Thursday, September 30, 2010

What Feels Good

If I made a Top-10 list of the things that make me feel good, somewhere near the top would be playing a good concert. Tonight was the first NEC concert of the year, and mm it felt good. First of all, Jordan Hall was literally full to the brim...I counted maybe five or six empty seats. Second of all, it was like a football stadium, with all the cheering and roaring, even before we played a note. But most of all, the energy generated in each piece was so tangible and present, like a ball of fire, coming from the players and being spread to every corner of the hall, and bouncing off the audience back to us. It's a kind of energy you only get from the "youth" orchestras...this sort of wide-eyed, passionate, sometimes even overzealous enthusiasm and eagerness to share the music. I like to look around when I'm playing in orchestra, and these are some of my favorite snapshot moments: a man in the front row with his eyes closed and a smile stretching across his face the entire time; the kid next to him with a huge afro nodding along to the music as if it were rap or heavy metal, staring up at the stage; a wave of string players with their faces and bodies moving to the whirlwind of sound; and little smiles between stand partners.
They say musicians make the best lovers; I'd flip it around and say lovers make the best musicians. You treat the music you're making like you would treat a lover...with tenderness, passion, spontaneity, patience, and commitment. If you're a person who is capable of loving with all your heart, it will shine through in the music you make.
Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself how amazing it is to be able to produce sound. I've been playing violin for so long, it's easy to take this luxury for granted, but just think--with your two hands, you can create a medium of expression that encapsulates ideas that have spanned centuries. Out of your instrument can come sounds that draw the darkest secrets and strongest feelings from deep within a listener's mind. And into your instrument can pour all the emotions and experiences that have been stored in your body after a lifetime of living...it's a miracle, really, if you think about it.
If, by divine will, I am able to do such a thing for the rest of my life...well, I pray I will never ever take it for granted.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Oh my.

Two memorable lines from a phone talk with M.

Me: How was your weekend?
M: It was so horrible actually. We've been getting our roof fixed, and I was in my room watching TV when through my window, I saw one of the workers fall off our roof.

Me: How was your birthday??
M: It was okay. But actually, it was bad, because while I was gone, my cat ate my hamster.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

color me gray, with a silver lining

Maybe it's pathetic fallacy striking again through the dreary weather here in Boston, but it's been a gray few weeks back at school. On the one hand, I feel like a chicken running around with its head cut off, trying to handle all the things I've put on my plate and barely surviving. On the other hand, I feel almost bored. I have an old T-shirt that says, "Find inspiration everywhere," and I think I need to dig it out of my closet and start wearing it again, because that's what's missing these days--inspiration.
You can work your butt off and do everything right, but if you're putting all your effort in for the wrong reasons, ultimately you aren't going to feel 100% satisfied. If I'm practicing harder than usual and scheduling my time more efficiently these days, it's so that I can cross more things off my check list and feel some sense of accomplishment and self-worth. But to be honest, simple love for playing music has become less and less of a conscious factor behind my actions. Here are some realizations I've had that probably contribute to my decreasing motivation:
1) All humans are not created equal.
Some of us are just naturally more talented than others, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. There's always that group of people who are the first to catch on to something, the fastest learners, the most creative minds. They can revel in the luxury of intellectual superiority without having to lift a finger--they were born this way. Then, there are the people who actually have to work to get to the level of that first group. I've always considered myself somewhere in the middle; I know what it's like to be the first to figure something out and have to sort of wait for everyone else around me to understand it...it's a weird combination of triumph and embarrassment, smugness and self-consciousness. I also know what it's like to be with people who are waiting for ME to finally catch on...I can tell when I'm the "slow" one who has to work harder to try and keep up. It doesn't bother me too much when I'm in the latter group, because I can accept that I'm not the best. However, there are a few occasions when it really makes me second-guess the extent of my capabilities, and whether my hard work is worth it.
An example--Q and I have been playing in the same quartet for three years now. I think we work well together, we get along, and there have been lots of good laughs and good times...I mean, we must be doing something right, otherwise we wouldn't have stayed together for so long. He's always been sort of like my hero in terms of violin-playing, and while I consider myself his equal when we're working together, I am secretly in constant awe of his music-making. However, spending a lot of time with him also reminds me more than anything else that life is not fair. Here's what normally happens. Say we both take an audition for the same orchestra. I start practicing for it a few weeks in advance, I listen to recordings, drill passages with my metronome like a good girl etc. He prints out his music and looks over it the night before, and minutes before the actual audition, changes his mind about which concerto he'll play. We both take the audition and end up with pretty similar results, him a bit higher than me. Granted, there may be a lot of factors I'm leaving out...he's a lot older, more experienced, and spent a larger percentage of his childhood practicing than I did...but what it boils down to is natural talent, in my opinion.
The fact is, there are people out there who are just automatically better/smarter/faster/stronger...and while perseverance DOES make a difference, there is only SO much that it can do. This applies to everything, not just music. I go to a school where I constantly see examples of people who easily achieve a level of music-making I can only reach at my best moments. This should inspire me, but watching them, I actually find myself thinking, "What's the point?" And I settle back to my usual comfortable spot--somewhere in the middle, certainly not the worst and certainly not the best.
2) You can't control luck.
There are good years, and there are bad years. I try not to be too superstitious, but I really do think 2010 is somewhat of a "bad" year for me, in the context of my life. It started with me trying to make a celebration pound cake, which both exploded and imploded in the oven (yes, that's possible). Then, it moved on to several days of weeping sessions, losing eight pounds, and eating about five bites of food a day (YES, that's possible). With regards to music, I guess there were several instances where I really felt I tried the best I could, did the best job I could, and still didn't get what I want. Now, if this were a math test or a science project, it wouldn't bother me very much. I mean, I'm not trying to make a living as a mathematician or a biologist. But in music? When I do my best and don't make the cut, it bothers me. Well, really, it scares me. I don't let it affect my confidence or my belief that I deserved it. I just realize that no matter how hard I try, there's always the luck factor that I can't control. I mean, you can play like Heifetz, but if there is no dream job opening, you're not going to get your dream job. Once again, I find myself thinking, "What's the point?" And I settle back to my usual comfortable mode of living--chugging along, practicing my scales and learning my pieces, so that at the end of the day, I can check off all the items on my to-do list.

There are some professions where this sort of philosophy and work ethic will suffice, but music isn't one of them. If you make music for the ultimate goal of self-satisfaction and accomplishment, I don't think you will get very far. It doesn't work that way...there is something fundamental, something much deeper that exists at its core. Knowing this, feeling uninspired has made me very uneasy and stressed out lately. And on a drizzly cloudy Friday night as I packed up my things and trudged out of my practice room at midnight, after a long day of sectionals (zzz...), French (zzzz...), Schenkerian Analysis (ZZZZZ...), excerpt class (sigh), Pho with C (God always throws me a silver lining here and there :) ), and the gym, I felt like a shape in a child's coloring book waiting to be filled in with a gray crayon.
But then I pass by one of the practice rooms, and look through the window. There are five people inside, obviously students, sitting around in a circle listening to some piano quintet which is blasting through iPod speakers. They have music in their laps and smiles on their faces, as they nod and sway their heads to the music, eyes closed. Late on a Friday night.
Why do we play music? Oh yeah. Because we LOVE it.
Find inspiration everywhere. Amen. :)

Monday, September 6, 2010

Chloe

Meet Chloe, my prayer plant!
While getting settled into my new studio, my mom and I decided to take advantage of my three windows and get a plant. At first, we were looking for rosemary, because apparently being around rosemary improves your memory, and God knows my memory needs improving. But the flower shop didn't have any; just as we were about to settle for a cactus or something else low-maintenance, I noticed a cool-looking plant, so I asked the storekeeper what it was. It turns out that this flower shop is the only place in Boston that sells prayer plants! Prayer plants originate in Africa, according to him, and are generally only found in Florida or very tropical areas. They are BEAUTIFUL--green with bright pink stripes on the front of the leaves, and a musky purple on the undersides. I think their life spans about a couple years. But the coolest thing about them is, they recognize time! Every night at 7pm, they close up their leaves, and every morning around 11am, they open the leaves again. My question is, what would happen if you brought a prayer plant overseas? Would it get jet lag?
Anyway, I brought my new plant to her new home, and I think she's pretty happy here so far. Doesn't she look like a Chloe? I only have to water her twice a week. Also, now that I'm living alone, it's nice to have someone/something to come home to every day. :)

Friday, September 3, 2010

Scattered Thoughts from a scattered mind

I think it's funny how Asian adults think the word "social" is a verb. "Why don't you go downstairs and social for a bit?" "My daughter is in a single, so she's worried she won't social as much." "Let the children social together." It's even funnier when they speak in Chinese and only use English for that one word.

If there's one productive thing Lady Gaga does, it's that she can instill a tempo firmly in your head. Just sing American teenagers' favorite syllables (rah rah ah ah ahh, roma roma maa, GAGA ooh lala etc.), and you've got yourself 125 beats per minute. VERY useful for musicians, especially in audition excerpts. :)


Why would you get a blog if all you're going to do is copy-paste photos/videos/links and then write a one-sentence commentary? I understand that sometimes, the media says something better than you can, but isn't the point of a blog to WRITE? Like, with words...and with your own thoughts, and with multiple sentences that consist of more than 5 words?


At least 90% of the stuff people worry and stress and pull out hairs over, don't even end up being relevant in our lives. I know this, and yet...I just keep worrying. In a way, it's a "waste" of time and energy...but it's sort of like whether you'd rather be over-prepared or under-prepared for a test. I'd rather cross a threshold in life thinking, "Hey, that was way easier than I expected," than...well, thinking nothing at all.

When old people hold hands, they walk far apart from each other, so that their arms are stretched out. It's cute, but they take up the whole sidewalk. Why do they do this?

I love my mom.
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