Btw... I finally understand why people use the word 'random'... because they, like me, are often unable to link the jumps in their ideas from one to another. And so, because there is no link, it is... Random! Well, anyways.
I wore all black today. My teacher Gulia (when we speak to her we call her 'Mrs Gulia' though Gulia is really her first name. Kind of like Mr Omar the teacher in charge of the Cedar AVA club.) would say, "Oh, please don't wear black, it's so depressing." In another conversation with her once during lesson, she continued and said, "I never wear black. Oh well, I did when I was in my early twenties, but that was because I was depressed." Thinking about it and fitting the pieces together, she had probably just gotten into Julliard at the time and had to work as a maid to pay her school fees (before she finally realised that she couldn't possibly go on like that and eventually found some other form of funding I guess) and lack of sleep probably made her grades go down, and lack of practice probably made her performance go down too. No wonder she was depressed.
Speaking of depression, I think that this may actually be the most productive period of my holiday. I just want to keep on practising, to focus my mind on things away from my own interpersonal relations, to solve musical problems that I actually can solve and not have to stare in the face and have it laugh back at me. *glares*
All of us in the conservatory are so extremely lucky to be able to be on scholarship and never have to worry for money. Especially me (in being accepted in the first place). I've always felt that Gulia accepted me just because it was the pioneering year for harp students. For the auditions, only two auditioned, one who actually qualified and the other who played badly (she actually said to me, "Remember the Handel Harp Concerto? The one you played badly?") but she felt compelled to just accept me because she didn't want to start a class with only one student. In one of the first few lessons, she stated explicitly that, "I took you in not because you were good, but because I saw that you had potential." Probably she saw potential in me in the form of my attitude because, in the interview, I showed so much joy towards making music and she came out and spoke to my parents and said that I was 'spunky'. First and only time I've heard that word being used to describe me.
Well, it sounds as if I feel inferior to other harpists but I don't really feel that in a pervasive manner. I know that technically or even experience-wise I can't match up to many of the other harpists. But what is within me is a certain purity of heart with life's experiences, some not my own, that have caused me to mature in a way I could never have imagined, the first time I produced a sound on the harp. In a kind of way, there's always been a show-offish side of me that comes into full view on stage. A kind of quiet, arrogant elegance. Not confidence, but arrogance. I'm the most important person on this stage for the next 30 minutes, and you better listen to me, because I have something important to say, and what I say will blow your mind. Well, something like that.
Whenever I get on stage, it's a different persona. Karen the solo performer is quite different from Karen the off-stage (lame) joker, or even Karen the orchestral harpist. It's like an actor's role. And yet... sometimes we get into the role so much that we actually believe it's us. Like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie becoming a real life couple after playing a reel life couple. Or the countless opera divas. When we play only happy pieces... at some point it becomes effortless to believe, or at least to trick our mind, that happiness is the only emotion we can and should feel. On one hand we draw from our own feelings to be able to bring out the feelings inherent in the music, but on the other hand, what music we draw from the notes on the page also become part of us. What is ours, and what is the music? Or have we become THE music?
I was wondering about Tolstoy's 'What is Art?', where Tolstoy believed that art (meaning all forms of art) was born to be a medium of self-expression for the artist, and art that is meant for money-making or otherwise commercial purposes cannot possibly be art. The first time I read his book so many alarm bells were ringing inside my head. By his definition, Bach's beautiful Brandenburg's Concertos are not art, because they were written as a kind of resume to seek employment with the count of Brandenburg. As far as I know, Tolstoy's aesthetic ideals were influenced greatly by absorbing all the influences of the Romantic period, especially the Late Romantic of his day, and so like Bach was able to absorb the entire spirit of the period he worked in. But obviously none of us still live in the aesthetic ideals of the Romantic period. And what if it is a piece of music that was composed by let's say the Bartok Viola Concerto to make money, but then was given true feelings by the performer? Is it art or is it not? I smile if I imagine Tolstoy in the world today. Art is so commercialised in a manner of speaking. What happened to spontaneous self-expression? Probably Tolstoy would be running around crying, when the truest 'art' in his definition may be those that is created by children and lunatics in art therapy.
As to regarding the absolute music vs programme music schism... I've always believed that absolute music won out because it's the only kind of music that you can project your own feelings onto and then imagine it to something that means something to you. In that way the music becomes personal. Programme music on the other hand gets boring when there's only one way to interpret the music. Well in a way it's kind of like the difference between books and movies. Movies are nice of course, but sometimes books are more powerful than you might ever imagine. Then again (I was thinking about this while in the patching session for OMM's CD recording), if absolute music won out in comparison to programme music, how come opera houses, which have a definite interpretation of music, are hugely more financially successful than orchestras? We have so many orchestras closing down or at least reducing in size (no Mahler for you), while business for opera houses is booming. Is this not another kind of absolute music vs programme music debate? Is it simply that programme music/operas are idiot proof, and that absolute music is the higher form of art? (I might accuse myself of being elitist but the truth is that I love opera, programme music and absolute music all equally) For more ideas, you can read here: http://101cds.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-everybody-hates-modern-classical.html
Speaking of movies, I've come to a new appreciation of them instead of just looking at the action/storyline, after taking the literature module and seeing literature even in movies. Yesterday night I was watching Ice Age 2: Meltdown, where there was a scene where Manny the mammoth went to the river edge to reflect on the possibility that he was the last one of his species, and there was a falling leaf that I thought was representative of the moment: the leaf tumbling to the ground pulled by the irresistable force of gravity was like the inevitable extinction of mammoths. As a person I pay an inordinate amount of attention to leaves. Maybe because I think they are so poetic. I hated staying at shears in year 2, but if there was one good thing, it was that every day when I was waiting for the bus, I could often see leaves falling. When I was reading 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett, I observed these falling leaves, like the lives of people, short and falling constantly towards death, falling, floating in the breeze, flashing a few times, and then gone. I couldn't help but link them to a particularly poignant moment near the end of 'Waiting for Godot', where Pozzo says, "They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."
Nothing that we have or create lasts forever, save for the human relations, the joy that we bring to others. Sometimes, I wonder myself why I practise so hard, and I remind myself that I can too bring joy to others by my music. Not just joy, but also peace and healing in the form of music therapy. So. Are we working hard to create things that last, or just to achieve things that will not stand the test of time?
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