Category Archives: piano

You’re Supposed to Say, Bravo!

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My two-and-a-half-year-old grandchild, Manu, loves to play songs on the piano, which he does by pressing down on random groups of notes in the song’s rhythm. Often he sings along, eradicating any question I might have about what song he’s playing, Sometimes I sing with him, but mostly, what he wants me to do is listen–and then burst into wild applause as soon as he plays the final note.

But a few weeks ago, suddenly that wasn’t enough. He turned to me and said, “You’re supposed to say, bravo!”

“Bravo!” I willingly added.

“No!” he said. “Bra…Vo” emphasizing each syllable with equal force and leaving a breath of air in between.

“Bra…Vo!”

“No, Braah…..Vo…oh..”

“Braah….Vo..oh.”

We went through this a few times. Apparently I couldn’t say bravo exactly the way his babysitter said it, but after a while he let it go and went on to something else. Thank goodness for two-year-old attention spans.

But I’ve been thinking about the message, regardless of whether I can pronounce the word bravo to Manu’s liking. We could all use more bravo in our lives.

As some readers of this blog know, four and a half years ago I started playing the piano again after pretty much abandoning it for most of my adulthood. This required way more than beefing up my music reading and finger dexterity. It involved delving into and confronting baggage that had plagued me my entire life–my debilitating perfectionism and the resulting shame at not being able to live up to the standards enshrined in our family legacy of professional musicians.

But I slogged through, one note, one phrase, one piece at a time until I eventually got the minimal piano chops I’d had up to snuff. I only played by myself in the living room. I didn’t want a teacher, or even anyone in my family to hear me play. Yet, in the back of my mind, I wondered, was I competent enough to join a chamber group? My kids had loved doing chamber music when they were teenagers and I’d been so envious. It looked like so much fun.

It took a year between the time I first started thinking about it before I called the local community music center and then another six months (until last February) to find a group. I’d like to say that being in this chamber music group was a sublime experience and a dream come true, but it wasn’t. On the other hand, it wasn’t awful, either. On a scale of sweet/sour, it skewed acidic, but the tangy taste was at least somewhat pleasurable. I felt gratified that I could play the music, and even if the coach seemed to give me more direction than she gave others, she always addressed me in a kind and respectful way. The other players all seemed friendly and no one stood out as being way above or below the level of the others–or unable to do what the piece demanded. But I didn’t get much of a sense of who they were as people, which I think lessened our ability to connect musically. And I didn’t particularly feel like we got into the nuances and phrasing of the piece, which made the experience rather boring (though in all fairness, maybe it was enough that we learned how to play together).

For all these reasons, and because I still am highly judgmental when it comes to music (despite how hard I try not to be), I really did not want to play at the end of semester recital. But the other musicians did, and I certainly wasn’t going to sabotage them–even though I told my partner and my daughter very definitively that no, I did NOT want them to come.

So, last Sunday I sucked it up and drove through the foggy, drizzly rain to the performance venue, arriving half an hour early so we could get in one last run through. I noticed that without depending on the coach to tell us what to do that we were able to stop ourselves to talk about problem spots and address them, and this made me feel more connected to the other musicians. And I was pleased that our actual performance of the piece, while not perfect or wonderful or exciting, was better than we usually played it, despite the nerves of having to play in front of an audience.

No one said, bravo, or (bra… vo…) but that’s okay. I can say bravo to myself for my bravery.

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Routines

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My father lived by his routines. Breakfast was a daily ritual of muesli, blueberries, dates, and apples–eaten dry, since he didn’t like milk or yogurt, accompanied by glass of orange juice, and followed by a cup of green tea with several slices of lemon, steeped for exactly two minutes. The day would unfold with the New York Times, which he read in his chair, often nodding off between stories, and later–as his illness worsened–between sentences. Later: lunch (a can of soup), a Ken-Ken puzzle, a walk, snack-time (two cookies and an orange), and dinner. In the evenings he’d look up what had happened on that calendar day in various other years from the short daily summaries he’d been keeping for decades and read the highlights to my mother, until Alexa reminded him at exactly 10:30 pm that it was time to empty the dishwasher–a task that was followed by the 11 o’clock news and some novel reading before winding down into bed.

Even in his healthier years, routines kept him going. After retirement, he’d go for a mile-and-a-half walk around the neighborhood every day, a distance that decreased as he grew older, but still kept him healthy and vibrant. And before he developed “trigger finger,” he also made sure to practice violin each afternoon, not because he had any expectation of getting good at it–simply because he enjoyed the process.

During these early days of mourning him, I’ve been thinking about the role of routines in my life–both in keeping me going through these sad, hard times, and also how they’ve served me in my creative life. When I’ve given readings or book talks people often ask me what my writing routines are like, as if I’m aware of some kind of magic formula that can propel them into the world of words. Sorry, folks! If I had one, I’d be happy to share it. I will say that sometimes my attempts at routine trick me into sitting down at my computer at the prescribed time. For me, that’s generally after a short breath-work practice, a cardio or yoga video, and breakfast. (Like my dad I’m a cereal and fruit person, but my go-to is my homemade granola with yogurt and frozen or fresh berries from our yard, depending on the season.) However, getting the words to come out when I’m sitting at the computer seems to be a totally different process. Sometimes words flow easily and I’m in the groove. Often, I’m stuck. And when I’m stuck for too many days in a row, the routine starts to feel stale and boring.

What then? Sometimes it helps me to deliberately not follow the routine for a day or two. Instead of getting to my writing after breakfast, I’ll tackle an administrative task that I’d usually save for later in the day, or make a date with a friend, or go for walk–another routine I usually save for the afternoon. In the summer, I go to the garden, where my best ideas come from weeding.

Sometimes, this process of switching up a routine, which ultimately involves letting go of expectation that I’m going to “produce” anything, can be intensely freeing. But other times, like the present, where I’m still floundering in a foggy and disoriented state of grief and sadness, just makes me feel more adrift. So this is why I’m clinging to routines, sitting down at my computer on Wednesday morning, because Wednesday morning is usually my blogging day, and I’m too much of a school girl to want to break my Substack streak of blogging 49 weeks in a row. And knowing that breath-work and exercise are the first things I’m going to do gives me a reason to get up in the morning. And even as I’ve given myself far more permission to do nothing than I usually would, I’m grateful for my evening routines of Duolingo (another streak I don’t want to break), and voice and piano practice, which, when I abandon judgment, makes me feel transported into a place where I can feel my emotions without having to find words for them.

So, I’m grateful for routines, but also glad, that unlike my father, I’m more comfortable flitting in and out of them as needed. And once my latest batch of homemade granola is depleted, I’ll enjoy switching my breakfast routine to the several boxes of unopened muesli I brought home from New York, so I can keep remembering my father, whether or not I make it to the computer right afterwards.

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The Still Space

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Lately, I haven’t felt like talking very much.

And not talking has translated into not writing. Because writing is like talking–to some specified or unspecified audience out there, or simply to myself.

You can call it writer’s block or mild depression, both of which may be true, but I think it’s different. I feel suspended in “a still space,” a quiet kind of sadness like a sepia filter over a bright picture, muting the light into something eerie and unreachable.

Why am I sad? Why am I stymied? I’m about to lose a parent. And my country is transforming into a place where cruelty and greed are heightened, and glorified violence against those with less privilege due to race, gender, gender identity, economic status, citizenship status, etc. has risen to levels I wouldn’t have thought believable.

But it’s always been this way. I can hear the pundits, the activists, the social media bullhorns saying. The seeds have been sown years ago. Look at our history: enslavement, internment camps, lynchings, family separations, forced relocation of Native Americans, hate crimes against LGBTQ people… just a few of many examples.

Yet, there always seemed another way the lever could tilt–an opposing force that could right the wrongs.

Right now, correcting the angle of the lever seems to be a pretty heavy lift, despite the pundits, the activists, the social media cheerleaders telling us to suck it up and do it anyway.

Which I will. Because it matters. And because even in this still space, my schoolgirl self would never think of not doing her homework. So I’m going through the motions, slowly ticking off the activist tasks on my large to-do list. I can’t allow myself the privilege of wallowing when the lives of so many people who are much more vulnerable than I am are at stake.

And for my own personal sadness, I remind myself that my father is 93. He has been happy and healthy for nearly all of his long and well-lived life. The experience of losing a parent is excruciatingly hard, but it’s something most of us go through at some point. I’m lucky I’ve had 67 years before I’ve had to face it.

The last time I visited my father, about a month ago, he was in the hospital with the New York Times spread across his lap. He was still reading it back then, though in small snatches between nodding off. I’m scared of what’s going to happen after the inauguration, he said.

Now, he makes no pretense of reading the Times or watching the TV news. Now his life has been compressed to a few waking moments between a lot of nodding off, and his conversation has dwindled to silence. Perhaps, he, too, is entering a still space. I hope it’s still enough that he isn’t experiencing the fear many of the rest of us are feeling.

Surprisingly, the one creative thing I’ve been able to, and have been drawn to do, is play the piano. I’ve been focusing on the Bach fantasias (not the fugues that follow) in a minor and c minor–at a slightly slower and more soulful tempo than the way it’s played on the videos. Bach is my father’s favorite composer, so it feels like a way of honoring him. And it feels like a creative space I can be in–perhaps because it’s a space without words.

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Sounds Like Me

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.