I’ve had a couple of good days of musical digging with my friend. We’ve gone through my concerto movement by movement to understand what is being portrayed. I was reminded of Bull Durham in the sense of the wise adviser and the semi-mindless pupil (me being Tim Robbins). It’s amazing to me how I can embody either role depending on the circumstance. Also how it is impossible to imagine myself in the alternate position during the other.
Although I feel better physically simply when I am exploring and extracting things musically, I have also come upon another technical idiosyncrasy which I know you will care about. Focusing on releasing the hand/arm affects the opposing one in like fashion. I guess I already knew this, but now I am seeing the true benefits of this approach over direct relaxation. It is much less likely to backfire. I perpetually undermine my efforts to relax (!) by overdoing the relaxing mantra I am working for at the moment. I become obsessed over the body part in question to the exclusion of all else, and I end up quite imbalanced as a human being. You may be surprised how easy this is to do to myself.

On the other hand, the indirect approach to looseness seems to prevent this overfocusing. It also has the benefit of affecting a more well-rounded proportion of my body.

originally published on 4/27/09