Coordinates
Lately, in an effort not to spin off the planet from anxiety and fear, I have needed to remind myself of my coordinates in the universe.
I mean this quite literally. On this date, in this minute, I am here. Here in the shadow of the Sandia mountains, where the New Mexico desert stretches out to meet the forever-blue western sky and the wind howls across the barest bones of earth and rock. This is where I practice and teach, play and perform, carving out my own world and identity day after day. “Are you a concert pianist?” I was asked for the 500th time last week by a friendly stranger at a dinner party. Concert pianist. It sounds so magical, a galaxy outside most people’s knowledge and reach. I find myself intrigued by this alluring label as well, seduced as easily as the next person by the idea of a closet full of black evening dresses and the sparkling conversation over champagne that must follow an evening of classical music making. While it is true that I often play concerts, others might be disappointed to learn that most of my hours are not glamorous or sophisticated at all, but rather mundane and repetitive. For what I do, day in and day out, is practice. Lately it has been soul food to remind myself of this.
I practice music I need to learn for this gig or that one. I practice sun salutations on the yoga mat. I practice my flip turns in the pool. I practice my patience with that squirmy six-year-old and my acute listening skills with that advanced student playing Chopin. I practice showing up on the page and on the meditation cushion. These are not vague, loosey-goosey spiritual practices, although they are all spiritual teachers for sure. All of these practices are tangible. They have teeth and sharp edges, exact coordinates. I am here.
It may be far into the third decade of the twenty-first century, but the rituals of my work hold very few trappings of modern life. Having seen no significant changes in over a hundred and fifty years, the modern piano is hardly modern. Even so, in the last four decades, I have spent countless solitary hours in the company of such a keyboard, my device of choice. The ten thousand hours of practice required to become an expert? I have that times ten. Once I was practicing—just a typical, unremarkable day of practice—when I overheard two electricians outside my window talking. “Man alive, that woman sure does play the piano a long time.” They had no idea.
Over the years, friends, annoyed that I wasn’t free at their invitation, would say, “You are so disciplined,” as if discipline had suddenly morphed into a four-letter word. “With you, I am second to the piano,” an old boyfriend once told me, summarizing in a single sentence the reality of my priorities. Of all the relationships in my life, my lifelong affair with practicing is the one that I fuss over and feed, fretful that without my constant attention one day the habit might simply disappear, like a lover who has run off in the night. Like any romance, there are good days and bad ones. Alone on the piano bench, I fall in and out of love over and over again, depending on my mood and the task at hand. And yet, still I stay, hopelessly faithful.
Just this morning I was in the middle of working through a gnarly technical passage in a Bach fugue when my practicing was interrupted by a knock on the front door. Things at the piano weren’t going particularly well. Last night I had a late orchestral rehearsal and woke up with a migraine. What I most wanted to do was to stare aimlessly out the window at the garden and drink coffee. Instead, I was at the piano, banging through Bach. Badly. “You don’t have to like it, but you do have to put a smile on your face,” my mother used to tell us when my siblings and I would complain about something we had to do. Sitting at the piano, I was not smiling. I was impatient and not paying attention to my work. I crashed through the same passage three times in a row and didn’t bother fixing it. As a form of self-pitying distraction, I began creating a list of grievances in my head, every single item petty and whiny. At that moment, I didn’t much like Bach, my practicing, or myself for that matter.
So there I was, cranky and irritable, when I went to answer the banging on the door. Outside stood a man who said, “I heard that piano was given here.” Immediately, I flashed back on the frumpy piano teacher in The Music Man with her sign in the window announcing, “Piano Given.” I even have the requisite two cats to accompany the stereotype. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
These days either response seems perfectly appropriate. If I am not practicing myself, I am teaching someone else to practice. “How did you practice this? How did you practice this? How did you practice this?” I ask this question all day every day, both to myself and to the students who walk into my studio. Piano Given? No, I often think, it should read: Practice Given.
On this date, in this minute, I am here. If I am honest about my practicing of late, I must admit that much of my work has lacked precision. I’m cutting corners everywhere. My 40-minutes in the pool three or four days a week has shrunk to 32 minutes two days a week, although I haven’t really owned up to that even to myself. My weekly Zazen time happened once last month. Dry January was slightly damp. Many days my time on the piano bench is minimal, my time on the couch respectable in comparison. Although the magic wake-up hour that best sets the rhythm of my day is 5:10am, too many mornings have seen me still lying in bed with the cats at 6am, at 7am, at 8am. That is the truth about my coordinates in the universe. These days they are fuzzy, abstract, quite messy around the edges. It’s hard to find myself.
Last night I told Matt that my practice could use some work hacks right now. But of course I already know the hacks: the kitchen timer, the ta-da lists, the baby steps, the power of streaks, the accountability of practice boxes, the habit of accessing and asking questions, the miracle of those additional five minutes. Ultimately, however, it may come down, not to a boost of discipline or a kick in the pants, but to truth telling, which admittedly is in short supply these days. Maybe more than anything, that is the practice these days: telling the truth. Being precise with myself and others. Giving my exact coordinates in the universe. Here I am.
Outside my window the elm trees are just starting to show the first buds. The forsythia around town is in full yellow flame. I’ve begun working in the back garden, clearing leaves and pruning down last year’s overgrowth. The pile of papers needed for this year’s tax returns are now all in one place. Yesterday I added a much-needed chunk of time on the piano bench. This morning I made the 7am meditation time at the Zen center. A former student brought her new baby for a visit on Monday. In the studio with the first round of performance classes for the semester behind us, we have started the conversation about our music preferences for the spring recital. As always, the kids have opinions. Very specific opinions. Yesterday, Jonah announced, “Miss Amy, I know what I want to play for the recital. Something minor and fast, but not too fast, like a march. Yeah, a minor march. That’s what I want. Also, I like fifths. And I want it to be three pages long.” Good grief. I thought. Here we go again.
I am here.
Links to those practice hacks listed above:
Asking the next (and the next) question.