Compin' it up

I have no witty line to open up this blog post, and I have no apologies for taking three months to write it. Time is moving in weird ways for me, simultaneously compressed and expanded. Once again, rather than try to be poetic ('cause I'm not sure that's ever successful), I'll just give you a run-down.

1. This isn't a specific event, but I do feel that I need to start with the backdrop. Which is this: little town out on the prairie. You know that, right, since you've read previous posts. But if you haven't been here, you don't know it. You don't know that 20 or so miles east of here there is some sort of climatological-geographical boundary that REALLY makes this the prairie, and that is never more obvious than when you are driving the two-lane Hwy 28 between the months of November and March, and the wind blows a little bit, and suddenly the half-inch of snow that just fell looks like that scene in The Empire Strikes Back (except there generally aren't space monsters to capture you, and the closest mountains are about a thousand miles away).

Yeah, so, Little Town.

On the Prairie.

Either element could act as an isolating factor in and of itself, but here, you have both. This hasn't been a particularly easy winter for me, and I've felt, you guessed it, isolated. On many levels -- isolated with only minimal colleagues, all of whom are overworked, isolated with few friends, fewer musicians. Don't get me wrong, there are some great people here. And they're all married, and can only hang out once every two months.

Also, I think this week is the first time the sun shone since September. I might not be exaggerating. I was beginning to feel like the girl in that story who lives on the planet where it rains all the time. Luckily it is spring (at least according to the equinox) and I can already feel my spirits lifting.

2. The upside of having a sucky social life in a town where there's one above-average Italian restaurant and pretty much nothing else is that I was getting a lot of practice in, for a while.* We won't speak of the last two weeks, though (more on that in #4).

*After adjusting to my job, that is. I think I give too much of myself when I teach here -- I always come home exhausted, and it will be, like, only 7 or 8 p.m. Hard to practice then when you feel wiped out. The two months before my recital I made myself practice then because it just had to happen. Usually I was able to somehow find a second wind.

3. Speaking of recitaling, I did just that. I played 8 recitals in 3 states in 3 weeks. That was fun, exhausting in a different way. (Ok, but surprisingly, not as exhausting as my teaching job.) The thing that was most difficult was having not so much practice time for the last leg of the 'tour,' when I was in Utah. I need about 5-6 hours a day, consistently, to give a solid performance. When I was there, it was only about 1-2 hours a day. So some things were not as clean as they could have been. But that's live performance, I suppose. One thing that pleased me a lot on this tour is that the Paganini vignette in Carnaval came together 4 days before my UI recital. I'd figured out how to practice it. I mean, I'd been practicing it all along, but one specific technique I'd forgotten about. And then I remembered it, and then I could play it (which is good, since Paganini is a bitch).

4. Now it is the season of Studying for Comprehensive Examinations. That's what I've been doing this week, and oh yeah, it's spring break. So I'm not in New Mexico at the MTNA conference (with many of my friends) because I have a crap-load of books and articles to read so that I'm prepared. I was feeling good about my research until Wednesday, but in the last three days I feel I've fallen behind. Two more weeks until they start. Here's what I'm researching:

A. The History of the Nocturne. I feel like I've conquered this question pretty well. What pleases me so about it is that it will be the rough draft of the first chapter of the DISSERTATION. I like this, two birds-one stone deal.

B. Winterreise, the amazing song-cycle by Schubert. Also amazingly depressing. Also, I didn't have insomnia this week until I started intensely studying this work in depth, although I'm sure the two events are unrelated.

C. Analyzing the Mozart C minor Fantasy (K 475) using CPE Bach's treatise on the true art of playing keyboard instruments, and specifically the chapter on improvisation. I have been given other articles and books to assist me, and speaking of SMALL and ISOLATED, the library at my school has none of them. I invoke the Gods and Goddesses of InterLibraryLoan to come rapidly to my assistance, so mote it be.

D. A practical question on piano teaching, which I like (since I've been doing it for 12+ years and since it will continue to help me): a student comes in with a piece by a composer you don't know much about/haven't played much of. How do you prepare?

E. Choose a composer, any composer, and write about his/her contribution to the piano repertoire. What makes it significant? How does it stand in relationship to the other literature? Use lots of examples. I, of course, am going to choose, wait for it ... Brahms! Bet you didn't see that coming.

As you can see, good questions. I am learning a lot. I like my questions. I need 5 more weeks of spring break and no students so I can fully exhaust all possible resources in my research. Well, that ain't happening, as comps start in two weeks and one day. Plus students return on Monday. I think if they aren't prepared for their lessons I'm kicking them out.

Happily for my tastebuds, comps begin the Monday after Easter Sunday. You can see where this is headed. BRUNCH! You might recall that I was somewhat disappointed in last year's brunch, having built up expectations from the previous two years of Devotay's delightful buffet. Making your way through this current post to here, you will have surely realized that in this town, there is no brunch. (OH THE HORRORS.) I eagerly anticipate whatever is on Devotay's menu, especially if it is related to one or more of the following: mimosas, bacon, chocolate.

Alright, my eyelids are drooping. This is a good sign.

Blogging as a cure for insomnia?

You'd never know it from reading this blog, but I rarely suffer from insomnia. If you do read this blog, it may appear as though I have it all the time; this is not true. What is true is that when I can't sleep and don't have the mental capacity to do anything else, I blog. Lucky you. I am unsure why this is happening right now; I did have tea today, but it was before 1 p.m. No outrageously long naps (in fact, no naps at all). Hmm. Maybe it's post-choir concert adrenaline rush? I think I played pretty well, aside from one really LOUD clunker in the piano solo in 'Homeland'* (what can I say? It was a crescendo to ff, at least I played musically) and a little bit of rushing in Alma Caribe, which, oh yeah, was put together YESTERDAY for the first time. Lots of tricky rhythms in that one, like one downbeat followed by four measures of syncopations. But overall I was happy with how I played. After six semesters, this was my last Camerata concert (bye-bye TA, bye-bye funding, sniff). Anyway, I looked and looked for someone to go out with me after the concert, and no one would (seriously, I don't care if your boyfriend has 'pneumonia'), so instead of going out to eat pizza and drink beer, I came home and ate a handful of wasabi almonds and some dark chocolate. Maybe I should have had a beer. 

*Gustav Holst's 'Jupiter' from the Planets is one of the greatest melodies written. Ever. No one should be allowed to set patriotic clap-trap lyrics to it. Ever. And yet a certain Z. Randall Stroope did. His name says it all. Why oh why did Dr. Stalter allow this to be programmed? I hope that I forget these awful words immediately if not sooner. And if I don't, Z. Stroope, if I am cursed to forevermore associate you with 'Jupiter,' I wish only that there might be a special place reserved for you in the seventh layer of Dante's Inferno. 

TO-DO LIST

Play a million and one voice recitals, check

Take listening exam* for post-1960 music**, check

Play choir concert for Camerata, check

Play portative organ for Kantorei, tomorrow (didn't have my camera handy tonight, but I hope to score a sweet picture to post here re: this organ)

Play penultimate voice recital, Sunday

Play ultimate voice recital (of the semester), sometime in June? [thanks be to incompletes]

Play C minor violin sonata by Grieg, Tuesday

Fail piano lesson because I've been doing too damn much accompanying, Tuesday

Go to Hawk Wok and have a Simpsons and beer marathon before collapsing, Wednesday 

*If I have calculated correctly, I think I got a 93 on this exam. Not as stellar as the 100 on the mid-term, but passable nonetheless. 

**What I loved on this exam:

Berio, Sinfonia, 3rd mvt. I think I could listen to it all day long.

Rochberg, String Quartet No. 3

Tan Dun, Death and Fire, Insert 2: Senicio (incidentally, Paul Klee's Senecio happens to be one of my favorite paintings)

Schnittke, Concerto Grosso No. 4, 1st mvt

What I liked on the exam:

Elliot Carter, String Quartet No. 3

Boulez, Notations, 2nd mvt

(both surprises, yes?)

What I never want to hear again:

Crumb, Night of the 4 Moons (bongos? seriously?)

Takemitsu, Piano Distance (Boulez already did all that, and I don't want to listen to that either)

Berio, Piano Sonata (Too. Damn. Long. There is no need for 23 minutes of this)

Finally, finally, my eyelids are drooping. I still sort of want that beer, but I want a complete REM cycle even more. Let's hope this attempt at sleeping is successful. 

This is how it works: you're young until you're not, you love until you don't, you try until you can't

Have you ever been kept awake by a piece of music? I don't mean the obnoxious upstairs neighbors playing their crappy hip-hop music at 2 a.m. (luckily, this doesn't happen to me!). I mean, there is a song playing on a loop in your head and it is going so strong that your thoughts don't quiet down to the point where you can blissfully leave consciousness. If you look at the time-stamp of this blog post, you might guess that this is currently happening to me. And you would be correct. I am listening to, in both my inner and outer ears, 'On the Radio' by Regina Spektor. It was on the radio (somehow, I don't think this song intends to be self-referential in a post-modern sense, but because of my current music history class, that's how I have started to interpret things) a few weeks ago and I heard it for the first time and it was one of those songs whose lyrics captivated me immediately. Plus it has a real catchy tune. Today I downloaded the album it's from, Begin to Hope. I guess it's my own fault that I can't get it out of my head; I put it on repeat before I went to bed and it's already crept into my iTunes top 25 most played songs. I'm sort of (sort of?!?) OCD about new songs ... as you can tell, I put them on repeat and listen to them over ... and over ... and over ... until the saturation point is reached. This often happens with songs to which I have a very direct, a raw honest emotional response. 'On the Radio' fits this description aptly at the current moment. 

This is how it works: you peer inside yourself.

Well, since I'm here, and the music in my head shows no signs of abating ... 

GOOD/BAD

Went to the eye doctor yesterday for the first time in five years. I've been wearing glasses since I was nine years old and went religiously to have my eyes checked when I was younger. But in my adult years, the lack of appreciable deterioration in my (let's face it) already pretty terrible vision has led me to become lax in scheduling check-ups. But recently I've noticed that my right eye is pretty fuzzy when I read music on the piano rack, especially when I'm in not brightly lit areas or when I'm tired. Turns out, my vision is mostly the same, but the astigmatism has shifted slightly in that eye. GOOD! I'd like to get some new frames, since the ones I have, while still in good shape, have some paint chips. Kind of a lot, actually. What I'd really like is the exact same frame, since the shape looks good on my face, it's a nice color (chocolate, but really the color looks good on me), they are lightweight, they are thin at the temples, they have magnetic clip-on sunglasses (that in five years I have not lost or broken, even with a four-year-old nephew). Guess what? They are no longer manufactured. BAD! So I ordered some new frames. They might be a little out of my comfort zone, since they will be black and red, but I figured that I really like red and it looks as good on me as chocolate (the color, not the food). Also, they are rimless on the bottom and I really don't want new glasses that will make me look remotely like Sarah Palin, but I think I am safe from that. 

This is the second time in three months that I've had my senses checked. Ok, auditory and visual. But really, who gets their senses of smell, taste and touch tested? I rest my case. Everything is functioning well. GOOD! One of the tests they did yesterday was to take digital pictures of my retinas, which looked so cool. I stared, one eye at a time, no blinking, into this hole in this machine, at a green dot, surrounded by black, surrounded by a red circle, and then there was this weird experience that included a green swath of light when possibly the aliens got into my head and extracted my brain without my knowledge or consent. And afterwards I got to see my retinas on the computer screen, and they totally look like pictures of the horsehead nebula.  

BAD: stress I am starting to feel at all of the impending end-of-year school events. I can tell I'm stressed out when I'm playing piano, and my foremost thought is, "I don't want to be here doing this." That's called doing-too-many-things. Some of these things are recitals that people told me would happen long, long ago, before spring break, and they didn't happen then, and now they are being postponed so that a whole cluster of events in which I am performing will occur within, like, a four-day span. AAAAACK. Ann no function well. I think this means I need to raise my rates.   

SEMI-GOOD: some of these performances include Brahms. This is only semi-good because the Zigeunerlieder are bloody difficult. I suppose that's because I haven't actually PRACTICED them, per se, I just show up and sight-read them at tempo for lessons, and end up leaving out notes and playing quite a few wrong ones. Still have one month before that performance. GOOD! 

GOOD: only one page left of Beethoven Op. 110 until it's all memorized! VERY GOOD! 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Currently listening to: Regina Spektor, 'On the Radio,' but you already knew that. 

No desserts to report this week ... but I do think the London Fog at Starbucks (which is basically an Earl Gray Latte) conspires to empty my bank account. Rarely do I go to corporate coffee shops, but I happened to go on a recent road trip out of convenience. And now temptation in a 10% post-consumer-waste paper cup beckons to me. 

-I laugh until I cry, I cry until I laugh. 

Insomniac grumblings from the bed (which is in a different room than the piano)

IS PU-ERH REALLY CAFFEINE FREE?

I have my doubts. This evening one of my little piano students, Daniel, from the Suzuki music school where I teach*, had his book 1 play-through party. Congratulations, Daniel! He did a great job, as I knew he would. Afterwards, his family had a dinner with lots of their friends over, as many people often do for play-through parties. After the beer, food, wine, and dessert, there was tea. It was very good tea, as Daniel's family is Chinese, they served Pu-erh from China. They assured me it was caffeine free. 4 cups and several hours later, I'm not so sure it was ...

*I have a lot of good students at this school. I had a lot of good students at the other school where I taught, but there were a fair share of, uh, mediocre and less-than-highly enthusiastic students there too. The ones that think that when I wave my magic wand that they'll instantly be able to play Linus and Lucy, or Für Elise, or whatever is the rage of the day. Anyway, I am quite pleased with my students at my current school. Now if only I didn't teach in the basement ...

FILE UNDER "AWWWWW FOR CUTE"

After Daniel played, the family's friend Audrey asked me if I would play something. Uh .... ok. Let's see, I have the Prokofiev 3rd concerto memorized* and some brand-spankin'-new Liszt. As in I just finished memorizing it about two days ago. Since it wasn't a very intimidating crowd, I played it. [It = Sonetto del Petrarca, 47 from Deuxieme Annees de Pelerinage, forgive the lack of accents.] It went ok for the first time out, now I know what I have to work on. ** When I finished, Daniel handed me a card that said (this is his seven-year old spelling): "Your a super star." 

*On an upright and with no second piano, I'm not sure anyone would want to hear it (ok, really I wouldn't want to play it). 

**Since I'm playing it in about three weeks for the Franz Liszt festival our university is holding. Alan Walker is going to be here!  Yes, this Alan Walker. He is going to be here! And I am playing in a festival that he will be part of! And I'll get to meet him! So! Cool! 

I KNOW, I KNOW, I'M AN IRRESPONSIBLE BLOGGER or CAN A BLOG CAUSE AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS? 

You would probably be shocked to know that EVERY DAY I think about coming here and writing. I do. I think, "I should take a little jaunt over to blogger and write something interesting, or at the very least, show these three or eight or nineteen interesting links that I have recently come across." Obviously this does not happen. I think, in part, this is because I feel sort of identity-less here. In some ways, that's good, I mean, I like the level or non-level of anonymity I can choose and thus create. What I mean about my particular space being identity-less is that most blogs or online diaries or what have you seem to have some sort of purpose. You know, this person's blog is about ... (stealing my friends' topics as examples) wine. This person's blog is about photography. This person's blog is about new music. Sometimes you get someone like Mimi Smartypants* whose blog isn't about anything specific per se, but it's an interesting and humorous online diary that is worth reading. I have been wrestling (have I really been wrestling with this? ok, perhaps I'm getting too dramatic because it is in fact so late and I do in fact have too much caffeine rushing through the bloodstream) with the purpose, or more precisely, lack thereof, for this cyberspace entity. I think it's because whatever product that I put out there and ends up here, I want it to be articulate and interesting, and whatever shoddy showing I've done recently fails to accomplish even that. So. Here's to a new year** and a new resolution. 

*Yes, I know I've linked to her before. Her comic genius has made me laugh aloud several times. This is why she gets the multiple links, even though she trashed blogs that start with "Random thoughts ..." I defend my title. They're random entries that generally have no particular threads linking them. Also, I still consider myself a neophyte to some of the more, um, I don't know how to say this ... the internet phenomena that used to be real geeky and somewhere around five years ago turned normal/cool, so it's not like I'm even aware of these other blogs that evidently share my name. (Am I always this late jumping on the band wagon? Maybe I'm so late it's not so common anymore.) Also I'm not creative enough to come up with a different title for my sporadic entries. So there. The end. 

**It's still a new year, right? It's January. Also it's Chinese New Year next weekend. 

HOW I'VE BEEN SPENDING THE END OF A VERY NICE BREAK

This has been a great break. I'd classify it as the most restful vacation I've had for two years. Here's what I've been doing:

Yoga, occasionally.

Practicing, 3-5 hours a day.

Little organizing projects around my house (I would have liked to accomplish more in this arena, but sleeping in on many occasions took care of that).

Eating out (Fair Grounds coffee house, Bluebird Diner, Devotay, Oyama Sushi). 

Making my first ever meal in my crockpot. 

Borrowing DVDs from the public library and watching them on my MacBook.

Here's what I've watched, roughly in chronological order:

There Will Be Blood

The Book of Life

Maxed Out

The Manchurian Candidate

Confetti

Zoo

The Yes Men

Kilowatt Ours

Curse of the Golden Flower

The End of Suburbia

Everything is Illuminated

I think I will spare you my opinions and commentary this time around, but I will say this: The Yes Men made me laugh out loud. Zoo made me cringe. 

AND THUS ENDETH THE FIRST BLOG ENTRY OF 2009

I hope it was as good for you as it was for me. 

GOOD NEWS POSTSCRIPT

For quite some time, I've been a little ... hmm, not sure "worried" is the right word ... how about preoccupied with the notion that my hearing has suffered some sort of a loss. Mostly because if I'm in a loud place and I'm trying to hold a conversation, it's all but impossible for me to discern what the other person is saying to me. Thursday I got my hearing tested (yup! I braved the -55 windchill for the sake of my hearing. I am a true musician) and I am happy to report that my hearing falls within the normal range. Although my right ear hears better than my left ear -- at some frequencies, by as much as 20 or 30 decibels (I guess this is kind of weird). I did notice during the testing that I am definitely right-ear dominant -- to listen to sounds in speakers, I leaned in with my right ear. Here's why I have a hard time in a loud place: the normal range for people is to be able to hear -2 to -5 decibels below the "noise", and I hear -1.6 decibels below the noise. Interesting. Whew, glad I'm not going deaf. 

Caffeine-induced insomnia

It's my own dang fault, I should not have had that second cup of super-strong Earl Grey Tea at 4 p.m. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not that late in the day, but since the semester hasn't started, I'm not yet sleep-deprived enough to have it not affect me.  

So I went to the library again today and got more DVDs from the list:

Across the Universe

Thank You for Smoking

Once

Watched Across the Universe with my friend R. after we had this splendid afternoon*: the aforementioned tea complemented by delicious chocolate muffins, the aforementioned trip to the library, then a long walk through Iowa City that included stopping by the new music digs and the large and wonderful Hickory Hill Park.  

*Even before getting together with R. the day was rather splendid -- finished memorizing the first movement of the Prokofiev; it took only 10 days!

So -- Across the Universe. This is a movie that I should like, in theory. In execution, I'm not so sure. The concept is brilliant: take a bunch of Beatles' songs, string 'em together to form some semblance of a plot. In reality, the 'plot' was a bit thin, I thought. Also, some of the effects that might have looked cool on the big screen seemed real cheesy when watched on a laptop. And using some of those songs to further drive the plot along was a reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal strrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeettch. But, what this movie did do for me was rekindle my latent interest in the Beatles' music. I've always liked them (maybe not the early stuff as much, but definitely their mid-late period) but don't have a lot of their music in my personal collection. I have Abbey Road; when the movie was over I came home and listened to it twice. And I think I might get some of their other albums -- for instance, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sergeant Pepper's -- from (where else?) the library.  

The other thing I've been listening to tonight is this amazing song, Hallelujah. So far I've listened to Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, K.D. Lang. I know it's a Leonard Cohen song, but my favorite, so far, is the first Jeff Buckley link posted. I think. Or maybe the second one. And this one, which has been added late, is nice. The Rufus Wainwright one is good too. This is one of those songs that I've been listening to over and over and over tonight. Do you have songs like that? It's like when I get a new CD, and I listen to my favorite song on repeat, like, a thousand times. Hallelujah is currently that song. I think that when I buy a guitar, which might not happen soon but will probably happen sooner than you think, this will be one of the first songs I'll learn on it. 'Course, I can always learn it on the piano. Then I'll sing it and break your heart -- 'cause it's a cold and broken hallelujah.