Brief thoughts (I promise!) and your daily vitamin WTF.

1. I practiced today, yay! Maquarre and Sancan (which was way better than usual) and Kokopelli, briefly, for 20th-Century Music Lit. Then, after orchestra, a violinist came up to me to compliment me on how in tune and gorgeous my Shostakovich solos apparently are. Conclusion: PRACTICE BREAKS ARE GOOD! But if you're going to take a practice break, you have to go for it. It needs to be more than simple laziness. It needs to be during a time you have off (like my fall break, which was this past week), so you can just stop stressing out and feeling guilty. Indulge in everything but whatever you "do"...for me it was no writing and no practicing, but lots of listening to music, shopping and snuggling. If done properly, I believe a thorough break can eliminate all the junk that builds up in your brain, making you see the music that much clearer! So you play better and are more energized.

2. It's really, really important to listen to your iPod on shuffle every day, especially if you're on a serious practice break. You can skip the comedians, poems, books, and awkward tracks with Jeanne Baxtresser talking. But if it's music, listen to it all the way through and don't skip it!!! It's lovely and so healthy. You'll listen to things you haven't heard since the very first listen and you'll fall in love again! Or be upset with the money you wasted (groan, Crystal Antlers), but 9 out of 10 times it's love. I promise.

3. I just got in from a concert with Nariaki Sugiura, my kick-ass accompanist and a lovely violinist/violist with a long name I can't remember, but her first name was Stephanie. Anyway, Stephanie did this sonata buy this Belgian composer, Ysaye (I think that's the proper spelling). Apparently, this piece that he wrote was the last piece of music he ever heard, about an hour before he died. What an interesting concept no one ever thinks of! The last piece of music you hear before you die. Now, sometimes I imagine you can plan that, but sometimes you can't. So listen to good music all the time and be thankful that it's good. I think my last music would be Beethoven's 7th (the famous slow movement) or Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. Et tu, readers?

In WTF news:

P4k mentioned harpist/psych-folk auteur Joanna Newsom's appearance on the red carpet at the Emmys earlier this year. This is a little WTF in and of itself, but it gets better: She went on the arm of The Lonely Island/SNL's Andy Samberg (which I guess makes sense because when the boyfriend saw her perform in Los Angeles, Samberg was there along with BJ Novak and the Indian chick from the Office). AND she sported a J. Lo-esque look with a low-cut emerald dress and a high, sleek ponytail.

Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Ah, never mind her WTFitude. She has good taste in men (cute, funny, bespectacled Jews!!!) . And her music has already proven her super-smart, so I guess a little bit of fun on the mainstream side can be forgiven. Party on, Joanna. Party on.

Currently listening: "Working Man's Blues #2" by Bob Dylan. Aww, sensitive Bob!

Fertile Sloth...how timely!

I'll preface this by saying that right now I'm listening to a recording of Philippe Bernold playing the Saint-Saens (which is still insanely gorgeous, though it seems I may have been taking it a little too slowly), and that is the closest I've come to practicing since the day of my last post (Thursday?). Today, while reading along in the score of The Rite of Spring, I was pleased to be feeling a little wistful, wishing I had time to practice today--I had to read three novellas, plus grapple with an ever-mounting pile of laundry. I'm glad to be having some feelings of practice withdrawal, however slight; it's probably more in my favor to be a workaholic right now.

But then I re-read "Fertile Sloth" by Michel Debost, which recommends work detox:

"The gaps in practicing caused by travel, vacation, family events or small injuries [!] are...quite necessary...[S]tore events and places in your imagination for future reference. A pristine lake, a great painting, a new friend, an enchanted party, beautiful love affairs (or failed ones), all will be part of you forever. Memories and thoughts are just as important as your...daily practice. Don't let the great American guilt machine ruin your free time."

Sigh. It makes me want to make a daisy chain or something.

When assigning this essay, my teacher pre-warned me that it was the total opposite of the American/Asian practice ethics in classical music, and of course she's right. Frankly, while I'm still feeling guilty about not having practiced in four days, the article is still a relief to read, and I have to give a little fist pump for it. As a person pursuing degrees in both flute and writing, I'm always excited whenever anyone says "Dummies! You can't make great art if you're always isolated." In fact, in so many words, that's what my degree-plan mission statement says down at the dean's office.

Yes, technicality is important if you're going to be a virtuoso (as Tromlitz told us all too well in last week's assignment...aaaaaaaagh!), but if you don't leave time in your life for love or sex or good food or calling your parents or partying or doing shit that makes you laugh, my hypothesis is that your art will be boring. Corny example: if the Mona Lisa didn't have that mystery smile, would we still love her so much?

Productivity feels good!

Practicing today was more like it: 14 minutes of P.E-D.'s warm-up, 18 minutes memorizing F Major Maquarre (WITH SUCCESS!), 15 minutes working on accents in La Montaine, 18 minutes on orchestra music, 28 minutes working on phrasing and technique in Saint-Saens and 27 minutes doing a Trevor Wye trill exercise to help with that piece. So two hours of practicing, PLUS a half-hour coaching PLUS 90 minutes of orchestra. Four hours of playing today, woohoo!!!

THEN, thanks to a large caramel vanilla latte at 1:30, I went running. And I ran SO FAST! And didn't get tired! It was a miracle. I felt so good. I love sweating! I wish I sweat as much when I played flute as I do when I run ("be careful what you wish for?"), because sweating just makes me feel so productive. It's a physical manifestation, just like the number of calories burnt that comes up on the treadmill when you're done working out. There's none of that in flute. And perhaps that's why writing's easier for me, too...because lots words on a page look pretty to me, even if they don't necessarily read so prettily.

Ended the day at a great concert by Eric Edberg (see blogroll!), my very talented accompanist Nariaki Sugiura and his very talented girlfriend and cellist Yeon-Ji. The program was ever-unique Menotti, too-long-for-comfort Brahms and an absolutely brilliant Kabalevsky concerto! Dr. Edberg was experimenting with having the audience clap between movements. It started out a great idea; his seminar class had made signs and jumped up and yelled and waved them--it was like a rock concert and added some spirit. However, I suspect that some people forced applause, which, after certain largo or adagio movements, sounded rather stilted and inappropriate.

Also reading some very angry Tromlitz, more on him later. For now, BED. And listening to the Coathangers. I love all music so.

Naahhhht an awesome day.

Practiced one hour today, plus an hour-long flute lesson and an hour of flute choir. So total three hours of playing. I know, not enough.

My headjoint and I are beyond our honeymoon phase. We're fighting. Or at least it's fighting me. It's in this awful stage where I (temporarily, I hope) can't play the way I have the past six years or so. The hole, instead of making everything brilliant, is making everything sound screwed up. Perhaps that's thinking about it the wrong way. It makes everything sound very raw. And I have to cut it. Like a geode. My ideal sound is the shiny part in the middle.

Exercises--working on No. 3 from Maquarre's Daily Exercises for the Flute. One good thing about Maquarre is that if you're going to memorize it, you absolutely have to tap into theory. If you don't understand I-vi-VI-ii-V/iii-iii-III-I, it's absolutely impossible and makes more sense. The last two bars, with the weird chromatic thirds, still doesn't really make sense. But I'll have to deal.

The Rodrigo Concerto Pastorale is hopeless right now, partly because of that but mostly because it's just impossible. When I took it to Gary Schocker, he immediately expressed distaste for the piece (he had performed it a few years ago with some orchestra), not because it's so difficult, but because he found it difficult for very little reward. He said that it didn't even sound beautiful if played perfectly. To me that seemed like a cop-out attitude at the time, but now I'm not so sure. I'd love to have it under my belt, but as far as the concerto competition goes, I'm now getting a little more interested in the Liebermann--that's a more standard piece, anyway.

Excited for the CFC competition and my recital. Feeling good about those, anyway.

I know everyone struggles with this (people who say they don't are full of shit), but sometimes I'll be practicing, and an hour or ninety minutes has gone by and I'll feel like I've done everything I can do. Clearly that's not the case, but sometimes it really does feel that way. And I have to go and chew on something or do downward dog for a few minutes, and then it will usually go away. But sometimes it doesn't. Today was one of the days when it didn't. Perhaps just exhaustion? I went back to my room, did reading for computer science and then fell asleep without realizing I'd fallen asleep. So maybe that was it. Or maybe it's because I didn't go running today.

Tomorrow's another day. That's got to be, what, at least the third cliche in this entry?