WARNING: Music Geekiness Ahead

Have been singing "Night And Day" - not just singing it, but really trying to figure it out. So I've been listening to it far more carefully that I normally would.

It's unusual for a song of that era. It's longer, for one. Instead of the typical four 8-bar sections, if is divided into 6 sections of 8 bars - with an ABABCB structure (instead of the more typical AABA).

This song has an unusual chord progression as well. And all sorts of lovely crunchy chords such as major sevenths built on the flattened sixth of the key, resolving to dominant sevenths. My favorite part starts with a chord built on the augmented fourth of the key, and descends by semitones before hitting the supertonic minor seventh. Gorgeous.

The only reason I can somewhat do justice to this song is that the vocal melody is a bit unusual - the melody is incredibly simple, with all the notes hovering around the SAME note for the most part, with all the lovely chords meandering about underneath.

After an early dinner with BM (during which we had the first celebrity sighting of 2009 - Dan Ackroyd), I came home and went directly to my piano. It was a lovely evening.

Of course, the most noteworthy part of it was that BM and I both choose to detox and NOT drink tonight.

While I am rather proud of that, I will admit that as I type this, I am sipping a bone dry white, and still humming.

Speed

Got home last night drunk and cranky.

I slept for a couple hours and woke to Bach's Two Part Inventions speeding through my mind. In particular, one of Glenn Gould's recordings where he flew through them at such a pace that I was actually stressed out listening. I remember after listening to that particular rendition, I practiced them at that same breakneck tempo and when my piano teacher heard me, her comment to me was: "Why are you trying to get them over with so quickly? It won't make the lesson end any sooner."

But I digress.

When I woke up a few hours ago, I played them. Started nice and slow, then sped up, then sped up some more, then sped up a lot more.

I remember what made me cranky. But for the life of me, I can't figure out WHY it did so. When others are inexplicably cranky, I assume that there is another, perhaps completely unrelated, explanation for it. I could spend time trying to figure out that underlying reason for myself. Or I could just go back to playing Bach WAY too fast and lose myself in speed.

Chanel N°19

It's not even 6PM and it's dark dark dark.

This only surprises me because somehow I completely missed summer.

I'm taking a short break from work right now and listening to my favorite movement from my favorite symphony: Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 in E minor, the Largo movement.

I remember the first time I heard it - at music school. My string-instrument friends all played in the orchestra so I went to a performance. Students, you say? You are probably imagining something awful. It wasn't professional, certainly, but re-tune what you are no doubt hearing in your mind's ear. Their performance was surprisingly good. So much so, that I remember "forgetting" where I was. Instead of sitting on the edge of my seat out of nervousness for my friends on stage, I sat back and closed my eyes.

If you've never listened to it, do.

It's beautiful. It's complex overall, simple in parts, and sweet and triumphant and sad and wistful and happy. I listen to it frequently, but most especially in the winter. Maybe because it was winter when I first heard it.

I have this belief that innocence has a surprising ability to remain untouched. (Of course, I'm precluding all manner of dark innocence robbers from this statement). For example, you can tell a dirty joke - if it's understood, then you were hardly the one to mar that particular innocence. If it's not, well then, it's not, and innocence remains.

I was always a voracious reader. I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on. Which meant that as a small child I was reading books that would be considered shocking for adults. (Let's ignore the fact that my parents' library contained such variety). But what didn't make sense to me, simply didn't. And it was only upon rereading those same books when I was much older that I thought to myself "WTF?!?"

But this piece was different for me. And I'm not relying on memory here. I read it in one of my old journals the last time I was visiting my parents. When I first heard it, I was 14 years old. And I wrote, later that evening, that listening to it made me "feel... grown up, as if I had been in love - not just having crushes. And that being in love hadn't always gone well. And although I was sometimes sad, everything was still... ok."

Yes, laughable. Nothing is quite so pretentious as a young teenager.

But the thing that struck me as I was rereading that journal, was that I WAS struck. Not just because the music was "pretty" or "sad." It made me think outside myself and my experiences to date. Which I suppose all art is intended to do. So maybe it's just me, and that during a certain period of young adulthood, I had a surprising ability to remain unmoved, untouched by what happened around me. Except for the first time I listened to this piece of music.

Oddly, I'm now thinking of Chanel N°19. It had me at the first whiff. But I've never worn it because I decided that I wasn't yet complex and interesting enough to do so.

But maybe one day, I'll wear it and go to the symphony and see if listening to a world-class orchestra performing this piece makes me think of being absurdly young, as if life were just about having crushes and playing my piano and reading books I don't understand.

This Is The Way It Should Be?

Ergo recently posted about songs that describe how she would like to be in love, and those that describe how she's actually been in love.

That got me thinking about it as well.

Of course, of late, my love life might be best described by The Sound of Silence.

But aspirationally, what would it be?

I went through my iTunes music library, and found and rejected a number of songs that I love to listen to. Basically, the songs I love to listen to describe love as dark and painful, or wistful and filled with unrequited longing, or just plain naughty without any depth. What can I say, I like what I like.

But then I found this:




According to Paul McCartney, "this is the way it should be."

I'm not sure I believe it. Or in it. But it's a nice idea, isn't it?

In the meantime, I'm going to listen to something naughty. Perhaps Nina Simone's I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl.

Gestures

During dinner last night, SK and I merrily went through our song lists, and she gave me advice on how to order my set. I was all ready to order my songs based solely on key, but SK pointed out that I should think of which songs I would need to be fully warmed up to sing. So then I started putting all the more vocally challenging songs in the second set. She then pointed out that during the break, I would cool down again. Ah. Her far greater experience in solo vocal performance is SO handy.

And then, a bottle of wine later, we reached the maudlin stage of the evening.

I'm homesick for Asia. But my nostalgia isn't just centered around a place. It's centered around a time. But that doesn't quite tell the full story.

I committed to DC, when I moved there so many years ago from NYC. I committed to Beijing. And then to Hong Kong.

But when I returned to NYC two years ago, I never COMMITTED to this city. I know why. It just felt so much like home that I felt I didn't have to make the effort.

Perhaps I need to unpack my ever-ready suitcase. That would be just a small gesture, but even the smallest gestures can have meaning, yes?

Thinking About Things...

I've been trying to blog, but I keep getting stuck.

So I switch from one keyboard to another. It's been a lot of Schubert lately. Specifically, this:



I figure if I play it enough, eventually certain things I've been mulling over will become clear...

Life Aspirations

I have two:

1. By day, to write trashy novels
2. By night, to be a lounge singer

My sexless trashy novel will never see the light of day. But my second aspiration might just be achieved - at least for one evening, if SK has anything to say about it.

Mid summer, SK told me that she wants to do a cabaret night sometime in November, starring herself, VH, and me. I immediately enthused about the idea and then promptly forgot about it until she came over one evening last week for wine and girl-talk and reminded me about it.

VH, if you read this post, consider yourself reminded as well.

Since SK is appalled by my karaoke song choices, she wrote up a list of songs for me and told me in no uncertain terms that the list is non-negotiable and that I will have to learn them.

Not only does SK know music, she also knows my voice. So her choices for me are spot on. I did try to be helpful by volunteering my karaoke favorites - all of which she rejected out of hand by telling me, "what you like to sing at karaoke and what you can actually do justice to don't have much in common."

True enough.

So we sat at my little kitchen table while she searched for various songs on youtube, muttering to herself, and I sat opposite her, drinking my wine, swaying along to whatever she was playing on my computer, and pretending that my remote control was a mic.

What do we need to make this cabaret night happen? I'll make a list:

1. a pianist
2. mics/speakers/piano/assorted other equipment
3. a venue
4. a date
5. an audience

But for now, I'm off to download Whatever Lola Wants from iTunes.

Nothing But The Music

I remember thinking recently that I got through my tumultuous teen and pre-teen years by playing the piano.

No need for a therapist, no need to act out in potentially destructive ways, not when you can empty yourself of everything difficult through your fingertips.

Some composers are better than others for that. Chopin, Schubert, and some Beethoven, are marvelous for their cathartic effect - you can overplay them when alone, without fear of criticism from one's piano teacher, and be self indulgently self-pitying or angry, playing yourself into every note, and feel better afterwards.

But Bach is what I played when things seemed so bad that the thought of catharsis was dreadful and unbearably naked, when the last thing I wanted to do was play myself into the music. Because Bach was always... wholly Bach.

I placed an Amazon.com order last Friday and received it today. I am on page 67 of my newly acquired copy of Madeleine L'Engle's The Small Rain and just read this:

Katherine looked down at the keyboard. "Mother said when you were unhappy or confused, Bach was the person to play. With almost everybody else you can think, but with Bach there's nothing but the music. It's true, you know."

"Yes, I know," Tom said. He stood leaning on the piano. Twice he seemed about to speak; then he waved his arms a little, helplessly, and wandered out.

The best writers can do that - magically pull out something important, and mostly forgotten, from your own experience, phrase it far better than you could have possibly done so yourself, and remind you of it.

The Sound of Trying

In Sunbeams: Sages, Saints and Lovers Celebrate the Human Heart, edited by Sy Safranksky, Thomas Powers writes an anecdote about Stravinsky, and a new piece the composer had written with a particularly difficult violin passage:

"After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, 'I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.'"

I haven't read the book; just from the title alone, it sounds like something that would probably piss me off, but I'd like to think that that anecdote about Stravinsky is true. And now I'm going to be mildly irritated until I figure out which piece it is so I can listen to that passage.

Playing Mozart

My guitar lessons are going well, I am progressing by leaps and bounds.

After 2 months of lessons, I am now working an a Carcassi Etude which I will perform in a student recital in the beginning of April.

But, as I predicted for myself, I am now at the stage where I am acutely aware that my "musicality," which has been very expensively developed by years of classical musical training, is vastly NOT matched by my technical ability on the guitar.

I know how the piece SHOULD be played. But I have to accept that in the next couple weeks, the most I can achieve is producing a clean performance - all the correct notes, no incorrect ones, and, more or less, in the appropriate tempo. But a clean performance is hardly a GOOD performance.

This has made me think of when I studied piano. My piano teacher introduced certain pieces to me when she judged that I had sufficient technical ability, and had me revisit them at regular intervals. She had me first play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata when I was 11. I worked on the piece and was eventually able to produce a clean version of it. But it was only as practice, never for performance.

She had me revisit it at 13 and I performed it then.

At 16, I worked on it again. And although it was indisputable that I was a far more capable pianist at that point, with greater technical proficiency and deeper emotional expressiveness, my teacher's reply when I asked if I would perform it was: "Let me think about that. No." I think if she had been less measured in her response, she would have phrased it differently, "Hell no."

The bottom line was that I was a near prodigy when I was younger, but I peaked at 12, and while I kept progressing, the rate of that progress had slowed measurably, and by 16, I was merely average when compared to the pool of young pianists who were my peers.

In my last few years studying piano, I focused almost exclusively on practicing and performing Bach and Chopin - two vastly different composers. I was most proficient at Bach. His almost mathematical precision lent itself well to my strengths and my performances of Bach were not only clean, but also GOOD. But I enjoyed playing Chopin (and Schubert) much more - and I performed those pieces with a certain romantic, over-the-top quality which played well with audiences. I NEVER played or performed Mozart. Mozart requires all the technical precision of Bach, but also an ability to emote with restraint and delicacy. And restraint and delicacy have never been my strong suits.

Every year, my piano teacher would have all of her students perform in her student recital, and the final performance of the recital was always reserved for her best student. I was not her best student. There was another girl who had far better pedal work than I. SHE was able to play Mozart beautifully. But I held that coveted final position for years. Why? My teacher phrased it this way: "She's better than you are. But you ham it up. I can't let anyone follow you. It's not good, I don't like it, but what can I do?"

With my current guitar playing sparking this self-indulgent walk down memory lane, it has occurred to me that perhaps I need to do the life equivalent of learning to play Mozart.

But first, I will play Carcassi at this student recital, hamming it up for JF, DP, JD, et al, in the audience - JF in particular has promised to shriek wildly and pull out his hair and maybe even pee a little, no matter what I end up doing on stage, even (or especially) if it involves ping pong balls.

Toughen Up

The calluses on the fingertips of my left hand are developing nicely and I can now play my New Love for longer than 15 minutes at a time.

No one wants to be described as hard skinned and insensitive. There's a premium placed on being open and sensitive and well, soft.

But calluses allow one to play the guitar for longer periods of time without pain - the only way to gain the proficiency to make music. I think the same applies more generally as well - the necessity of toughness to create something sweet.

Shhh....

My guitar teacher played a Bach Gavotte for me today. We all know what that means... I started getting all tingly.

MG is perplexed by this thing I have for Bach - she asked me, "Bach is so mathematical, what about Debussy, or even Satie?" I don't understand it either. Perhaps it's because I'm Asian and therefore find math sexy? I did have a little crush on my algebra teacher back in the day...

Well anyway, my guitar teacher believes I am a musical genius, and is awed by my near "magical" ability to instantly master both technique and music theory, often before he has completed the explanation.

I may have neglected to mention 5 years of music school and 12 years of piano lessons and the teensy little fact that I learned to read music before words.

Let's keep that between us.

I Threw Up A Little In My Mouth

My Heart Will Go On is a horrible song. It enrages me - rather like waving something red at an angry bull.

And yet, in advance of my fast, I have downloaded not only that song, but also the following:

• Say You, Say Me
• We've Got Tonight
• Wind Beneath My Wings
• Theme From Mahogany
• Who's Crying Now
• Open Arms
• The Way We Were

These are my guilty pleasure songs. They are wonderfully suited for gesturing dramatically to, which, as my fast proceeds, might be all I have the strength to do.

I am moderately worried that I'll emerge from my fast not only thoroughly detoxed, but also with a room temperature IQ. In fact, I might be able to communicate only via song lyrics:

"C-Belle, boozy brunch tomorrow?'

"Who knows what tomorrow brings?"

"What the fuck does that mean? Yes or no?"

"My spirit is free, laughing at the questions that you once asked of me."

"You said your fast would be broken by now. Do you remember that?"

"Misty water-colored memories."

"God, you are SO annoying."

"Say you, say me."

"I'm hanging up now."

"My heart will go on, and on..."

Gesture Dramatically

With JN in town from Austria, I have a handy resource if I need reminders of things I had said and done as a child. Which is about as fun as one might imagine.

We were in my apartment working, and, as I am wont to do, I was dancing to Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart. JN pointed out that this isn't a good song to dance to... that it's better suited to sitting to, while gesturing dramatically from the waist up - which is what she was doing.

As I ignored her, she asked me, "Remember when you didn't like to dance? When did that change?"

It wasn't so much about things changing as it was about blocks suddenly, mysteriously vanishing.

Once I danced only to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive and Men at Work's Down Under. And one day, to my surprise, I found myself dancing to Crowded House and Duran Duran. A block removed. And as the years progressed, blocks kept disappearing.

The final block was removed this weekend. And this time, I can point to the precise moment of block removal: dancing to that Techno crap at that club on Friday night. Apparently, after that experience, I can now dance to ANYTHING.

SK and I had boozy sushi last night, and we found ourselves sitting at our table, eating sushi and drinking pomegranate martinis, listening to the musak that was piped in, and shimmying happily away.

Off now to gesture dramatically to the Bangles' Eternal Flame.

The More Things Change...

The summer after I graduated from college, I visited my old music school. Feeling terribly grown-up and worldly, I wanted to revisit a place of my Youth And Innocence.

I went to the fifth floor and walked down the hallway to pause at the spot where I had thrown up after having eaten a bad hamburger.

I went to the third floor and sat outside the practice room where a boy had tried (quite nearly successfully) to woo me by humming Bach's Piano Concerto in D Minor in my ear.

I went to the cafeteria to sit at the table where we had gotten drunk one lunch-time on some cheap wine someone had smuggled in.

I walked by the sofa on which JL had cried and cried her heart out upon learning that Simon Le Bon got married.

I left my music school that day feeling quite smug that I was so much more sophisticated and mature than I had been as a child.

One day soon I'd like to go back and do that tour again. But I suspect that this time I'll walk away with the realization that I haven't changed at all.

97 Keys

When I decided to move back to the US from Hong Kong, I chose my neighborhood in part because WC told me that I would need to live on her subway line if I ever wanted to see her. (Although I've noticed that she suddenly has no problems trekking to the east side of town to see her BF, but hey, I understand - he possesses attractions which I lack.)

But I also chose this neighborhood because someone I once knew lived here.

When I was 16 years old, attending music school on the weekends, I cut my afternoon theory and composition classes one Saturday to go to Patelson's Music House. I was comparing two different scores of Beethoven's First, when I got that familiar tingly sensation on the back of my neck. I turned to find myself watched by a frighteningly elegant older woman. She asked me, "Are you a musician?"

My response was something like this, "uh... well... I take lessons... but... uh... you know... uh...."

She placed a perfectly manicured hand on my arm to cut short my eloquence, and said, "So, you are a musician."

There was something both challenging and reassuring about how she made that statement. So I took a breath,  threw my shoulders back and said, "Yes, I am."

I never learned that much about her. The sum total of our "relationship" was that I would go to her townhouse on the occasional Saturday afternoon and practice on her Bosendorfer grand piano while she read or typed or even talked quietly on the phone. Often, she wasn't even in the same room.

The Bosendorfer was astonishing. Sweeter than a Steinway - and with those extra keys on the bass end which I never quite knew what to do with, but was terribly pleased to see there.

I remember once I decided to take extreme liberties with a piece so I could take advantage of the extra keys and that was the only time she ever commented on my playing. She told me to stop and just play it as it was written. I must have looked crushed, because then she added, more gently, that when I got more skilled, I would figure it out. That was also one of the longer conversations she and I ever had.

Then I went to college and never saw her again. But I've wondered about her and I've written her story in my mind a number of times. But it always goes back to a simple question: "Why?" To my chagrin, I am nearing the age she probably was when I met her and I ask myself what would drive ME to "befriend" a young music student?   I've explained it to myself that she was a music lover - but then why spend the time listening to a student practice when she lived in a city where you can't swing a cat on the sidewalk without hitting a gifted, professional musician?

I've pored through my journals from when I was 16 and 17 looking for clues, and while I documented copiously detailed accounts of the boys I liked and the calories I consumed on a meal by meal basis and countless drafts of college admission essays, there is nothing more than the barest of references to this woman. I never even wrote down her name. Certainly not her address. Apparently I thought that this was a secret I should keep - even from myself.

Sometimes I think I'd like to find her to talk to her and tell her that while I've never figured out when or how to use those extra keys, I think I've learned when not to. But then I always decide that I would leave her in peace, even if I could find her again.

Sometimes a moment just passes and you should let it do so.

But that doesn't stop me from walking down a tree-lined street of townhouses in my 'hood and peering into the windows, looking for a Bosendorfer.