Maestro, Digitalis, Hellfire Inferno

I am always pleased by the sight of foxgloves. For I always imagine elegant foxes adorning their paws with Digitalis Purpurea, gingerly trying the silky bells on for size...

[Warning: I'm letting myself go to town on adjectives and extravagant descriptions today. Prepare yourself.]

A dull-looking day. Nonetheless, beautiful to be out in. I am guilty of complaining about cloudy blah-days. The thing is, once I push myself out the door, I realize that the essence of a day is about much more than the colour of sky. I just came in from a long, sweet walk. The ocean air comes into the lungs like a tonic, expunging staleness, evicting sourness, eradicating boredom, exfoliating the senses!

Esther agrees.

The tide was low, so I was able to explore around the corners of beaches, scuttle over rocks and seaweed, revel in the naked barnacles and slippery ocean life. And then I entered the forest, a green tunnel of damp earthiness, vast verdant swaths of foliage, and chortling birdsong. There is so much to love about the BC coast - the view from my window does not touch it. Inside, it is quiet and pleasant. But there's a certain deception in this little shell. There's warmth and safety, but also isolation from the breezes and the sounds and smells and shifting moods of the trees and sky. I need to get outside every day or I forget this.

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young...

Yesterday I watched a film about Maestro Valery Gergiev. I am still feeling the effects of it. Awe and longing. I think in my heart of hearts, I yearn to conduct an orchestra. Or to play in one. (More to the point, to play in an orchestra conducted by Gergiev.) Or... the Ultimate Dream: to compose for orchestras.

I am glad that I am a pianist - perhaps I would never have taken to any other instrument. But there is rarely a place for a pianist in an orchestra - except as a soloist. When I'd finished my ARCT, I knew that my chances of becoming a concert pianist at the concerto-soloist level were about equal to my chances of becoming an Olympic triathlete. I torture myself sometimes by wondering if I would be playing in orchestras now if I had learned the cello or bassoon instead. Then again... if that was the case, I would quite likely not be writing music - as the piano is such an excellent tool for composition. So then I torture myself further by wondering if I could be composing symphonies and concertos instead of songs, if I had devoted myself to composition right after high school - had spent the years since then in European Academies, studying with great Masters.

I did not include the 3rd stanza of e.e. cummings' poem (above), because the first 2 stanzas speak perfectly to me. But the 3rd does not.

(and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile)

I feel a note of resignation when I read those lines. They turn down a path to which I dig in my heels. I've known this poem from heart for some time - and I realized yesterday, after watching Gergiev, that I feel a pang of hollowness and regret at "do nothing usefully". It's not that I take those lines literally - I too love art because it is, in a sense, 'use-less'. It's that they evoke in me a feeling of humility and insignificance that I relate to a little too strongly.

Walking, yesterday and today, letting my mind drift about, I found certain bare patches inside me - hungry places. I tried to discern if the familiar sense of uselessness and not-good-enough-ness was just a result of comparing myself to Gergiev. (How could I compare myself to Gergiev?!?!) I doubt there could be more than a few handfuls of people on this entire planet with his passion, drive, enormity of spirit, and staggering talent. It's beyond comprehension. I don't need to be such a God-like creature.... I am but a modest little being with a wish to make some contribution to the world. Gergiev studied in the same rooms as Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Borodin, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev.... He was raised in their footsteps, in the richness of that tradition. Thinking about this, I feel like an ambitious ant in a parade of elephants.

My heart and mind are thirsty, hungry - but are they fearless and supple? I take my steps forward inchingly, because even inching is sometimes hard and overwhelming. I do what I can when I can, because if I let the weight of my expectations ride upon my back, they crush me. But am I too gentle on myself? Will my lenience, in the end, leave me so short of the mark that I will have bitter regrets for not pushing myself harder? What is 'the mark' to me, anyways?

I feel confident about the path I am on, and pretty overjoyed to be on it. Overjoyed to have given myself permission to live this life. Overjoyed to be creating and performing my own music. But that hunger is pacing around like a tiger in my belly. Hunger for more. It's easy to be hard on myself and wish that I had acquired more skills by now. There's no point in doing that - it doesn't help me in any way. The only thing I can do is assess the present and ask myself if there is something that I could be doing that would be more satisfying now, make me happier now.

One thing continually comes to mind: Writing for larger ensembles. Writing outside of my little niche. Learning how to orchestrate. Hell's bells, I think I've just hit the nail on the head. I have a fear that I might be venturing down a street with a dead end. I'm afraid that if I keep writing songs in my own convention, that I will get bored of my song-writing and find myself not knowing how to do anything else. I don't want to be confined to writing tunes for a band. I want to write string quartets! I want to write for brass ensembles! I want to write suites for orchestra! I want to PLAY with an orchestra... And I'm not talking about 'Symphony Pops' garbage.

I read something once that said that Fear is a signpost that says you're going in the right direction. The scarier something is, the closer you are getting to the real Essence of what you want. Again, it's the dragon guarding the treasure. Delving into 'real' composition scares the hell out of me, because I don't think I'm capable of doing it. And because composition sometimes seems like a mysterious elusive alluring dangerous hypnotizing Being that I don't know how to approach.

I feel that I'm a dabbler. Like someone who dabbles in the Occult, but stays safely on the fringe.
I fear It will eat my Soul, or that my Soul will eat It. Yet.... I yearn for it so passionately. I listen to 5 minutes of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite or Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or Rachmaninoff's 3rd, and I want to both step into the fire and run away from it. I don't care what anyone says... there is nothing more ecstatically/horrifically elemental than an orchestra united in an exquisite inferno of music. Aaaaaaghhhhhhh.

What to do, what to do? I don't want to turn my life upside-down and toss out my plans. They are still valid. But... maybe I apply for a grant to go study orchestration with a composition teacher for a few months somewhere. Or maybe I just start working with an orchestration programme like Sibelius, and learn how to do it hack-style, on the computer. (Ergh, that appeals much less.) I'll have to give this some thought, and see if I still feel this way in a few days, after the Gergiev spell wears off. I think I will - this was a deep primal reaction and I know it's been there all the way along. Maybe I find a teacher in the French Caribbean and I combine my studies with my winter-getaway? Mmm - now we're getting closer to the mark! (Honestly. Why must the great music centres of the world be located in such miserable climes? Russia in Jan/Feb/Mar? No thank you.)

This blog is starting to outgrow its breeches. I'd better finish off. My keyboard is staring at me, leering even. It's losing respect for me by the minute...

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