  The new year doesn't really start at midnight.  It starts around 7:45am.  That's what you must stay up for.  Unless your New Year's Resolution is to start waking up early and being productive.

"Beautiful day, watching you as you awake
Morning stars in your eyes, your hand in mine"

Not all the complex intertwinings are illuminated at once.  Through the present glow, one can make out, far into the distance, the undulating outlines of weaves undiscovered - hopefully not made of thorns.  Mystery future.  Sometime, the light will be cast on those as well.

Until then: wait.

New Day

2007-01-01T19:12:00.000+01:00

The miracle of today isn't the new year. 2007 is just a number. But after a long, celebratory night of fireworks and bubbly, standing in the middle of a party-ravaged kitchen and watching dawn break over old gray buildings, the magic is in the melting of night into day, blackened darkness into a deep-blue/cold-blue/charcoal-and-ash-gray hinting at the nearing of a sun still below an unseen horizon.

"Look," I said to my exhausted companion, we two the last remnants left standing in the silent dusky room. I pointed to the window. "A new day."

To start off your new year, check out Norwegian/British singer/songwriter Kate Havnevik by going to www.myspace.com/katehavnevik and clicking (on the right sidebar) her song entitled "New Day." Listen to the whole 7:42 minutes of dark strings, atonal slides, techno beat, electronic austerity, and gorgeous lyrics, a landscape of sound you've never encountered before. Her music may be familiar to you if you watch "Grey's Anatomy" - they seem to use her music whenever the tension becomes too unbearable and the show hits emotional zero, most notably the finale of season 2 and the recent episode "From a Whisper to a Scream."

Maybe

2006-12-31T14:33:00.000+01:00

I wanted to post an audio file of this song, but I can't figure out how to do it. Anybody have ideas? It's such a beautiful song.

Maybe This Christmas by Ron Sexsmith

Maybe this Christmas will mean something more
Maybe this year
Love will appear
Deeper than ever before

And maybe forgiveness will ask us to call
Someone we love
Someone we’ve lost
For reasons we can’t quite recall
Maybe this Christmas

Maybe there’ll be an open door
Maybe the star that shone before
Will shine once more

And maybe this Christmas will find us at last
In heavenly peace
Grateful at least
For the love we’ve been shown in the past
Maybe this Christmas

So Christmas has come and gone, and maybe the sentiments above are a little old and a little lost now. Maybe not this Christmas. Maybe next year.

Go to That Opera Again; Singers Are Only Human

2006-12-30T19:34:00.000+01:00

By ANNE MIDGETTE
Published: December 30, 2006, New York Times

The lesson was not about endurance. Opera lovers are generally glad to sit through as many performances of a favorite opera with a strong cast as they can get tickets to. Two measly performances of even a four-hour opera like “Don Carlo” is nothing compared with, say, four hearings of Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” to which I happily subjected myself in my college years.

Rather, the lesson concerned performance. I had heard the mezzo-soprano Bruna Baglioni, who sang the role of Eboli in 1992 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. She was, on the first night, little short of ghastly. I seem to remember a wobble, vocal unevenness, missed pitches and the kind of war-whoop effect peculiar to a certain type of putatively dramatic singer seeking to convey excitement without the technique to support it.

I thought she was awful. So when I returned two days later, I was rather dreading Eboli’s scenes.

But Ms. Baglioni was absolutely terrific. She marshaled her forces and gave a fantastic, powerful, exciting portrayal.

It is a truism in opera that you’re only as good as your last performance. Human variability is supposed to be one of the exciting things about live music, making it like a high-wire act. Will the tenor successfully negotiate the course? Or will he fall spectacularly, in plain sight of everyone, cracking on a high note (or, as Roberto Alagna infamously did nearly three weeks ago, storming off the stage)?

This mutability has given even superstar singers screaming cases of stage fright. (The soprano Rosa Ponselle used to walk to the Metropolitan Opera as slowly as possible, hoping she might be hit by a bus before she arrived at the theater and had to go onstage and live up to her reputation). And it’s what draws opera fans to attend multiple performances of the same production, to hear what variations may emerge from one night to another.

And still people are prone to snap judgments in a society rife with cultural experiences, where they are chronically challenged in finding time to process them. Another favorite saying in critical circles is that you don’t have to eat the whole egg to know it’s rotten. Yet this saying reveals a tacit, and incorrect, assumption: that live performance can be equated with a book or a film, and that a constantly changing art is comparable to something that is fixed and will be encountered in the same form by everyone who apprehends it.

After I began writing this article, a passionate debate on the same subject erupted in an online discussion forum: how can you presume to judge a singer after a single hearing? It’s a thorny question, particularly for those of us whose job it is to do just that. Had I been reviewing Ms. Baglioni, I would have written a blistering assessment of that first performance and never gone back to learn how wonderful she could be at her best.

Yet anyone who listens to music can cite performers who have varied wildly from one evening to another. I recently reviewed a gifted cellist who on the night I heard him happened to have trouble with his intonation. I’ve been assured that he has been brilliant on other nights.

Or take the tenor Salvatore Licitra, who has by now sung quite a few performances in New York, ranging from brilliant to so-so. Audiences here have had a chance to form their own opinions. Yet when he sang Canio in the Metropolitan Opera’s “Pagliacci” this fall, some of the problem spots in his voice seemed to have improved strikingly: the upper middle, once strained, was strong. He had been working on his approach. Is it still possible for him to change fans’ minds?

Here I might invoke another cliché: performers are only human. And I believe the most appropriate response to the recognition of artists’ human failings is not necessarily to hedge your bets by making allowances, speculating on outside factors that led to their being bad on a given night, or hypothesizing that they might improve with more practice. (It would be equally true, or equally fallacious, to qualify a description of an excellent performance with the observation that the artist could well buckle at the next show.)

Art matters. And if it doesn’t matter enough to provoke strong opinions in the people who passionately love it, it can hardly be expected to awaken responses in anybody else. Indeed, it is vital to the future of the field that music lovers of all kinds remain judgmental and passionately involved; that fans care enough to be upset when someone turns in a dog of a performance, or to defend a favorite performer against charges of inadequacy.

But the corollary is to remember that listeners too are human, and that we too can be wrong. The best acknowledgment of an artist’s human weaknesses, and the mutability of live performance, is to keep your ears open and your judgment suspended. For the lesson I learned from Ms. Baglioni is that if you love music, there is great joy in being proved wrong by an old pro who, versed in Italian style to her fingertips, may not always have it in her to be good but who, when the chips are down, can pull it all together and deliver a fantastic performance.

Hello Gorgeous

2006-12-24T01:04:00.001+01:00

A little Christmas present to myself.

Brain/Death

2006-12-19T23:08:00.000+01:00

For a really cool article on a new cutting edge technique in neurosurgery, go here: (pun intended)

www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/health/19brai.html?ex=157680000&en=ecc223e3a3b470b5&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

For those of you who aren't up on your neurosurgerical procedures, this blog gets its name from a fascinating operation involving removal of one of the brain's hemispheres - thus, hemispherectomy, or its official title, functional hemispherectomy. For more information on this, read "The Deepest Cut" (The New Yorker, 2006) or watch episode No. ? from Season 1 of Grey's Anatomy, my favorite source for all things medical and all things dreamy.

In other news, somebody had the nerve to die over the weekend and have his funeral in the church this morning, the very morning that I needed to practice for an important audition. Do I lose extra points for cursing a dead man?

2006: Year in Review

2006-12-17T20:53:00.000+01:00

In reviewing the events of 2006, internationally, artistically, personally, I hope to remember the ups, forget the downs, and propel both myself and my readers to greater heights by examining the intricate, sometimes dark, sometimes dazzling worlds around us and within us, and by using this knowledge and inspiration to create a better, more hopeful new year.

Major world advancements: production of the MacBook; discreet use of Polonium
Major problems generally overlooked: Israel's destruction of Lebanon, particularly Beirut; the falling dollar

Best movie: Sophie Scholl--the Final Days (German)
Best American movies: Munich (was this 2006?), The Constant Gardener (2006?), Little Miss Sunshine
Best TV show: Grey's Anatomy
Best eye-candy: Patrick Dempsey (Dr. McDreamy)
Most interesting article: The Deepest Cut (The New Yorker, July 3)

Best fiction I read this year: Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov); The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoevsky); Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Susannah Clarke)
Best poetry I read this year: Extravagaria (Pablo Neruda)
Best non-fiction I read this year: The Glenn Gould Reader (Glenn Gould)
Best movie not released in 2006 I saw this year: Camille Claudel (French)

Best performance of the year: Macbeth--Shakespeare in the Park (Central Park, New York, starring Jennifer Ehle in a compelling, frightening, and beautiful performance as Lady Macbeth)
Best music of the year (CDs and concerts): none - altogether a disappointment, though I suppose that the La Scala scandal recently wins for most exciting.  Also, Yoni's debut at Alice Tully was noteworthy.

New skills: horseback-riding; white-water rafting; soldering

Performances of: Bach, Couperin, Schubert, Schumann-Liszt, Wagner-Liszt, Dallapiccola, Brahms, Gershwin, Trapanese, Mahler, Mozart, Barber, improvisations by me at a ballet performance (interesting experience)

New Repertoire: Bach 4th Partita, Couperin Le Gazouillement, Beethoven Sonata Op. 109, Schubert C minor Sonata D958, Schumann Etudes Symphoniques, Dallapiccola Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera, Brahms 1st Violin/Piano Sonata, songs by Mahler and Mozart, Sextet by Joe Trapanese (one can only hope to be better next year...this is dismal...)

Literary output: 1 sonnet, a blog

Major personal accomplishment: graduation from college

Observations from abroad: Germans aren't very nice.  This is why my friends here are American, Italian, French, Korean, and what I like to call "international."

Travels: New York, California, Connecticut; Berlin, Prague, Amsterdam

Life-changing event: International Keyboard Festival at Mannes

Combination most shocking/proudest moment: when Matt won the post in the New York Philharmonic

New Year's Resolution(s):
1. A more intense work ethic focusing on quality, hard work, and a more prolific output of everything in the above categories
2. To complain less and appreciate more

Quote of the Day: "The only way to do something wonderful is to work hard." - a member of the Minnesota Symphony

Quote of the Year: "I'm going to KILL you." (teacher)
no, wait...
"If you don't graduate from MSM, I'm going to KILL you." (mother)
no, wrong again...
"I'm in love with you." (McDreamy)
ok, seriously...
"Think of all the inferior composers.  They weren't bad people." (Dr. Andreacchi, Piano Literature class - I may disagree with this pronouncement)
"Fraternities allow you to get drunk and throw up in an organized way." (Dr. Barone, Early German Romantisicm class)

Why Nabokov is the best writer I've ever read (excerpts from Lolita):

"I could not kill her, of course, as some have thought. You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight."

"Somewhere beyond Bill's shack an afterwork radio had begun singing of folly and fate, and there she was with her ruined looks, and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her goose-flesh white arms, and her shallow ears, an her unkempt armpits, there she was (my Lolita!), hopelessly worn at seventeen...and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else."

Serious Quote of the Year:

"I thank you for the gift of life.  If I consider matters properly now, it was nothing other than the road to God.  I am preceding you by a little, to prepare you a splendid reception." - Christoph Probst, Feb. 22, 1943, written in a letter to his mother on the day he was executed by the Nazis for his participation in the German resistance group The White Rose

Remembrance of the Year: A great pianist, my favorite pianist ever:

"My last memory of [Glenn] Gould will always be one from our final meeting, on a chilly August evening in Toronto a little more than a month before he died.  At 3:00 a.m. we drove to a deserted midtown recording studio, where, clad in his usual indoor summer wear--two sweaters, wool shirt, scarf, slouch hat--he relaxed at the keyboard of a Yamaha baby grand and played through his own piano arrangements of Richard Strauss operas.  The Yamaha suddenly became a six-foot-square orchestra: dense contrapuntal lines, translucently clear and perfectly contoured, echoed through the empty room.  Far from the eyes and ears of the curious world, the hungry fans and disapproving critics, the lucrative contracts and percentage deals, Gould played through the night, lost in the sheer joy of creating something beautiful." - Tim Page

Lest we forget, I re-quote something I posted on this blog awhile ago:

"I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations.  The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, life-long construction of a state of wonder and serenity."
- Glenn Gould

(this being said (by him, of course), it's very amusing to hear him swear in the recording outtakes)

Addition to the Hit List

2006-12-15T01:39:00.000+01:00

So I didn't think it could possibly get worse.

And then after a Thursday with no opportunity to practice (choir rehearsals and yoga classes drove me far, far from the church), driven by the fear of another lesson this weekend, I decided I would try again at 10pm after the last choir rehearsal. At 9:30, a half hour early, I practiced a bit on the upright (free for the first time that day - the yoga room, the daycare room, the voice coaching room), waiting for the sanctuary and the grand piano to be free at 10. Finally the choir leaves. I walk downstairs, anticipating a night with the piano all to myself, and I open the door...and there, seated at the harpsichord, is an ancient man tuning the thing. Oh fine, I think, and stomp back upstairs to the upright. Tuning a harpsichord can't take all that long can it? I remember the tuner at MSM, and she didn't take too terribly long. I think maybe an hour ought to do it.

No. Exasperated and sick of the upright, I finally left the church over 3 hours later, at 1:30am, and the old man was STILL tuning the harpsichord. The worst part? It was still out of tune. What was he doing in there? WHAT was he DOING in there for all that TIME??? I mean SERIOUSLY. Somebody out there hates me.

Motivation

2006-12-14T14:35:00.000+01:00

Today I have no motivation. None. Being sick doesn't help. I get out of the routine. And I just realized that practicing is going to be impossible for the next 3 days unless I drastically change my sleeping pattern.

I have to get out of this chair...I will not allow myself to go back to bed and watch DVDs...but that sounds so nice. Augh. I'm so lazy.

GET TO WORK!!!!! NO!!!!! YES!!!!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I WANT A VACATION!!!!!! From what? Seriously. Vacations are for sissies.

A nice piano all to myself for hours and hours would be lovely motivation. Sadly, nothing like that around here.

This land is my land....

2006-12-12T23:35:00.000+01:00

This is a very weird city.

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- German animal rights activists have launched a campaign against plans to put up a giant ferris wheel in Berlin, saying it would disturb the sex lives of rhinos in a nearby zoo.

A group of investors has unveiled plans to erect a 175-meter high wheel for 120 million euros ($158.9 million) in the German capital, hoping to attract millions of visitors from 2008.

But animal rights activists oppose the project, saying the fully-illuminated wheel would disturb the rhinos' daily routine.

"We're worried that these endangered animals won't breed any more, which would hamper animal protection programs," Berlin's animal rights association said in a statement.

The planned Berlin wheel would be higher than the London Eye, which claims to be the world's tallest observation wheel at 135 meters, according to its Web site.

Jump on the bandwagon, kids! Everyone's doing it!

2006-12-11T20:53:00.000+01:00

That's right. Follow my lead and move to Berlin. Today I received emails from two friends, a Norwegian and a Californian, saying that Berlin is on the horizon. The Norwegian is a definite, in January, and the Californian...well, give her several months.

Finally, I lead the bandwagon. I drive the bandwagon. This is my band. Wagon. Piano. Whatever. VW? My dad drives a bug.

By George, I've got it!

2006-12-09T16:59:00.000+01:00

Maybe I should become a squatter! It's better than being a prisoner, I think, though I might become one in the process. Glenn Gould would be proud.

Now if only Michelle would move here so we could cause trouble together.... :)

The Code

2006-12-09T00:12:00.000+01:00

There is an unspoken code amongst musicians, a code governing behavior and social manners between colleagues. Every musician knows it and most follow its rules. For the benefit of non-musician readers, I will enumerate the main points below - if anybody would like to add to the list, please comment. (These are across-the-board valid for all musicians relating to one-another with the exception of a teacher-student relationship or between musicians who are good friends).

1. Never, never, never ask a fellow musician how much he or she practices. This is a very personal question, a very touchy subject. It's like asking, "How much do you weigh?" It's absolutely none of your business. Besides, it's more important how a person practices than how much. Some people need more time to accomplish what others can do more quickly. Of course, the best musicians combine the how and the how much, and in 8 hours, get done what mere mortals can't do in a week. To each his own.

2. Don't volunteer information about how much you practice. That's just rude. Nobody cares, and nobody is impressed. You're probably lying anyway.

3. Nobody wants to hear all the technical exercises you do. "I play the complete Hanon in a different key every day." Yeah, nobody cares. And you're probably lying. If you want a high-horse, be a gymnast.

4. Don't give unsolicited advice. If they don't ask, they don't care. "You should play the complete Hanon in a different key every day." Who are you, my teacher? Um, no.

5. Occasionally, if the conversation progresses in a civilized way, it's ok to ask current repertoire. But you have to cough up your current repertoire too. Please remember that personal anecdotes and stories about how you learned and performed Carnaval in 4 days are prohibited. Unless you want people to hate you.

6. If all the above problems have been avoided and the conversation is moving along nicely, civily, respectfully, and both people are interested, it's ok to talk about the interval span of one's hand. "How much can you reach?" is an more or less a neutral question. Everyone's hands are different, and everyone must come up with unique solutions for unique hands.

Again, in a teacher/student relationship, all this changes. A teacher should give advice--should make demands--and should ask all the tough questions, especially the "how much are you practicing" question, though usually it's clear by the playing; a student, in return, should be able to ask the teacher those "how" and "how much" questions. Also, musicians who are friends and need each other for support and inspiration may cross the line every once in awhile since it's not about bragging but about helping.

I don't know how much any of my friends practice, except that it's a lot. I don't ask; I don't need to know. And they don't ask me. We know the code. We follow it. However, it was my recent misfortune to encounter someone who crossed the line, someone who should've known better. It's insulting, offensive, and eliminates the benefit of the doubt we usually extend to new acquaintances. Maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal to non-musicians, but it is. The code-breakers are the type who put razor blades between the piano keys.

----

Moving on, I listened to some recordings of mine from ages 17, 19, and 20, and it alarms me a bit to say that I like my playing back then better than I like my playing now. Especially at age 17. I was much closer to my aesthetic ideal back then. I think conservatory derailed me into main-stream thinking for 4 years. Somehow I've got to get back. Back in the old days, my Bach was a pretty good (if mild) imitation of Glenn Gould - and you know what? It sounded really good. Now...now it's just a mush of half-piano style, half-harpsichord style, half-nothing style, a battlefield of differing opinions. I sound like nothing because I can't make up my mind.

I also listened to some chamber music recordings from the past couple years. I miss my girls, Sara, Rena, Joanne, Gaby. Making music is so much fun with someone else. Those were special times. These days making music is a lot of work. My lessons are fun, sometimes, when I'm not terrified or he's not kicking my butt. Then we start laughing and can't stop. A threatening comment like "I'm going to KILL you if..." usually sobers things up. Actually, he's one of the most wonderful, generous people I've ever come across, not to mention a fantastic pianist and teacher. I'm very lucky.

----

Tonight I babysat two adorable, clever little American-German boys, ages 6 and 9. We played soccer for a long time in their attic, and the older boy showed me all sorts of tricks. Sometimes I wonder if I never developed beyond the 4th grade. There's something to be said for sweet little kids who just like you because. Because nothing. Just because. I like them too, just because.

Lonely in...Seattle...No, wait, Sleepless in...Berlin

2006-12-07T21:49:00.000+01:00

I miss my dog.

Trumpet Tragedies, Queen of Nightmares, and God

2006-12-07T14:54:00.000+01:00

Just when you thought things were starting to get boring....

http://www.billandellie.com/sounds/TrumpetBloopers.htm

Also includes that not-to-be-missed Queen of the Night by the notoriously esteemed Florence Foster Jenkins. Really, your life is not complete until you hear this recording.

To cleanse the palate, watch God play the violin. Go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwEbOoVIwak

B.S.

2006-12-05T17:36:00.000+01:00

That's right. B.S. This country is full of B.S. I've just about had it.

1. Beethoven and Schumann. Last December, I was battling Bach and Schubert. Stupid German composers.

2. Boys Suck. Last December: Boyfriends Suck. Know what else sucks? The price of the Euro. When I first arrived, not even three months ago, 1 Euro = 1.25 Dollars. Now, 1 Euro = 1.33 Dollars.

3. Yesterday, somebody took the plastic bag covering my Bike Seat. Yep, a Bag Stealer. In a rainstorm. That's just mean.

4. Lest I forgot what country I'm in, I had a Gestapo agent as my visa interviewer yesterday morning at 7:30am. He made up all sorts of rules that none of the other Americans I know with visas had even heard of. Result? No visa. He wouldn't give me a visa. I didn't get a visa. They let all those Muslim terrorists into Germany, they let all those unsavory Turks invade Berlin, but they won't give me a student visa. Talk about BULLSHIT.

Seriously. All I want is my own apartment with a kitchen and a piano. And a visa. Is this really too much to ask? SERIOUSLY.

Pianist as Psychologist

2006-12-03T11:13:00.000+01:00

Dear Greg,

My love life sucks. I haven't been on a date in over a year. I find the piano more interesting than any of the guys I've met lately. What should I do?

Desolate in Deutschland

Dear Desolate,

Good grief! I'm not a psychologist, nor do I pretend to be!

Regardless, I can offer you two bits of common sense. 1) Be authentic. If you'd rather interest yourself with the piano, no one's stopping you. If you'd rather be out on dates, get yourself out there. 2) The piano is there to enhance real life, not supplant it.

Now, if your some reason, you are intimating that pianists (myself included) are stuck in the practice room and have no love lives, I suggest you reconsider! "Us Weekly" could easily devote an entire issue to the torrid romantic records of the great pianists.

-Greg

(www.andersonpiano.com/interact/ask.html)