…And Yet…

In my March blog, I wrote about the irreproducibility of art—how the “real thing” is the only “real thing”. Well, I stand by that 100%…and YET…

A very dear commenter left me a note suggesting leaving a bit of space for the “slightly-less-real”, yup, let’s just call it REPRODUCED art. And, well…(I’m ok admitting it) he is right.

I mean, while attending a concert live is surely the ne plus ultra, I am not about to toss my CD collection into a skip! (Spotify? Skip ye to the skip—I’ve truly had it with you! But that’s another blog…or two).

Because reproduced art is, above all, useful. It’s not the real thing, but it reminds us of the real thing. It can substitute for it, if imperfectly. (This recovering perfectionist recognizes the immense pull of the “perfect” at play). If we accept the imperfection, we can accept the reproduction.

Perhaps even my love for Rothko’s color-drunk canvases began…gasp!…with seeing them reproduced in a book? Or…two gasps!…on a POSTCARD! (Who doesn’t love art postcards? Alas, it’s not like most of us can buy an original Rothko).

Contemplating this, or rather, jerked into this self-confession by my dear commenter, I remembered the curious aphorism coined by the great physicist Niels Bohr:

“The opposite of a profound truth is also true” (don’t shoot me, this is an imperfect reproduction of his statement…).

This seems absurd, but take these examples:

The mobile phone is a blessing—The mobile phone is a curse.

The internet is a blessing—The internet is a curse.

Religious figure X brought peace and healing into the world—Religious figure X brought war and suffering into the world.

Pretty cool how that works, no? (I don’t know if all of these are profound truths…but they do flip nicely!)

For musicians, we have, among many others:

I need to practice—I don’t need to practice.

Sure, we need to practice. But sometimes (frequently?) it does more damage than good. Sometimes we need to just “do the thing” — perform—and stop the (wrong-headed) preparation. Sometimes, we just need to… do anything BUT practice!

In the case of Rothko et al, we have:

Art is irreproducible—Art can be reproduced.

The point is, the reproduction is just that. It is an approximation, a shorthand, a portable or affordable version, a cipher. In the case of recorded music, it is a disembodied, frozen, fixed version of one performance —that nonetheless can spark a mood, make you want to get up and dance, or even move one to tears … Go figure! It’s basically all wrong and yet so terribly USEFUL!

This, in turn, reminds me of Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII’s 4th wife, Anne of Cleves. Here, the painting itself was the reproduction—of a person—a representation that Henry fell head over heels in love with…only to discover that the “real thing” was not at all to his taste! Holbein’s painting was thus both useful AND all wrong…

(Luckily for Anne of Cleves she got an annulment instead of a beheading!)

In light of this messy paradox, wherein the reproduction both IS and ISN’T “the thing”, perhaps we can agree that every version of art has its purposes—and its limitations.

Put that CD to play, and enjoy. Or stream disembodied, jumbled-up bits and pieces of the Western musical tradition (hello, Spotify), and enjoy. Bring out your art postcards, posters, and coffee-table books, and enjoy. But ALSO…get up off the sofa and make contact with live, unmediated art: direct to your eyeballs, to your ears, to your whole being.

If you suspect I’m walking back on last month’s blog, well…

My blog always tells the truth—My blog…

"Disponibilidade" & the Art of Turning on a Dime

Lately I’m keeping busy playing several different flutes “each in order, all together” as F.M. Alexander would say. This is a technical challenge, and naturally, one that I alone threw at myself…why stick with one flute when you can juggle FIVE?? The goal is to be able to pick any one of them up and play well straight off the bat. To go from contrabass to piccolo and back without dropping a beat, to turn from one to another “on a dime”.

(Apropos of multiple flutes, I am reminded of Rossini’s little ditty: “What’s worse than a flute? TWO flutes!” Nonetheless he wrote flute duets in every single opera, so I suspect he was just pleased with himself for coming up with a clever joke!)

Anyway, I have been staring down a small collection of flutes: a bansuri (Indian bamboo flute), a contrabass flute (four times the length of a concert flute), a piccolo (half the length), a baroque flute, and finally the  “normal” concert flute.

Aside from their differing lengths, each has peculiarities of construction that requires adaptation—ideally instantaneously. At first, each one gently ask you to adjust, but in short order outright DEMANDS to be approached differently, else the result fall somewhere between questionable and perfectly dreadful!

This delightful little self-imposed challenge has invited me to explore my ability to adapt, which is to say to respond to a stimulus. Which is to say, to work on my Alexandrian technique. And in order to adapt, I must first be AVAILABLE to adapt. I must make the fundamental choice to be WILLING to adapt. In Portuguese the word for this willingness is “disponibilidade”; I put myself “ao dispor”—open to—adapting.

To clarify, the opposite would be to force the playing of every flute to conform to a single standard, to try to shove one flute into the “shoes”, so to speak, of another. Naturally, I have previously attempted this approach, which results in a squeaking piccolo, an overblown contrabass, a wooly-sounding baroque flute (hmmm, this one is particularly familiar…), and so forth. Nope, we cannot use the “ruler" of the concert flute to measure the others.

Instead, I use the principle of play and experimentation, exploring cause and effect like a scientist, removing—to the best of my ability—prejudices and pre-determined expectations.

The more I practice these (and other) flutes in this spirit, “asking them” how they would like to be played, the better the results.

[Deets for flutists: aside from the length of the flute, other variables include the cylindrical or conical construction of the tube, the size of the embouchure and tone holes, the height and shape of the embouchure wall, and the key system or lack thereof. All these affect the resistance, volume, color, and tuning, which affect the blowing, which affects everything…]

Immersed as I currently am in this back-and-forth experimentation, a sort of feedback-loop, it occurs to me that this spirit of disponibilidade applies to other aspecst of music-making as well, and to life in general. Being “available” for adaptation can be tremendously useful.

In any ensemble, it is handy to be able to “turn on a dime”, adjusting appropriately according to whether your part is the “solo” line, or a secondary or tertiary line. None works without the others, and—like bopping back and forth between disparate flutes—this adapting is one of the delights of ensemble playing. We push our part into the “spotlight”, then duck back into the color, or harmony. In Brahms symphonies, as far as I can tell, there is not a single uninteresting note or less-than-gorgeous line anywhere in the 25 or so orchestral parts. Ah, dear Brahms!! (It is perhaps a particular danger of the flute—top line of the score—to assume our part is always a solo!)

In life, too, it’s surely advantageous and pleasurable to similarly adapt to the demands of any situation. I’m the teacher: I run the show. I’m the student: I enjoy following someone else. I go to a lecture and sit quietly. In the break, I turn to the person next to me and a fascinating conversation ensues. We take turns switching from speaker to listener, and back. I speak to one friend with a specific level of energy, openness, and vocabulary, but with another friend—an entirely different person—I speak entirely differently. I mean, IDEALLY, I do this! (Lordy-me, I am soooo far from a master…)

In sum, we humans have the wits to become virtuosos of adaptation and disponibilidade, as long as we are tuned in!

So, metaphorically speaking, while of course we enjoy focussing on concert flute solos, in the long run, figuring out which “flute” a particular situation demands, what part we play in the whole, and adapting ourselves, can be tremendously fulfilling. There is so much richness and plain old fun in the switching around: being now the flighty star, now the hidden warmth of the harmony, now part of the propulsive rhythm section. Go for it: turn on a dime!

I'm Quitting Practicing!

(Did I catch your attention?)

The more you know me, the more you know that I actually like to practice. I actually LOVE practicing. So…what gives?

I’ve come to a realization, and it has to do with the fact that the words we use are important. If I tell someone, or myself, that I’m having a “crappy” day…I’ll probably feel worse immediately. If I tell you the sky as “blue”, you’ll probably be less intrigued than if I describe it as “sapphire lit from within”. Words are important.

And this little word, “practice”, gets a whole lotta use in the music world. Most of the time it carries a dreary, heavy, grind-y weight around its neck: “I gotta practice”. “If I don’t practice, my lesson will be crap”. “I’ve practiced N hours today and have X left to do”.

So I propose that we simply DUMP the word “practice”, because when we do it properly, we are actually:

• Enjoying making sound

• Experimenting

• Playing around with different expressions, different solutions

• Listening and feeling

• Playing “for real”

And all of those things we consider fun!

So please join me in this switcheroo: Cancel the ball-and-chain word “practice”; let’s call it “PLAYING” instead. As in: I’m off to PLAY flute! Sounds a lot more fun (because it is).

I hear you saying: but what about practicing SCALES?? It must be done and surely it’s no fun!

Ha! “Even” with scales, approach them as above: experiment, listen, feel the meaning of notes climbing up or dropping down. See if your scales don’t get cleaner and more expressive faster than when you slog it out “practicing”. Dare ya! (BTW: for scales, you may substitute tone exercises, studies, finger exercises, etc.)

The very word “practice” implies you are “trying to get it right” but are NOT YET doing it right…it implies you are not yet doing THE REAL THING. Kinda negative, no?

If you always play for keeps, there will be much less of a shift to the moment of performance. Either way, you are always PLAYING MUSIC. You might be playing music slowly, you might be playing only two notes of music, you might be repeatedly playing small segments of music. But you are PLAYING MUSIC.

How do we eat an ice-cream cone? Do we practice? No! We experiment (top first, before it falls? Bottom first before it drips?), we play around, improvise, feel our way to satisfaction. Why should music-making be any less delightful?

Yup, I’m QUITTING PRACTICING -and PLAYING up a storm!

The Helen Jones Principle

I’ve never met Helen Jones…in person. But I don’t need to (even though I’d love to). She reaches through the screens of Zoom-land and sends me wisdom on a regular basis. (Who’s bitching about Zoom??)

In a meeting some months ago, I was reeling off various delays and hangups and frustrations and complications … . YADDA YADDA YADDA.

“Things take longer than you think”, said Helen.

Well now ain’t THAT the truth?

I jotted it down on a scrap of paper and stuck it on the wall above my desk: REMEMBER THAT!

And in the intervening months, the more I look at those words, the truer they ring. And the more I accept it as NORMAL. Possibly even desirable. While the time is being taken, one comes across hitherto-unknown, felicitous side-roads, discoveries, diversions. In a rush, not so much.

“Anything worth doing is worth doing well”, was the mantra of my beloved grade-school teacher, Mr. L..

And this “doing well”…simply takes more time than you think.

AND THAT’S OK.

This rejoinder came straight away from another member—or several—of the Zoom group; it’s practically our motto. (As in: I didn’t do a scrap of work today…AND THAT’S OK. Or: I worked 15 hours straight today…AND THAT’S OK.)

During March, I was hibernating, hunkering down to get some creative and practicing work done. I enjoyed it thoroughly. And still, the Helen Jones Principle hit me upside the head pretty much daily.

Things take longer than you think.

AND THAT’S OK.

For April…more hunkering. Why? Because “Anything worth doing is worth doing well” (we should insert a caveat about WHAT we define as “worth doing”, but that’s for another day, another blog), and because “things take longer than you think” (except when they don’t…Gladwell/Blink/…yet another day/blog).

Thank you so much for the peace of mind, dear Helen—I’m going to ENJOY my hunkering down to do the work, for just as long as it takes.

A Gold Star for… Young People!

On one of my favorite podcasts, the co-hosts trade turns giving—to themselves or others—”Gold Stars” and “Demerits”, which range from silly things like emptying the dishwasher (Gold Star!) to serious things, like reading your iPhone instead of paying attention to a child (“Demerit”!).

So today, as we near the end of this long and strange school year, I’d like to award a GOLD STAR to the many Young People in my life who are doing exceptional things. It’s easy to say they (not us, no, not us, never!) spend too much time glued to YouTube and so forth, but the evidence is otherwise. These kids are pulling off a lot of serious work, under enormous pressure—from family and societal expectations, academic pressure, a shaky economic outlook, and, of course, a … pandemic.

In my own life, I see this up-close and personal with my 12th grade daughter, working furiously to finish high school well under the oddest conditions, looking forward to college (hoping to not start college on Zoom in her bedroom…), but still finding time to participate in a peaceful protest here in Lisbon last weekend. The word “commitment” comes to mind.

Likewise, the constellation of my students, prospective students, and many other flutists I’ve met briefly in classes, shows me the power of this generation to PERSIST, to keep on working, striving, improving, (while waiting for a live concert like us all), and yet, remaining profoundly humane to each other at the same time. I look forward to being able to greet and hear them IN PERSON before too long.

In the meantime, everyone is “making do” (“desenrascar” in Portuguese, a great word) using Skype, Zoom, and recordings, in spite of the limitations and imperfections involved. A huge thank you to you all, along with the GOLD STAR, for your dedication, effort, and good cheer!

Poster for our 8th and last recital of the year at ESART (a Zoom event, naturally)

Back in the saddle!

I've been enjoying the last gasp of Summer, before things really get rolling next week! Of course practicing anyway, but also had a short trip out of town to catch up with my European cousins and stock up on inspiration!

As we all get "back in the saddle" (Wild-West terminology still in the language!) here's some advice I even hope to follow myself: spend not too much time in the "comfort" zone, nor too much time in the "impossible, panic-inducing" zone, focussing instead on the "learning" zone in between these two extremes, where we push ourselves without causing panic (and extra tensions). Go steady, enjoy even the mistakes, and progress will come!

Here's a little angel to watch over us all, found on my travels:

Bas-relief by Eleonore Blount