Piano Practice

I used to be addicted to practicing the piano.  In college, and really long before that, I did it everyday, without fail.  It didn't matter if I had a concert to prepare for or not; practicing was a fixed part of my daily existence.  When my family planned a vacation, we made sure it was somewhere I could access a piano.  In college, I often spent six hours a day in a practice room, sometimes more.  My last year in New York, my school lent me an instrument to keep at home.  It took up about half of my studio apartment, but it facilitated my existence as a chronic practicer perfectly.  

Obviously, things had to change to some degree when I started working on a PhD.  When I first arrived at UCLA, I had to commute to campus to use the school's pianos, which were in short supply.  I was juggling coursework and, by my second year, teaching responsibilities.  I moved my childhood instrument to Los Angeles during my third year of graduate school, but as wonderful as it was having it in my living room, I didn't play it as much--or, at least, not as consistently--as you might imagine.  My reality had shifted; I was no longer a part of a practicing community.  Whenever a concert loomed, I jumped right back into practice mode and put in the hours.  But I didn't get up the morning after the performance to start learning new repertoire.  I took breaks, long hiatuses from practicing.  And I didn't miss it!

Or I thought I didn't.  People say that old habits die hard and it is proving to be very true in my life where practicing is concerned.  When I quit practicing for more than a few days at a time, my mood and psychology begin to shift.  I get uneasy.  I feel restless.  It sounds so cliche, but it's completely true.  Something is wrong; I don't feel like myself.  This has happened several times during extended practice breaks, but each time that I find myself moody and anxious, I have tremendous trouble pinpointing the problem.  I haven't been missing the piano consciously; I've almost forgotten that it exists and that I was once its loyal attendant.

Inevitably, I realize what it is that's making me uneasy and I start practicing everyday once again.  And it feels terrific!  I don't even have to ease into it particularly.  I start up full force.

I just experienced this cycle of events for probably the twentieth time or so.  But it has particular significance this time around.  I am in the midst of personal changes, having just moved to the Bay Area and submitted my dissertation.  And more changes await as I plan my moves for the summer and next year.  It is more crucial than ever that I hold onto the things in my life that have always been there--practicing being one of the most important.  

So enough blogging...back to the piano!

What's Cooking?

I have always liked to cook, but in the last year or two it has become, hands down, my favorite hobby.  (I even rank it above watching tapes 4 and 5 of the BBC Pride and Prejudice over and over again, if you can believe it.)  One of my good friends from New York, pianist Kimball Gallagher, who is an excellent and dedicated cook himself, suggested to me what may be the big attraction of all those hours in the kitchen.  Cooking, he says, is the complete creative experience.  You decide what you want to make, create it, enjoy it until you're satisfied...and that's it.  You clean up, turn off the lights in the kitchen, and go do something else.  The more I think about it, the more I feel that it is, indeed, that notion of completion that compels me to cook.  In most parts of my life, the work is never done at the end of the day.  As a pianist, there are always improvements left to make and pieces left to learn.  As an academic, there is always my dissertation left to finish (which, incidentally, does exist in a complete draft now..but next comes the book version!), new scholarship out there to read, another conference or job to apply to.  While I'm sure that plenty of chefs are occupied with the idea of making progress, so far I have let cooking be one activity where I'm not particularly concerned with self-improvement.  When I set out to make something in the kitchen, it is to enjoy it in the moment and share it with friends and/or family.  If the souffle falls or the tart burns, I might get discouraged, but I start fresh the next day on a new task.  Most of the time, my culinary disasters aren't too outrageous anyway, and something enjoyable emerges.  If only I could finish practicing and revising each day with the same sense of satisfaction and contentment that I experience after a good home-cooked meal.