I am resorting to bribing myself these days to get my work done. This is really a last resort, because nothing else is working.

I shouldn't imply that I haven't been working, because I have. Obsessively. All the time. Morning, noon, and night. I am in a high energy cycle, which is dangerous on lots of levels. Dangerous, because I don't get enough rest, and because I don't allow any space between my actions, thoughts or obligations. Dangerous, also, because I get totally out of balance during these times.

I am acutely aware of this at the moment, because I just returned from yoga class and every pose only illustrated how out of kilter my body (and therefore my life) was. My scoliosis makes finding symmetry hard on the best of days, but today, I had no idea where center was. This, I should admit, was the first yoga class in over two weeks, which is the first sign that things have gone awry around here. I know better. I KNOW BETTER. I know that in order to have some kind of center, some kind of balance in my life I need certain things: I need to eat well, get enough sleep, go to yoga regularly, bike and walk, write every day, and practice. Of that list, I have been managing decent eating, marginal sleep and way too much practicing. And therein lies the whole problem.

Other things that help keep me healthy and on top of my life: taking some time to do some teaching preparation, instead of just winging it every day. (Yeah, I'm good at winging it, but that's not the point.) My days start better when I take time to do some reading as I drink my coffee in the morning. My days end more serenely and contentedly when I have dinner and conversation with Matt. But a close look at that more detailed list only shows more holes, for the last several weeks have been all about my fall studio recital, which took place last Saturday night. That is a big megillah indeed, requiring serious attention to picking out recital music, working especially hard in lessons on recital pieces, and then doing the program and organizing the reception. In addition, no matter how confident and together my students generally are, there is always an increased amount of hand-holding for both parents and students in the week prior to any big performance. So in answer to why I am not on top of teaching stuff I have two words: Fall Recital.

So while some of the reasons I am less than well balanced right now has to do with these very specific things and my own energy fluctuations in response to them, the other huge part of this equation is just the normal cyclical nature of being a performer. Given all of that, I have lots of reasons these days to be thinking about recitals and what they require of us. Not only was Saturday night the fall recital in my studio; last weekend I played a big recital with a flutist; this weekend I am doing a recording project with a singer. Without a doubt, there are certain areas of my life I have to put on hold in order to have the attention and focus required to do these things. In students' lessons, I have no choice but to let many important things go in order to simply have the time to devote to getting recital pieces ready. I fall out of habit of doing teaching prep work----picking out new music, reading through collections, sending organizational emails and newsletters out about upcoming events----because these things seem less pressing when we are getting ready for a recital. In fact, to look too far into the future when the present needs our attention is more than just distracting, it can actually be unhelpful. Of course, now that the recital is behind us, I find myself swimming madly to keep my head above water. I'm out of habit of putting in the teaching preparation time, and now I need to do so desperately. If we are going to take this recent performance momentum and run with it, I have to do some major catch-up work both in terms of picking out and reading through new music, but also in terms of asking myself, "OK. What does this kid need next? What have we neglected lately? What do we need to circle back to? What should we be revisiting now that we are playing at this new level?" This is a lot of work for 25 students, but it has to be done.

And it is the same with all the other things I need in my life---the writing, the exercising, the time with my husband. It is so easy to get out of the habit of making sure my days include all these things, and so painful to realize how out of balance I have become when they are missing.

Which is a long way of explaining why I am now resorting to bribery. I don't have to bribe myself to practice: That has never been a problem, and at the moment the sheer pressure of the gigs in front of me is enough to get my butt on the piano bench. But all those other things: the exercising, writing, reading, teacher preparation and so on that I need to do in order to not spin off this planet, I am now bribing myself to accomplish.

I am a big fan of bribery and reward systems, if not used by organized crime or our government. I have broken bad habits by using rewards; I get myself to yoga class and in front of the computer with the promise of chocolate or lattes. I may be too old for such silliness, but I have years of evidence and piles of accomplishments to prove that it works. At the moment, I don't even care about accomplishing anything, I just need to find a way to slow down, breathe deeply, and gather together the loose ends of my life and sanity.

Or at least that's the idea. But in the meantime, there's chocolate waiting.

It’s been one hell of a ride the last two months.

Of course, I did it to myself.  In spite of what everyone -- from my husband to my father to my best friend -- thinks, I really have tried to cut back and practice the art of saying no.  I had thought I was doing OK, with one big recital a month, but I miscalculated horribly on the timing, because suddenly I realized I had three huge recitals each two weeks apart.  This put me in the position of having to practice and rehearse multiple recitals at once.  I usually avoid this, if not to protect my hands and my sanity, then simply because I don’t have enough time to be doing rehearsals with multiple musicians or groups.  I can manage three or four hours of rehearsals a week on top of my teaching and practicing, but that’s it.  And three or four hours goes quickly when rehearsing a major program with a serious musician.  



In September, I played a program with a flutist that I work with often.  This included the glorious but daunting Franck sonata—a piece that has always seemed like a watershed piece to me.  For years, I thought I didn’t have the technical chops or large enough hands to play that particular piece, then suddenly I find that I do.  (My hands haven’t grown, but thanks to a new teacher and a lot of work, my technique has.)  I had plenty of time to prepare for that program, and plenty of rehearsals, so that recital went swimmingly.   It was after that one that things got dicey.

I rather reluctantly agreed to play several pieces on a university choir concert in October.  I agreed because it was one of those two rehearsals and performance kind of deals.  In the first rehearsal, due to no fault of my own, I discovered that I had the wrong edition of one of the pieces, so had to sight-read a very different part.  In another of the pieces, the tempo was incorrectly marked.  Of course, it wasn’t in my favor: it ended up being twice as fast as indicated and unfortunately it was a tricky Bach reduction.  I had two days to fix those problems.

Next, I played a recital with a graduate oboe student.  Her preview in front of the wind faculty was the same week that I was struggling with the above choir music.  The preview is essentially when a student’s recital grade is given, so it is a big deal.  Regardless of the fact that we might still have two more weeks to pull things together (or finish learning music in my case), the rehearsing race is always to the preview, not to the recital itself.

Two weeks after that I played several pieces on an all-Brahms concert.  I played a late solo intermezzo, and was one of two pianists playing the Brahms-Haydn Variations.  I was also one of the duet accompanists in the Liebeslieder Walzes with a small professional chorus.   The first rehearsal of the Liebeslieder was also the same week that I had to pull music together for the university choir concert and the oboe recital preview.  I was the rehearsal accompanist, which meant I couldn’t wait until the week before the performance to learn the score, regardless of how doable that might otherwise have been.   That same week was also the first rehearsal for the Haydn Variations.   At that point, I was far from having that piece under my hands.  

Both the Thursday before and the night after the Brahms concert, I played for two additional performances of one of the pieces from the graduate oboists’s recital:  the Loeffler trio for piano, oboe, and viola.  A great piece.  Fantastic piano part.  Needed lots of attention and maintenance even after getting one performance under our belts.  

Two weeks after that I was scheduled to play another recital with the same flutist with whom I began this whirlwind of recitals.  Included on this recital was the Fauré Sonata and the Piazzolla Historie de Tango—both big, four-movement works.  In the midst of all of these other performance deadlines, we were to begin rehearsals.  Somewhere in the middle of this madness, my arms and hands started tingling.  I would wake up at night with numb fingers.  This was not good; even I could recognize the signs of carpal tunnel problems.  I was convinced that it was not misuse I was suffering from, but simply over-use.  Small comfort when I could not feel my hands.     

Clearly I need to better perfect the art of saying no.  But these were all great gigs, and at one big recital a month I thought I could pull it off.  “Pulling it off” meant getting up at 6am to put in a good hour or two of practice before my 8 o’clock lesson.  It meant practicing all day on the weekends when I was not teaching or in rehearsals.  It meant sleeping less, eating less, and teaching from a less than balanced, centered place.  This was not good.  Matt began tip-toeing around me.  The cats began whining and crying for attention.  I had e-mails backed up and phone calls that went un-returned.  I was far from being in my happy place.  



During the first rehearsal with my flutist for our December recital, I admitted to the hand problems.  “I’m sure I can get this under control,” I said breezily.  He admitted to feeling a bit pushed to this next recital and suggested we postpone it until February.  I jumped at the delay, believing that there might be light at the end of the tunnel after all.  Suddenly, everything seemed possible—we would cut down rehearsals to one per week and stretch out the learning process to the point where we could, in his words, “inhabit the music.”  Lovely phrase. This is the place from which I want to work and perform when I am not pretending to be superwoman and taking on more than I can really handle.  I know this.   I just repeatedly make the same scheduling mistakes, believing that maybe this time I will transcend my human limitations and perform miracles.  

In the end, all the concerts went fine.  More than fine, actually.  The Brahms concert was a huge hit—the performance stars aligning for me in a wonderful, mysterious way.  Oh, I know that generally I play well, or I wouldn’t be playing this much (“you are only as good as your last performance,” goes that little voice in my head…), but every once in a while a performance is particularly special.  This was one of those times.  As my husband told me later, “You hit it out of the park.”   God knows, that doesn’t always happen.  I shouldn’t complain, because base hits get the job done.  But a home run feels damn good.  



Last Friday was our annual St. Cecelia party, in honor of the feast day of the patron saint of musicians.  We have held this event annually for the last ten years, with the parties reaching a new significance now that we have been in New Mexico long enough to establish a tradition.  In August, people begin to ask us, “When is St. Cecelia this year?”  It’s always the Friday before Thanksgiving, kicking off the party season early.  There are always lots of people of many stripes:  people we work with, people we just like, musicians we know, and other assorted characters.  We ask guests to bring offerings of wine, chocolate, or song—and the music goes on late into the night.  



There is not a year that goes by when I don’t secretly think that maybe this year we could skip St. Cecelia.  We are always up to our eyeballs in obligations and this party is a lot of work.  We design and send out invitations, eating up countless hours of addressing and putting together these small creations.  The house is always a mess and needs to be dug out and transformed.  We light luminaria along the sidewalk and courtyard walls.  This year we had a fire pit in the courtyard.  I bake cookies and cakes, and we put together cheese plates and gather and wash all 60+ wine glasses.  We always use every glass and then some.  It’s not only the preparation that kills me, but often the recovery.  I have played recitals the day after St. Cecelia.  I have taught five hours of performance classes the next day.  One year I played for Santa Fe Opera auditions.  



This year, I planted bulbs.  Last weekend in between Brahms rehearsals I went and bought 100 bulbs:  daffodils, alliums, tulips -- insuring that I can greet the spring with flowers once again.  The thing is, there is not a year when I don’t need to raise my glass to St. Cecelia and toast the gods that allow me to earn my living making music.   For all the times I get it wrong, (and there are plenty) there is still nothing I’d rather do.