Random Thoughts

Originally uploaded by photoholic1

Posted by Beth at 10:55 AM | Permalink

The orpheum is bloody beautiful.

It's funny, we're being conducted by Sidney Harth, a rather large and formiddable old man who you need to be warned about before you play for him. After hearing the stories and the descriptions I was expecting a tyrant, and yes, he's rather brutal - but he also has an excellent ear, and his method of orchestral....intimidation....works. He's nasty and he's cranky, but yeah, there's a reason they get him back each year and I'm certainly not losing out on an opportunity to learn from him. I like that he demands the best from everyone, that he demands we put our stands down and actually play the music out, and I am grateful that he noticed that my stupid, insanely fast, evilly high triplets were not sounding like triplets, because I didn't notice - I thought all the notes were coming out, I was so sure that I went home and recorded it to double check....and goddamn the bastard was right - the second to last note wasn't sounding....still isn't quite there....but at least I know, and yeah, I'll be practicing that arpeggio long after we hand our music back in.

I have an interview for a teaching position at a music academy out in Richmond....it's a long way, but damn it'd be good to start getting paid to do music related stuff.

I need to tell people about my concerts before the day before.

It's snowing and all I want to do is run through the forest laughing, with you this time...in my mind. Maybe I'm losing the completely asocial aspect of myself, maybe that's a good thing, or maybe it simply is, or maybe it's temporary. It's snowing. How can I be responsible and serious when it's snowing? I sit and listen to the romance dance out before me and somehow nothing can taint that. Not even a single bar with seven notes and a slur to a high Eb. Nope. I love that bar goddamn it, and I'll play it over and over again because, you know, taken with the whole peice, it's really cute. yeah. cute. But I don't get cynical when I'm playing it. I can't. And I think maybe that, if nothing else, is a good thing.

It's snowing. snowing. snowing.

Posted by Beth at 1:33 PM | Permalink

Is alternately useful and terribly annoying, particularly when you're quite sure that you'll look back at this and laugh at yourself not too soon in the future. Fricking mind won't even let me be peacefully unhappy without laughing at me all the time....

I let myself be weak and there were no horrid consequences save a small amount pillow-pummelling. I do feel rather out of my element, trying to make a relationship work...well, perhaps not out of my element, it's just that I've never tried. Two years of mistreating someone who loved me more than I was really aware of doesn't count. The further I move away from that the more I realize how bad it was, but that's neither here nor there - I didn't consider him most of the time...I did sometimes, but only sometimes, and after that only bits and pieces of intensity, usually one sided or across the border.

I find the balance of humility and pride rather precarious; I'll play out like crazy and then find I'm in the wrong key. It's hard to keep playing quite as gloriously after that, but there's nothing else for it, really.

I've never considered myself to be particularily depressed, rather the opposite, actually, but it does take a lot of effort to be agressively positive, and sometimes I do slip, I've never really considered the idea that some people go without slipping down to the bottom ocassionally, but I suppose it's possible. I'm not like that though, and really, I wouldn't change it. I am me, and am alternating fierce happy/fierce sad with a bit of a grey-green slide inbetween. Not a bad way to be, really.

I have background promises I've made to people in my head right now; things they probably didn't really expect me to do, but that I wanted and haven't been able to do.

It's much simpler to know you don't have someone to lean on than to wonder if you're leaning too hard. If I could just not care quite so much it'd be easier, but then it wouldn't be worth it, now would it?

Posted by Beth at 5:40 PM | Permalink

Is another musician, or maybe a lover.

Sitting in Our Town again. I always seem to catch their open mic nights without thinking and without an instrument or music on me. There's a couple of guys on the little stage who look like they're serious about what they're doing. No one is paying attention and there's the decision that hasn't been made yet about whether to leave the unattentive audience alone and become background music or to harass them and risk being disliked. A real dilema.

I'm not good company right now.

He's playing a fun bassline that skips up and down like a fish. More like a trout than a bass. I should order another coffee to be polite, but there aren't that many people here and I want to sleep at some point tonight.

My backpack broke beyond repair today. This will force me to buy another one.

I have difficulty finishing songs; it's all there, melody, a bit of a chorus some possible bridge bits, but the words don't flow together properly and it feels too tightly held together. Breathing space is needed and I can't help thinking it doesn't make much sense to the listener.

The place is starting to fill a little bit, with musicians and their friends. bar chords. I need to make myself memorize bar chords. I also need to memorize three pages worth of somewhat atonal 20th century music and think about choreography. I think about my grade 12 physics teacher more lately, the first person to ask me are you happy? I need to thank him for that sometime.

Put it in a box and deal with the rest of your life.

Details, details, details, and money in the details. Balance and guilt and worry. Nothing others haven't gone through before, nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary.

My dad gave me a timeline without meaning to; on the phone he called it a transitory phase, it might last up to three or four years, he commented, trying to be comforting. So I have at the most four years to....to what, exactly? Land an orchestra job? That's a bit harsh - I know people who consider themselves professionals and are teaching in universities and getting paid for small scale performance stuff and have been out of school for about 10 years. Maybe to be at a stage where I am regularily auditioning for orchestras, getting paid for gigs, that sort of thing. That's doable, that's almost this/next year. I have a trio, we still need a name, we've only had two rehersals, but we've got a flute player that can play, has a professional photographer for a husband who is willing to do promo shots, and I think we're determined enough.

Wouldn't it be nice to rest for a bit.

I'm so very glad that it's raining. I want to strip and just run and run until I can no longer feel my skin. Instead I'll stay here a bit longer then head home, maybe make some reeds, wake up tomorrow and mail a package. Cold desperation of adulthood, huh? Pah. Transitory, and I love the rain as it runs cold down my face. Bits and ends again. bits and ends.

Posted by Beth at 7:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm a bit of a jumble of nerves right now - this happens now and then, I have to remind myself, and it'll pass, but unlike the other times where I was confident enough to laugh at myself for being upset over such small easily changeable things...this time, well, the solution is simple enough, but simplicity doesn't make it easy. I've lost a little faith in my ability to rise above the masses. I am getting better, I can play so much better than I've ever been able to before (somewhat like each moment you're older than you were before, but less dependable). I played a concert today where every solo was fun and I played it on a reed I made yesterday with no help...but at the same time I know I'm not good enough...yet. It's always not yet, and I finish school this year and it's still not yet.

What am I going to do? I haven't applied for grad school for a couple of reasons, mostly I don't think the benifit outweighs the cost, but also no one cares how much school you have when you're behind the audition screen. I need more time, the constant, nagging game of catch up or fake it, and you can't fake it, not really. I can't see being able to improve while working full time, I can't see paying my student loan payments without working full time, I still haven't called the academy about their artist diploma programme, but I'd still have to pay for that, and I wonder how much less it'd be than any other grad school.

I'm at the point where most people quit

I can't quit. Quitting on this would destroy me, and arguably I haven't even tried yet, not really..not yet. Better to try and fail? The question becomes when to call failure. I want to give myself a time frame, but at the same time I'm mortally afraid to for fear I won't make it. Most of this stress is counterproductive; witness me blogging angstily as opposed to practicing....but it's still early. I am a long way from giving up, but damn.

I'm getting ridiculously spoiled right now, too, which is probably why I haven't exploded in a thousand pieces just yet. Funny to have this, odd to be wanted and reciprocate, strange to feel the time pass and still feel right, to not worry too much about any sort of future, but to talk about it anyway. Yes, I like this quite a bit.

I need to find another job for January too...seasonal work and all...hmmm. I'm putting off everything relating to planning right now, and I need to stop that.

Conversation with my mother the other day really scared me. She's come to genuinely accept the the thoughts that plagued me during highschool. I overcame them for the most part, since they were, and are, complete bullshit, but it's frightening to hear her say things that depressed me for what felt like so long. I am, to a large extent, motivated by terror of allowing myself to believe the bullshit. I'm also usually really happy with what I'm doing; I'm not right now, but I expect this will pass as soon as I get my act together and plan a course of action. Indecision and stagnation infuriate and paralyze me alternately. gah. I am writing and thinking in circles.

I'm reading Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors right now; it's the first book that's made me close the door quickly at night in a long while. (I am so lucky, I got to rush back to a warm bed and a strange boy who is just as crazy in his way as I am...what was I whining about again?)

Time to make reeds.
Gnight.

Posted by Beth at 8:03 PM | Permalink