trying again. and I sense a link with my music presently.
coming into your presence, having been away, is "ouch!". The initial sense of unworthiness is horrifying. Having got there I can place my hand in yours in no time. This I know perhaps through experience?
Without understanding how or why there is immediate relief and a sense of thirst being assuaged. . . . . .
My need for you is so palpable. And yet, once that fragile thread is broken, it is just as easily forgotten. In that forgetfulness comes doubt and that doubt can grow like a ferocious weed - suffocating all I ever knew and all I ever understood before. In no time everything to do with you seems so much nonsense.
When faith is not practised it dies with astonishing rapidity - especially in our modern world. Like a plant in a wilderness; unwatered, even for a day or so, it withers quickly and is dead within the week.
But unlike the plant, crucially, it is the relationship which has died and not the reality.
Turn and turn again. . . . .
regards the music. Do not practise for the future. even with scales and exercises. Practise for and in the present. Music is only ever in the present and can only be heard there which is a truism I know but easily forgotten in the urge to improve technical competence.
When an athlete trains he has in mind only the race which he/she is to run in the future but this cannot be the way we practise as musicians. I say this because it IS the way I have been practising over the past year and I recognised this suddenly on returning from a near piano-free holiday, when I suddenly found myself improvising "in the present". All improvising is only in the present of course but it is perfectly possible to improvise "going through the motions". No real music happens that way. But "going through the motions" is what happens when we practise without "being in the present moment". Although one may be playing the right notes in the right order and at the right moment it is not really making music unless one is "present" to the music; making it one's own. A Mozart sonata, when I play it, is no longer just his. It is mine also and it is NOW. Nor must I be comparing it with other versions I have heard or remember and feeling unworthy as a result. The music does not lie there.
Wow, this is so hard to explain!
coming into your presence, having been away, is "ouch!". The initial sense of unworthiness is horrifying. Having got there I can place my hand in yours in no time. This I know perhaps through experience?
Without understanding how or why there is immediate relief and a sense of thirst being assuaged. . . . . .
My need for you is so palpable. And yet, once that fragile thread is broken, it is just as easily forgotten. In that forgetfulness comes doubt and that doubt can grow like a ferocious weed - suffocating all I ever knew and all I ever understood before. In no time everything to do with you seems so much nonsense.
When faith is not practised it dies with astonishing rapidity - especially in our modern world. Like a plant in a wilderness; unwatered, even for a day or so, it withers quickly and is dead within the week.
But unlike the plant, crucially, it is the relationship which has died and not the reality.
Turn and turn again. . . . .
regards the music. Do not practise for the future. even with scales and exercises. Practise for and in the present. Music is only ever in the present and can only be heard there which is a truism I know but easily forgotten in the urge to improve technical competence.
When an athlete trains he has in mind only the race which he/she is to run in the future but this cannot be the way we practise as musicians. I say this because it IS the way I have been practising over the past year and I recognised this suddenly on returning from a near piano-free holiday, when I suddenly found myself improvising "in the present". All improvising is only in the present of course but it is perfectly possible to improvise "going through the motions". No real music happens that way. But "going through the motions" is what happens when we practise without "being in the present moment". Although one may be playing the right notes in the right order and at the right moment it is not really making music unless one is "present" to the music; making it one's own. A Mozart sonata, when I play it, is no longer just his. It is mine also and it is NOW. Nor must I be comparing it with other versions I have heard or remember and feeling unworthy as a result. The music does not lie there.
Wow, this is so hard to explain!
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