Skip to main content

I'm Back!

This past season ended hard. My last two weeks of heavy work were...heavy.  I was mentally bruised and physically exhausted. I didn't have the energy or the willpower to practice, to write, to put food on the table in any caring way.  But that was mid-May, and we've been recovering since.  I have needed and luxuriated in the time.  At this point, I'm finding myself in a great phase of practicing both the oboe and the tarot.  This is the thing I love the most about summer - just having the time and space to dig in deep.

Last week had long been intended as MY week.  I had four days away from home and I'd been looking forward to it for months.  As always, I was overambitious about the way I planned to use my time.  I packed three books, four magazines.  Running clothes.  Three tarot decks.  And 25 minutes worth of difficult solo oboe repertoire that I couldn't play yet, to be performed in two weeks time in front of hundreds of oboists at the IDRS conference.

Mind you, I was in central Illinois to perform with the Peoria Bach Festival, which is not an insignificant time commitment.  But anytime I'm away from my home and my family responsibilities I just KNOW that I'll be able to achieve greatness .

I accomplished a lot.  Of COURSE I'm not exactly ready yet to perform, but the program is coming together.  I got a lot done.  Somewhere in the middle of Friday, though, when I was struggling to drag myself back out of the sunshine and down to my basement practice room, I sat at a picnic table by the river and drew the Five of Swords and Ten of Cups from the Wild Unknown deck.


The combination was immediately resonant.  The Five of Swords is traditionally  about a victory that doesn't feel like one, a short term win that may be a long-term loss.  This deck's image of the earthworm cut in half - the enemy vanquished but arising again twice as powerful - reminded me of the pitfalls of unproductive practice time.

Sure, you can make yourself practice, but if you aren't enjoying it, aren't actually interested and curious and enjoying the journey, you'll be learning bad habits, or practicing grimness and anger into your music.  That felt too close to my last month for comfort.

I don't want that.  I want the openness, joy, and abundance of the Ten of Cups to be a part of my practice time as well as  part of my playing and my performance.  I want to approach the oboe with the right mindset.

So I finished my walk.  I came back to my host's house, took a shower, got a cold drink - and approached the oboe fresh and refreshed.  I took some time to meditate before I started to play.  I began with long tones that brought focus to my brain as well as to my sound.  And then I had a spectacularly productive session, loving the music that I was working on.

Could I have gotten there without that message from the cards?  Sure.  It was an obvious insight.  But would I have thought to sit down, take some deep breaths, and consider how I intended  to practice?  And ponder what was wrong with my mindset?  And decide how best to get back in?

I love summer. I love the oboe.  I love the tarot.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zoe's Musical Beginnings

I've mentioned before that I started out on the piano by figuring out melodies.  Connecting notes and trying to learn how they worked.  I'm fascinated to observe that Zoe's initial approach to the instrument is totally different from mine. She sits at our new piano and plays random notes, and tells us what to feel.  If she is playing slowly then the music is sad, and we should cry. When we are "crying" she either gets up and hugs us so we feel better (so awesome!) or bangs faster, to indicate that the music is now happy and we should dance.  Her other piano game is accompanying herself - she plays "chords" in alternating hands while she "sings" the ABC song or Camptown Races or Sesame Street.  She makes us sing along.  She loves it when we clap at the end.  When I was little I wanted to know how music worked. Although I make my living as a performer now, I learned about the interpersonal aspects of music later.  Her immediate interest is in ...
2 comments
Read more

Cleaning Your Reeds

Updated: I've posted a video of my plaque cleaning technique HERE ! Oboe reeds are made from organic material, and over time it is inevitable that they will age and change. The first few days of change are usually quite welcome, as you break the reed in by playing and the opening gradually settles down to something you can be comfortable with and the response becomes more and more predictable.  You might even hit a plateau where it appears to be perfectly consistent and reliable for several days! But after that, the reed seems to be on a constant gradually accelerating downslope, until it eventually collapses into a sharp, non-responsive, mushy mess. We can rejuvenate the reed during this time by cleaning it, and can often extend its life as well! There are three good ways to do this. First, least invasively, you can just run some fresh water through and over the reed AFTER you play each time.  Go ahead and rinse that reed in the sink, shake it as dry as possible, a...
6 comments
Read more

Knife Sharpening

I've gotten a lot of questions on this topic, and the most recent querent prompted me to make a video to demonstrate.  You can find that  HERE . Knife sharpening seems to strike terror into many hearts.  And it's little wonder.  Many famous oboists have gone on record as saying that a sharp knife is the most important aspect of reed making. People have entire systems of stones and strops and rods set up to sharpen their knives. And it is important, of course it is - but I don't believe that you need your knife to be razor-like, or objectively the sharpest blade of any in your home.  The reed knife has one job - scraping cane off in precision ways - and it has to be sharp enough for that, and sharpened optimally for that purpose.  More than that is overly fussy for my taste. This is not to say that I allow my knife to be dull.  A dull knife forces you to put too much pressure on the reed and can cause cracking. Obviously it can lead to terribly inc...
7 comments
Read more