Tag Archives: philosophy

cello practice, everyday observations

Resist

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I took a nap before the concert tonight, and it gave me an ease at the outset of the performance that I don’t often feel without a great deal of concentration and (non)effort. Last summer I blogged about trying to play with utter looseness, a la Perlman. I felt it oddly unnatural and unsatisfying to not exert much effort, perhaps due to the contrast from what I am accustomed to. Tonight I remembered another phase I went through – Krishnamurti immersion. He frequently talks about non-effort, non-conflict, non-worry and non-thinking. They are tantalizing concepts, but the last time I perused one of his books I was less than taken by his philosophizing.
I like the idea of extending the technical issues I have on the cello out to the rest of my existence. That’s of course been a great quest and fantasy of mine for decades.

As the concert progressed, I gradually lost that pleasurable ease. It tends to be fleeting like that. It’s as though I like to have something to butt up against. I like friction, resistance. I need them, more to the point. I realized that I also like to hear other performers with some of that taste for friction. I am unmoved by totally comfortable, unperturbed players. It’s like watching a piece of cardboard play music.

originally published on 1/26/08

hypotheses and philosophies

Lacadosic

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Human. I am one, apparently. Against all I’ve been taught to believe, I am but a guy, with the full gamut of weaknesses and foibles that goes along with the gender and species.
If I can courageously accept this humanity, who knows what may lie in store? If I am allowed to err, I may end up taking a risk once in a while. I may also relax my ever-present vigilance and tension and simply enjoy the act of being alive (versus the alternative – dead and buried). I have found that it is pretty sucky not to fess up to my humanness. You end up getting sucked into all the negativity of other people who also aren’t enjoying their humanness.

I did recently play one concert with this in mind, and it worked out quite well. Allowing myself to be vulnerable and trusting of my most essential self took a weight off my shoulders. It gave me a psychological calmness which radiated to my physical state. I ended up being far more tension-free than when I am only focusing on my physical state. I also ended up unintentionally removing the burden of feeling irked by those around me, being that they are just human, too. Imagine that!

originally published on 3/15/08

hypotheses and philosophies

Binders

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I’ve known musicians who conclude that in order to be happy and fulfilled, they must find more meaning in life than simply excelling at music-making. Although I have explored many other facets of life, in my heart I never really left the womb of music. I have even suggested to people that everything they do should be in the service of their music, philosophically speaking.
I guess today at the bookstore I found a chink in that armor/cocoon. There really must be more to life than music. There is obviously more for 99% of people in the world. Maybe it would have to be a birth of sorts for me – and just as difficult and shocking to my system. Maybe that is one of the main loops I get stuck in: I try to expand my cello-oriented perspective, find it too daunting and alien, and soon fall back to where I started. When I peruse my blog entries, I see how often I have felt like I cannot grow or progress from a place of dissatisfaction, no matter what steps I take. This could explain why.

originally published on 6/20/08

everyday observations

Cheshire

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My monkey is fatigued. It does its dance all day, all night. It is the mind monkey. I had to laugh tonight in the middle of the Mozart Requiem as I observed its antics. I guess I never really liked the metaphor of the monkey, but now I am getting it. It has a lot of personality. It is actually your pseudo-self, your scattered self. Your externally obsessed self. It actually can seem very entertaining until one notices how tiresome it gets. That’s why it’s called the monkey. It’s not going anywhere – it’s a natural part of you. But it’s important to distinguish yourself from it. Your truer self, one hopes.

originally published on 10/11/08

hypotheses and philosophies

Inverness

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So, the theory is, I can begin limiting myself (in a way) to behaving not like an angel, not like a devil, but somewhere in that gray area in between. If I can sustain this behavior pattern long enough, it will force hidden feelings out of me which I have heretofore masked via those extreme states, which are somewhat obsessive and highly distracting states, really. The more I sustain the gray, the more things will come out of me which I have kept hidden, and which are only doing me harm in there. I must just be normal. And I must be in a state to handle what comes forth from this theoretically more natural place I will be in, which is not one extreme or another. Just being.

originally published on 3/29/07

cello practice, hypotheses and philosophies

Lefty Loosy

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I realized something. Music-making is really just the tip of the iceberg. It is the cherry on top. There are so many other ways to forge your way through life, to while away the hours of a day. Those things are the journey. Music-making is just a rest stop. The best music comes from an accumulation of many other things. The pith of those other things will determine the quality of the music. I have always thought you can work on music just on its own, but now I am changing my mind.< In addition, I can now see why too much awareness and self-reflection detracts from the overall quality of the music. Making the music be the focal point will unravel all that it is made of. Music should be allowed to be abstract. Unfettered. originally published on 6/10/07

cello practice, hypotheses and philosophies

Blanket Statement

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Upon further investigation (a reading session with some friends) I better understand what makes music-making so elusive and challenging. The pithiness inside yourself I referred to earlier sustains you in the midst of creating the music. One can so easily cave in on oneself if not for that support system. The richness of the music, the grandeur and beauty, must be counterbalanced by whatever one might experience in the daylight of real life.

The thing is you cannot substitute will power or intellectualization for life experience. That is the temptation, because it seems so much more efficient. However, the more time-consuming path of making my life enriching will actually accomplish what I need. And in the end it will be quicker. I won’t keep going in circles, for one thing.

originally published on 6/11/07

hypotheses and philosophies

The Limit

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Wow. What is it about home that sucks it out of me? What residual crap am I dealing with that has nothing whatsoever to do with my present life? Because I really am at a loss to discover what could be the instigator of my numbness. As soon as I got off the plane in Ft Myers I felt it beginning. By the time I got home I was ready to collapse into my useless routine. There is nothing remotely cruddy enough about my life here that would explain this reaction.

In fact, I did some fantastic reading, writing and soul-searching on the plane ride from Detroit. You wanna see some? But wait, before I do that, let me just say that my growth and emergence from whom I have been to whom I could be is inevitably going to be slow and incremental. So I would be wise to cut myself a little slack. Okay, here’s the quotation:

Wisdom is seemingly a cure for what I frequently consider neuroses. The seeking of wisdom. The imparting of it. Wisdom may not be a static state of being. It must find expression. I like to be static, to find defining characteristics of myself, others, or situations, and label them or pinpoint them. But what if it is in the striving for this clarification that truth and beauty lie? Not to mention serenity and open-endedness? It feels like a paradox: motion, generosity of spirit, and active inquiry may be the pathway to inner calmness and balance. Maybe it is akin to yin and yang – one without the other is a spiral downward. Passion and reason, as Gibran says. He continuously attributes his higher sense of wisdom to observing the menial day-to-day lives of the villagers of Orphalese (The Prophet). Give and take. A giver needs a receiver and vice versa. What use is wisdom without confusion, and how can the confused strive towards anything without learned guidance?

I guess one of the sources of my neurotic behavior is my need to find equality and fairness in the world. But maybe that is a flawed aspiration in the first place. That would lead to a stasis and eventual deterioration. For how does one determine the superior philosophy to use as the benchmark for a good life? Whatever and whoever are eliminated will end up being squashed, discounting any equality.

originally published on 12/8/07

hypotheses and philosophies

Malnourish

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There is a problem with having a strong constitution. It’s a double-edged sword. While you’re only minimally affected by bad things that happen to you or that you inflict upon yourself, you have great difficulty developing strategies to encourage healthy behavior. It’s hard to say who ends up better off: the weaker among us who learn quickly how to live correctly, but eventually cannot handle what life throws at them; or the stronger ones who can withstand severe abuse, but never end up learning how to take care of themselves, thereby succumbing to their own foibles.

Another angle: pacing. Constitutional pacing. How quickly each person’s body succumbs to harmful intrusion, both in the short and the long term. That is probably more apropos than simple blanket strength. If your pacing is gradual, then you must be particularly reliant on your wits to make your way through the maze of temptations. You’re getting very little feedback from your senses or internal nervous system. If you navigate erroneously, you’ll catch it in the ass later on. Or in the arm. Or the tooth. Or in that tendon descending from the kneecap. These toxins will build up, and you’ll be out for the count for a good while.
But the quick-paced among us are getting feedback almost constantly. And while it isn’t pleasant, it’s a good chauffeur to lead us in healthy directions.

originally published on 2/2/08

everyday observations

Lancet

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I’m funny. I don’t think things affect me. Ha! Just ’cause I don’t keel over with a seizure or aneurysm has nothing to do with whether I have escaped scot-free from an abuse, either self or other-inflicted. Maybe I’m not the most sensitively created being in the universe. But each small act I engage in has at least an equal repercussion on who and what I am in the ensuing hours and days. I’m glad I googled scot-free, because that’s precisely not how I end up after any sort of indiscretion.

Another wonderful truth is that I cannot separate different parts of myself from eachother. I am one organism, and each part is linked to the rest. I guess the question becomes, to what degree are these things linked? Well, that depends how deep you look.

originally published on 2/3/08