It's Official December 14th 2009

December 14th 2009 - "Well I guess it's official, I don’t listen. That is why I play so bad. I am not focused on the sound. The only way to get better, the only way to make sense out of MusicaListening is to know that it always gets deeper. There is always another level to get to. I have only scratched the surface and then moved on thinking there was something new to find out. There is not really anything new, there is only that which is already true and you take it to the next level."

I wrote that a decade ago, apparently. Until I re-read it just now I did not specifically remember writing it. I do remember writing this sentiment or truth or discovery or whatever it should properly be called, many times, many many times ad nauseam nauseam, amen and amen.

The realization of it was so intoxicating. To be conscious that I was not actually listening to what I was doing, to comprehend that such a thing was possible after so many hours at the cello, my chosen profession, the thing that was supposed to bring me a living....  It was horrific, awe inspiring, sensational and depressing. What a whirlwind, no wonder I kept re-discovering this fact for so many years. I would even go so far as to say I was addicted to the cycle of diagnosis and practicing that went along with this endless circle of re-encounter.

As I write to you now in December 2019 I must confess I think it has only just begun to change. This entry is fortuitous to find because I find myself sincerely, truly listening differently lately. Hmmm... think I wrote that before? It just comes out and feels so new that for a moment there I didn't realize I was doing the same thing all over again a decade later. Wow, old habits die hard.

The part I wrote at the end was dead on, and the part to cling to for now. Listening didn't change, I changed, I found a new level. I am finding a new level even now, after 31 years playing cello and 10 years teaching orchestra. It's a new way of being while I am listening, and so it feels like I am listening for the first time. Perhaps it is my age also. Perhaps now I see that nothing else much matters in this aural art form except for the aural parts. That sounds so obvious that it can come across as comical to say it but it's so true. There is so much to get your brain, fingers and arms hung up on that the aural aspects can come in dead last on the priority map of performing a musical instrument. Like the opening thesis here, I have written that previous statement before too, in many variations. I have done many thing many times in pursuit of musical progress. And this is where age perhaps matters the most, knowing what works and what doesn't. I have tried thinking about music in so many different ways, so many different ways that I know, now,  don't work. I have tried to skirt around it, around the sound,  around being in the moment with the aural-ness of instruments around me. I have spent a lot of time thinking I could find something new, or some completely new way of thinking that wasn't 100% focused on the sound. Of course if anyone ever asked me my stock reply was "Of course I am listening, of course I know the sound matters". I don't think that was a lie, but at each new level of listening there is a judgement that passes in me that feels like any declaration that came before is now retroactively null and void, falsehoods of a person that doesn't exist anymore.

In order to stay focused on what matters, to not throw the baby out with the bath water, lets say that each new realization, each new encounter is a tone in a chord. If you have a root, and then the third, you have a completely harmonization, a complete tonality. If you discover later that you can add a 5th, and you quickly love the idea so you do it,  you have a more complete chord, a more complete harmonization, a more complete tonality. You don't then say to yourself, or anyone else playing with you "Now we have the right notes in the chord. Those previous ones were not really tones, this 5th is the real tone." Well... you see the folly already. It's only a 5th because of that root sitting under it, take the root out of the equation and you have to call that 5th something else.

Let's not judge our journey so harshly anymore. Let us say that the only thing that is official is that we are officially resigned to the fact that there will always be some new place to get to, some new plane of musical existence to explore. The present and the past are not two sides of a coin, or two sides of an experience, the light and the dark, despite how much we treat them that way. And let us give ourselves a smidge of credit. There is also the fact that there are aspects of music that change my listening experience and that makes it so challenging when trying to realize if we have taken an unnecessary path. The more we know about theory the better we hear. The more we know about a composer the more real a piece becomes. The more we know about the history behind and around a piece the more context we can give it in our own time. All these things, which seem non-aural are in fact serving the fulfillment of the aural goal. If we dwell on them two much and forget about the end product we get into trouble. If we do that human thing where we go, "Hey, these non-aural things affect listening, so what if there are other non-aural things affecting listening that I can discover?" I don't know that we literally say that to ourselves but that is what happens. We get curious, genuinely and sincerely curious in pursuit of something better and we loose our way. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, a wise person once said.

Stay well out there, stay focused and make sure to forgive yourself on a regular basis. Nothing is every official or final in this journey. That's why we decided to take it.

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Balancing Fear with Decisiveness June 26 2008

June 26, 2008 I wrote about Balance and wrote about Fear. When I reread it recently I first thought of it as my usual random wondering's and not focusing on a single topic. The more I think about it now though the more I realize how and why these two things are interwoven and why I may have been inclined to spend time on both and connect them. They are certainly worthy of separate treatment.

I have written often about fear or other such emotions connected with playing that are related to fear. In this entry in particular I was very declamatory about calling it fear specifically, not beating around the bush. What I had written about before June 26 2008 and many times since then is playing away from the cello, pulling away and playing in a tensed up way. At the time I am writing this I am practicing my part of a duet, the bass line to Bach invention No. 13 in a minor. Earlier as I got in to measure 16 I noticed it, the pulling away of the left hand, the pulling back and pulling up tension of the left arm. What note was I playing? F#, 1st position 3rd finger on the D string. As of this school year I have now played the cello for 30 years. How many 1st position 3rd finger F#'s have I played in my lifetime?! Certainly one would think enough of them to be comfortable with them and be confident in their accuracy. Alas that is not the case. Why? The simple answer is that it comes from being afraid, from being afraid of any of the following; making a mistake, playing a wrong note, those people listening not liking the sound, forgetting to do a certain something in the music, forgetting notes period, etc etc the list goes on and on.

Fear, a healthy dose, is healthy for us because it keeps us from doing bad stuff to ourselves. At least most of the time. And so its difficult to notice when the fear is unhealthy and this makes it easy to mushroom into an internal epidemic. We can start fearing the fear itself and what it might do to our playing, and then we are questioning why we are doing this in the first place and the whole thing spins out of control. You have to balance between that healthy amount and the amount that cripples you. But what is the balance? What tips the scales in favor of a less fearful experience? Decisiveness.

This was my declaration at the end of all this fear analysis on June 26 2008 was to say that all of it is fed by one looming problem, the inability to make a decision, a decision about the sound. If you never decide what you want, never decide what is good quality and bad quality, then the void that exist in the absence of decisiveness fills up with something else. Since fear is fairly prevalent, lots of things to be afraid of when performing music because so many things can go horribly wrong, that void fills up with fear.

And so what do I think about all this now...

You see, ours is an aural art form. It all comes back to the sound and what you decide about it. The decision making process about the sound, that logical step, balances the emotional part. Isn't it always so with anything worthy of doing in our world? I come across it so many times, that in order for the artful product to fully manifest itself it must be produced in a process that is balanced between the emotional vision and the logical order.

I will interject here something of an aside. In those moments when the fear is under control, at least more under control, I move differently. That stands to reason but I mean very specifically that different muscles get used. When I am focused on the sound in a more pure way, free from the distraction of an inner dialogue, something extraordinary happens physically and my hands and arms begin to contract and move in different ways than they did before, in better ways. Its above my pay grade to know exactly why but I do know for certain that we move toward sound. That is why deciding what we want about the sound matters so much. .... moving on....

Everything we are as fearful wonderful human beings with this discipline of music is based around the kind of sound we make. Everything we feel about it, think about it, and experience in making it is connected to those vibrations we call sound. Further, because we are so connected to it this way the sound effects us on a conscious and unconscious level. That's why we sometimes have pent up fear that we are clueless to the origins of. Ever not know exactly what you sounded like? Ever been surprised by a recording of your performance? Well your conscious mind and ears are surprised by what you didn't know, but all that unconscious programming running in the background is never fooled, ever. It is wise, and old and impervious to any lack of decision making on our part. There is something deep in us that always makes a correct judgement of the sound, sometimes we listen to what it tells us and sometimes we run in fear. 

Hoping you find a healthy dose of balanced fearful aural decisiveness in your practicing. (<= what a mouthful no wonder playing a musical instrument is hard)

Clay

Bach Invention No. 13 in a minor
http://ks.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/3/33/IMSLP00759-BWV0784.pdf