Sounds Like Me

I’ve taken two significant piano plunges this week–actually, make that three.

(1) A piano-playing friend of mine invited me to choose a duet piece to play with her. I picked Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba because that was a crazy-fun duet I used to play on the Cornell Chimes, which involved running around each other to get to our notes. My friend expressed some concern that the piece would be too fast and therefore, too hard, but I assured her I was totally happy to play it as slowly as we both needed to (way more slowly than in this video–LOL). I told her my aunt (whom she knows) had a chamber music group that they called The Trio Lento, because no matter what the piece was, they played it at “lento” (slow) speed. The important thing was that they had fun.

A few days ago we ran through the piece for the first time. Lento. And we had fun.

lecates, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Since my friend had most of the chords at the bottom and wasn’t familiar with the melody, since hadn’t played the piece before, she had more trouble than I did getting things to fit together. So, I offered to make a recording of the melody part–at lento speed. I have a tendency to rush when I’m enjoying the music I’m playing; so, this was a good lesson for me to pay close attention to the rhythm we’d set.

(2) Making the recording inspired me to record one of the pieces I was playing to see what I thought of it. I have TOTALLY AVOIDED doing this in the four years that I’ve returned to the piano, terrified that I’ll absolutely hate whatever I hear myself playing and fall back into an unescapable abyss of self-judgment, resurrecting all the negative messages about my musicianship that have haunted me all my life. But I’ve been feeling more confident, lately. So, I figured I’d give it a try.

To make it easier on myself, I chose a slow piece–the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, whose speed is marked adagio–only slightly faster than lento. It’s a piece I’ve been playing for years and know well, so I could focus on the expression and mostly forget about my cell phone recorder. Still, I did feel just a bit jittery when I pressed the button to play it back.

What stood out most wasn’t the mistakes, which I knew I had made, even as I managed to smooth them over and keep on going. The big surprise was that my playing SOUNDED LIKE ME! Something about how I was choosing to accent notes and how I flowed in the rhythm reminded me of that inner voice inside, the same voice that hears the words I write and tinkers until I have exactly the cadence I want.

Was it the best rendition of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata that I’ve ever heard? Far from it! But it was “in the ballpark.” And it was mine!

(3) This gave me confidence today to do something I’ve wanted, but have been too scared to do for at least a year–call the local community music center and ask about joining an adult chamber group. I had a lovely conversation with the person in charge of that project, and now I’m feeling giddy at the prospect of playing with other people in a more formal and challenging setting.

Stay tuned!

Grandmothers, Chopin, Cats

I’ve been back at the piano nearly four years, and lately I’ve noticed that occasionally I can zone into what I want to express in a piece, rather than flounder around in the notes. It’s such a liberating feeling–like I’ve finally acquired some basic tools in my kit that I can use to deepen my experience of playing. I’m trusting my fingers more to do “the right thing,” giving my heart an opening to put in its own two cents.

Grandma Jeanne with baby Alana (my daughter) 1989. Photo by Shel Horowitz

This got me to thinking again about my Grandma Jeanne, who, in her eighties, still played the piano for at least three hours every day, re-visiting old pieces and learning new ones. In the hot, flat days of her retirement, where she rarely left her Florida condo, itt was piano that gave her days shape, made her life matter–until she developed severe arthritis and couldn’t play anymore.

One of the last times I visited her, she tried to play for me, anyway. Her face was hopeful as she positioned herself on the piano bench, set her hands with their bright red nail polish, straightened her back, took a sweeping glance at the music, a large breath, and placed her hands on the first chord. I watched her wince, as she tried to push through the pain. A few more chords. A run, and then she stopped. Banged her hands down on the piano. Closed the lid.

“You play!” The bark in her speech made it clear this was not a request. It was an order.

At the time, I didn’t have much in my repertoire, but I found her copy of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and began to read through it. She stopped me somewhere in the third line.

“Listen to the melody. These are the important notes. Play them with everything you’ve got! Everything!” Her thinning voice rose to a crescendo, as if she were my coach in one of those Hollywood sports movies, giving the Oscar-moment speech in the scene before the perpetual underdog was about to emerge victorious.

How much did I have to give these notes?

That’s what I think about now, as I play a Chopin Prelude. Instead of worrying so much about the individual notes, I’m focusing on the shapes of the phrases, the interplay of loud and soft. It’s kind of like thinking about the arc of a story. And I’m also thinking, as I often do when playing, about my grandmother cheering me on. “Yes, like that!” I could hear her exuberance as she leaned over close that day, marking the important notes.

I had a cat, Fudge, that died under the piano–a metaphor that seemed more than coincidental, though at the time of his life (and death) the piano was my daughter’s domain more than mine. But he clearly liked music and always seemed to slink into the living room whenever either of the kids were practicing. And while he has no connection to Grandma Jeanne, they somehow both ended up in a poem, that was recently published in Humana Obscura. Even more cool–someone I don’t know read the poem and made this video. (Not exactly what I might have done if I made videos, but I’m extremely touched that the poem affected her enough to do this–just more evidence that our creativity matters!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Revisiting “Finished” Work

Yesterday, as an offering to alums of my MFA program, I had the opportunity to meet with a literary agent to talk about my piano memoir, Imperfect Pitch. I’d sent her some materials in advance–an overview/summary and some sample chapters, but I had no expectation that she would open the conversation by telling me she’d fallen in love with the book and was happily going to take it. Those pipe-dreaming days are long over, and the book has already been rejected by more than 30 agents. The few who took time to actually write back (rather than simply ghost me) all said the same thing. The issue wasn’t the writing–which was strong. The issue was the marketability.

So, not wanting to waste my precious 15 minutes searching for compliments or reassurance, I dived right in. What could I do to make this book more marketable?

Apparently–though not surprisingly–it’s extremely difficult to publish a memoir with a major publisher unless you are already a celebrity. Of course, more people would rather read about Taylor Swift than about me. I know this. The only reason I’ve been trying the “big-time channels” with this book is that I believe its underlying message will inspire and help people who’ve lost their creative north star, as I did in my music life, succumbing to the pressure of perfectionism and performance and losing all joy in the creative process. So I’d like the book to get greater circulation than it would from a smaller press.

“You need to position this more as a self-help book,” the agent told me. “Have more about the overall arc in the first chapter about what the reader will find out, and make it clear to readers that the ultimate payback will be getting permission to go back to something they cared about. Also include some instructions—make them broad, so they can apply to other arts.”

What? Give away the arc in the first chapter? My fiction-writer self is quaking at that comment, which goes against everything I’ve learned–both in my MFA program and way before. It’s hard enough to develop the darn arc. Why would anyone read a book if they already know what’s going to happen?

“In non-fiction, the journey is in the destination,” the agent said. She also suggested not being afraid of name-dropping if I knew anyone in the writing world that I could say would help promote the book. Ha! I know many people in the writing world, but most of them, like me, are not household names. In the music world, though, I do have only a couple of degrees of separation from Yo Yo Ma. I wrote about the time he guest-coached my younger child’s chamber group in the book–but likely he has better things to do, like call attention to repressive immigration policies by playing cello on the U.S./Mexico border.

Oh well, I’ll tackle that issue later. First, I’ll have to think about the reframing. I’ll keep the current version, just in case, but in general, I like revision, which I think of as re-visiting, rather than correcting something that was previously wrong. I’ve recently discovered that in my piano life, as I re-visit pieces I struggled so hard with four years ago, like Beethoven’s Pathetique, I have a lot more facility in bringing them back. Frequent practicing has made my fingers stronger and more flexible, and I can focus less on the notes and more on the shadings of a piece, how I want to express it, which gets to the soul of the creative process–especially as I’ve learned to let go of the expectation that I’ll play every note and every rhythm perfectly and without bumps.

I think this is also true for writing. As I’m working on several projects at once, I’ve become even more aware of the difference in my writing confidence and fluidity between slogging through a first draft of a new novel, and revising a poem or prose piece where I already “know the notes.”

So I’m willing to dive in and try. Maybe this rewrite will feel too loud and brash, or predictable, but maybe I can strike just the right balance between memoir and self-help to please both the publishing gods and my own creative vision–and feel jazzed by the discovery of what my fingers and brain can do.

Here’s pianist Daniel Barenboim playing the Pathetique. Enjoy!

 

Getting to Carnegie Hall

Today my mother turns 90!

While I have many reasons to be grateful in my life, one of my biggest sources of gratitude is having healthy parents who are still enjoying and making the most of their later years. My mom–and my dad, who is 92–are cultural aficionados. They love going to Carnegie Hall and Broadway. In fact, often when I announce my plans to come into New York, they search for tickets to something they think I would enjoy. In their eyes, tickets are one of the best forms of showing love.

The COVID years were hard for them. “It’s like jail!” my father would grumble. But as vaccinations have become abundant and restrictions have relaxed, they’re out in the world again.

© Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar

How do they get to Carnegie Hall? I know you’re thinking–practice! But they’ve paid their family musical dues and don’t need to practice any more. They take the subway–about a 30-minute ride. That they’re still able to do this is a wonderful privilege for people in their 90s, but when I mention it my mother looks confused. How else would we get there? she asks.

When I wrote my memoir, Imperfect Pitch, about the generational baggage of coming from a family of musicians and my struggle to meet what I perceived as a family expectation to be the next in a line of musical “prodigies,” I was pretty nervous about sharing the book with my parents. Not everything in the book I wrote about them was complimentary (LOL). But I realized, as I delved into the material, that they were just as much victims of the generational expectations as perpetrators. Like me, my parents both played music through high school, but didn’t have the ability–or (unlike me) the desire–to play professionally. And also unlike me, both of them accepted their limitations and went on with their lives, getting their “musical fixes” at Carnegie Hall, rather than from their own playing.

While I had a much harder time letting myself off the hook for not being able to play better than I could, I also moved on to my own life, spilling my creative passions into writing. But in 2020, my way of dealing with “COVID jail” was to return to the piano bench–tentatively at first, with a lot of finger stumbles and tears–and now, with a fluidity that pleases me. Even if I’m never going to win accolades for performing music, I’m happy to spend around 30 minutes every evening (the same amount of time it takes my parents to get to Carnegie Hall) to play for an audience of one–me! This is another thing that I’m profoundly grateful for.

And a final note of gratitude: when my parents did read my book, my mother said, I think this book will be very helpful to people in our family. We’ve gone through many birthdays together, and seen many shows at Carnegie Hall, but of all the gifts I’ve received, this affirmation is the one I cherish the most.

Happy birthday, Mom!

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Poem Wrestling

Today I completed Poem #30 for the 30 Poems in November fundraiser for the Center for New Americans–a day ahead of schedule, Whew!

Since tomorrow is still November, I may attempt a final poem. Usually, I like to write a cento (a collage poem using lines from other poems) from all the poems offered as prompts over the month. That will enable me to drop a poem that’s not working when I compile my collection of 30, kind of like having the option to eliminate the lowest grade on a series of quizzes!

Of course, at this point, many of these baby poem-drafts aren’t working too well, and getting rid of only one won’t solve that problem. That’s where poem-wrestling comes in. My December writing focus will be on honing these poems into a shape I can share with those who donated to the fundraiser without being too embarrassed about them, even though most of them will still be far from my perfectionist standards.

But perhaps, part of this practice is also about being more comfortable showing my flaws in public–as I did, last weekend when I was asked to be part of the rotation of family musicians and play five minutes of background music on the piano for the appetizer hour of my nephew’s wedding celebration. I NEVER play the piano in front of other people, as those who are familiar my journey back to claiming my piano-playing past (which I wrote about in my not-yet-published memoir, Imperfect Pitch) already know. But I said yes, because I’m loyal to my family and my brother assured me no one would be listening. So, here I was, first on the list of the family players approaching the ivory among the (thank heavens) rising din of chatter. I pretended I was alone and played the pieces I’d prepared, even adding a little klezmer-inspired tune I’d composed on the spot the day before when humming to my grandchild to get him to take a nap.

I actually had fun, because I really was able to play as if I were alone in the room. And I think that’s what I’m going to have to do as I wrestle these 30 poems–pretend I’m alone in the room and see where they want to go without thinking too much about the added pressure of having to share them.

What will poem wrestling entail? Many things, but briefly–zeroing in on what the poem is really about and then thinking about whether each image builds on that or feels like a random aside. Also, looking closely at language and form: how do the words sound on the page. I play a lot with rhythm and repetition of sound patterns. I also look for places I can improve enjambments or use space more strategically.

And because I’m a perfectionist, I’m often writing 3 or 4 or 5 versions of each poem, then letting a version sit for a couple of days before reviewing it. Sometimes I’m so bemused by what I’ve done as in that funny Christine Lavin song, What Was I Thinking, I go back to an earlier version.

And as the days of December wane and my deadline for sending the poems to donors looms, like the cat hesitating at the open door, (an image in the poem I wrote today) I’ll just have to go bravely into the headwind.

 

 

Back to Bach

On January 6, 2021, as reports from the Capitol insurrection filtered through the news channels and my social media feeds, I sat at the piano and worked through Bach’s Italian Concerto, note by endless note. Playing enabled me to return to breath, lassoing my mind away from the pictures and videos that were plastering the news. And Bach had an order that could be anticipated, a calming hand on my shoulder saying things would be okay.

As my social media feeds heat up again with the war in the Middle East and I find myself holding the pain, fear, and anger of people I love–whose perspectives range from strongly pro-Israel to strongly pro-Palestine–I find myself back at the piano with Bach. This time, I’m trying to learn a fugue. While I can take some pleasure in seeing how far I’ve progressed in my piano skills–especially when I take time off note-learning to play the Italian Concerto and see how smoothly it’s sailing through my fingers–the bigger issue that gnaws at me is how we as human beings can ever pursue paths of peace.

I have no answers to that (even though the ever self-chiding part of me thinks I should) but I keep coming back to Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk, The Dangers of a Single Story. Someone with a pro-Israel perspective is going to tell a very different story of the situation from someone with a pro-Palestine perspective, and each will be influenced by their own experience and values. Since the situation is so complicated, there will be truth in both versions–as well as in the many versions and perspectives that lie somewhere in between.

In fiction writing, a common character development exercise is to switch the point of view. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you suddenly assign the narration to a different character in the action. In the process of deeply inhabiting someone else’s mind, you discover what previous experiences shaped them, and what’s at stake for them as a result. Taking the time to understand your story from another character’s point of view also helps to make sure you don’t develop flat one-sided characters, and that you understand and are able to project the humanity in your chosen “villains.”

My hope is that wherever we are, we can take a step back from ourselves and see the very real emotions this conflict has raised for everyone involved in it. And to also take a moment–or many moments–to mourn for everyone, especially the children, who have been hurt or killed, regardless of which side they come from. I’ve felt a glimmer of hope from learning about a group called Standing Together, an Israeli grassroots movement pursuing “peace and independence for Israelis and Palestinians, full equality for all citizens, and true social, economic, and environmental justice,” who warn of the dangers of choosing only “one side” of the story to cling to.

So, as I go back to the fugue, I’m going to try to amplify the different voices as best as I’m able to bring them out. And hope that maybe some time in the future, the voices in Israel/Palestine, while still contrapuntal, will resolve from dissonance into harmony. It’s a dream, I know, but as the people in Standing Together say, “where there is struggle, there is hope.”

Vulnerability, Writer’s Block, and Performance Anxiety

I’ve fallen in love with a new Chopin Nocturne I’m learning, Op. 9, No. 2. There are a few different versions of this on youtube, but my favorite is this one by Tiffany Poon. Sometimes it’s hard to listen to professional pianists play the pieces I’m learning, as they remind me, even after I get the basics down, how far away I am from ever playing with such fluidity and ease.

A friend of mine who is co-authoring a book I’m editing writes about his past experience with writers block: I labored under the mistaken notion that writing was a gift from the muse, he says. You either had that gift or you didn’t–and obviously and sadly, I wasn’t one of the chosen few. This is how I feel about piano, except that when I was a child my parents and extended family led me to believe that because I had perfect pitch, I was one of the chosen few. But I couldn’t actualize “that gift” because my fingers were never as good as my ear, especially in a performance setting. I played exactly one piano recital when I was nine–a special concert for “teachers’ best pupils” in a fancy hall in New York City–and it was an unqualified disaster, as I wrote about in detail in an earlier post: Reframing a Past Mess-Up.

I want to feel that spending the last three years returning to piano, a process that has required not only frequent practicing but also a deep dive into my family history in order to decode and defuse a long line of harmful generational messages, would put me past some of my performance anxiety. However, I don’t play the piano if anyone other than my husband, Shel, is in the house. (And if he went out more, I’d probably wait until he was gone, as well.) Even as I’ve managed to turn the screech of my inner music critic down to a low murmur and generate enjoyment from my own flawed renditions, I’m terrified of anyone else’s judgment. So, it was an odd leap of faith to impulsively ask my visiting younger child, Raf–who is a professional musician, nonetheless–if they wanted to hear this new piece I loved and was in the middle of learning. I could do this–even if it made me more vulnerable, I told myself.

How wrong I was.

Man sitting on a chair covering his ears. Earworm concept, also know as brainworm, sticky music, or stuck song syndrome. <a href=”https://depositphotos.com/vector-images/places.html”>Earworm Concept. Man Sitting on a Chair Covering His Ears. – depositphotos.com</a>

Even though I could already play the piece decently with just a few rough spots, knowing Raf was listening made me miss the easy notes as well as the hard ones. My baseline totally fell apart and it seemed to be a matter of chance as to whether I was going to hit the right chords or the wrong ones. Keep playing! I told myself, even as I could barely breathe. Focus on the expression–why you love this piece. Somehow, I managed to finesse the melody, finally landing pianissimo on the last few chords, their soft reverberations calming my shaky insides.

It will be a long time before I do that again, I said to myself. But something had shifted. Unlike the time I was nine, the minute I stood up and walked away from the piano bench, I left the incident behind me. My inner critic didn’t take this little blip as a chance to screech with delight. It stayed at its current murmuring level, which I could easily drown out the next time I tackled the Chopin.

My friend writes about writers’ block, Now I accept without pain that I am a reasonably competent writer. I don’t need to be special in order to enjoy the writing I produce. While I prefer to use “aspiring,” rather than “reasonably competent” to describe my musicianship, the last sentence rings true. I don’t need to be special in order to enjoy my piano playing. Even if I may not be ready to play for others very often–or at all; for myself, I can play well enough to express what’s in my heart. And in any art we might pursue at whatever level we might be at, that’s what should matter–whether or not we choose to make ourselves vulnerable by sharing.

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A Writer is Someone Who Writes

One of the most annoying questions people ask me when I say that I’m a writer is, What have you published? While I can counter that parry because I’ve published a lot (two novels from major houses, upcoming short story collection from a smaller press, poetry chapbook, and numerous poems, stories, articles and essays in newspapers and literary journals) I don’t consider myself any more or less of a writer than someone who hasn’t published.

As my writing mentor, the late Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers & Artists put it: A writer is someone who writes. Period.

If you are driven to put words on paper to try to make sense of your inner and/or outer worlds, or because there’s something inside you that you are driving to express, you are a writer. And what you have to say matters.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to make the pieces you write more vivid compelling, clear, unique, original, and powerful. When I play the piano, I have no need to be in a musical spotlight, I just want an outlet to express the deep feelings the music holds within. But it’s still important for me to drill and practice so I can do this more effectively. There are many craft elements from conceptualizing a book-length project to writing a perfect sentence that are absolutely essential to learn and practice, even if they take a lifetime to master, or even if we can never fully master them. This likely means that, like me, you may have days or weeks or months of metaphorically banging your head against the wall trying to wrestle your incoherent thoughts into a pattern of words that flows smoothly on the page. That’s what makes you a writer–not whether some public entity casts a yay or nay on whatever you ultimately offer them.

Being published is a choice. (At least, it’s a choice of whether or not you want to try to get your work published.) Some writers might prefer to write only for themselves, or to share with friends and loved ones. And some writers choose to publish themselves–which opens up a whole other set of issues I’ll write about in a future post.  But in the meantime, don’t downgrade yourself if your publishing credentials aren’t as good as you might want them to be. Keep going for that authentic nugget of your own truth and making it sing.

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