Musicspeak: recurring nightmares

Recurring nightmares: do you have them? Here are some of mine that are music-related:


I am waiting behind the curtain on stage, getting ready to perform to a full house and someone hands me a violin. (I am a pianist.)


I am seated at the piano on stage and suddenly realize I am to perform a Beethoven sonata that I learned 10 years ago and don't remember any more.

During a performance of a Mozart concerto, I suddenly realize I have jumped from the 1st to the 3rd movement.

Wait.That last one actually happened.

(Pause for you to feel the horror of it.)

The good thing, if there was any good about this sad situation, was that I was only a first year conservatory student, and while the recital was a public one, not many people were there. Also, I wasn't accompanied by an orchestra, but by my piano teacher playing the orchestral reduction on another piano. We fixed that problem quickly and I finished the rest of the recital without further problems (I think; I was on automatic gear after that and don't remember anything very well.)

I knew that piece backwards and forwards, maybe even upside down. How could that have happened?

The audience, that's what.


Practicing alone in a practice room, playing to my teacher in his studio, or even playing the piano on a empty stage were significantly different phenomena than performing on stage to an audience.


I was an inexperienced performer and did not know how to handle my heart beating a mile a minute, my hands frozen and sweating at the same time, my thoughts wandering all over the place. It was a miracle, really, that I didn't have more memory lapses.

My mother, if you remember from a previous post, was (and still is) a writer and while talking about this incident, remarked that the main difference between our chosen art forms was this: that a writer did not have to be present when her work was read whereas a musician performed to a live audience.

At the time, still smarting from this humiliating experience, I wished I was a writer, safely cocooned in my private writing world. No falling flat on my face in public, no fumbling with trouble passages for all the world to see, no having my work determined by one incident. I wondered why my mother seemed wistful.

As I grew as a performer, I understood my mother's envy. There is nothing quite like the energy in a room when you have a receptive audience. It is supremely gratifying to give something of yourself and feel the vibes of the audience who accepts it. There are very few things in life that compare to how alive I feel during those moments.

Now that I am spending more time writing than performing, I appreciate the more forgiving nature of writing. I don't have to produce great sentences on the spot. I can spend time with my words, polishing them before I present them to my audience. By the same token, I do miss the immediate feedback from my audience.

I am not sure where I stand in the spectrum of whether art is a form of communication and isn't quite complete until it's received, or it is a form of expression that stands on its own. Some days, playing a piece privately is enough; it is my very private expression, of gratitude, of sorrow, of joy, and I don't need nor want anyone around. Other days, I enjoy playing for people. Some of my writing remains my prayer and will never be seen but I can't wait to see what reaction some other stories will be met with.

Where do you stand? How do you view your art or the art of others? Did Picasso create only for himself? What if Glenn Gould never released his two versions of Goldberg Variations? What if Schumann performed all the songs he wrote the year he got married only for his beloved Clara? Are you curious about all the works of Dostoevsky or King we never get to read?

[Yes, I do realize that writing, in many ways, has become a much more public endeavor. A writer known only by her works is no longer the overwhelming norm. These days, we can, if we choose, to put our work out there for something like immediate feedback by the public. But I am staying clear of this tangent for now.]

Big and Small, at the same time

To say that something is big and small at the same time is to equivocate. But to feel small and become aware of limitless possibilities: that is what art does.

Yesterday, I saw some amazing pictures of stairs at Talespinning that did just that. Go over now and look at those photographs and see if you have the same reaction, especially to the first one, where your eyes follow those old stone steps upward and when the steps stop abruptly, your eyes are directed to the sky. I found myself holding on my breath as I looked at the photograph.

I felt small.

What am I when I consider the stones, and the power and time it took for them to come into existence? And the steps: how much work and strength and skill that had gone into making the stones into steps? And that unending vastness that uplifts and humbles we call the sky.

Small and big simultaneously? Yes.
Me: small. Possibilities: big.

Have you felt like that?

From Where I Stand, or Head Hopping

One of the earliest lessons I learned in writing fiction is to pay careful attention to POV: that important position from which a story is told. Stick closely to the Point-Of-View you've chosen; don't switch nilly-willy from third to first and definitely do not jump from head to head. It confuses the reader, who wants to identify with the person who's telling the story.

It's true that head jumping is disorienting, and I get irritable when an author tells me things that the POV person shouldn't know, and it seems like a lazy thing to do.

But when can rules be broken? When did Picasso start deviating from drawing people as they looked to the rest of the world, and deciding that things seen from multiple perspectives are more interesting? Perhaps after he's mastered the basic "rules" of his art form?


Roxana Robinson has a masterful grasp of language (although it's pompous for me to pronouce that; like a violin student telling Joshua Bell he has a masterful grasp of his art form.) In her book, Cost, she shifts POV frequently. In chapter four, for example, we see the scene from the viewpoints of Edward; his wife, Katherine; their daughter, Julia; and Julia's grown son, Steven. The transitions were smooth; I never had any doubt whose head I was in; and no hint of irribility is detected anywhere within my reader/writer brain.

Rules are meant to be broken: when the rule breaker has mastered the rule and can break the rule without violating the idea/spirit behind said rule.

Agree? Not? Vehemently?

Tomorrow I'll ask some follow-up questions, such as:
What rules do you find you violate, but with justification?

Those Creative types: album cover designers

Typical size of a Vinyl LP jacket: 12 x 12 inches
Typical size of a CD jewel case: 5.5 x 5.5 inches
Typical size of an thumbnail on the pages of iTune: 2 x 2 mm, if that

LP jackets offered artists a decent size canvas for their artwork. That, together with the close connection between art and music, and it's no wonder even famous artists have been drawn to designing for album covers: Andy Warhol, for example. Cover album art, in fact, took on a life of its own and you can even find coffee table books on the worst/best/most famous album covers over the years.

But can you imagine the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band shrunk to the size of a CD jewel box?



All the details are lost. We're not even talking about an icon on the iTunes page.

What is a cover album artist to do? Lament? Tear out hair? Start a movement to change the music medium back to Vinyls? Throw his hands up and say he'll get his artistic fix by posting his album cover ideas on a blog?

I am sure some do. But those who need work and can keep an open mind adapt. If you look at the new designs, most of them take on the style of a logo so that they mae a statement as boldly as they can in their diminutive sizes.

E-books, self-publishing, people shifting online in their reading habits: what is a writer to do? Keep abreast of developments in the industry, confusing and chaotic though they may be. Stay open to new possibilities instead of mourning the death of something we know and understand and love. Adapt and survive.

And write, I guess.

Those creative types: Disney Imagineers and The Haunted Mansion

The Haunted Mansion is one of my favorite attractions at Disney World. Its goofy spookiness is pure Disney and pure fun.

When you first step into the ride, you feel as if you're in an old-fashioned foyer. An ominous voice speaks and fun things happen and you can't quite believe your eyes or what your body is feeling. One of those things is that the room appears to stretch on top. It's a memorable event, but one that would not have existed had it not been for some space limitations.

Because of the way the original Disneyland had been set up, with train tracks surrounding the theme park area, new attractions could not expand outward easily. The only way the Imagineers (engineers everywhere else but if you work at Disney you get this cool title) could make Haunted Mansion work, was to take people underground via an elevator to an area outside of the one marked by the railway tracks. This has to be written into the experience, thus the seemingly stretching ceiling when it's actually the elevator lowering.

The effect that resulted from this limitation became such a hit that it was replicated in other Disney Parks that didn't have the same space limitation.

I've done my share of complaining about certain limitations placed on writers, but I also know that when I am given complete free reign: draw a picture of anything I wish, I freeze. Structure, rules: these are good things, because they focus our minds and force us to use our creativity within prescribed boundaries. Who knows, unexpected but excellent work can result.

Those creative types: Bourdain arranging flowers, Ikebana style

This week, I turn my attention to the thoughts and endeavors of creative people in the arts; composers, theme-park engineers, album cover designers sharing their thoughts about the creative process.

The idea came when I caught a snippet of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservation on TV a few weeks ago. You may know Bourdain to be the macho, chain-smoking chef who travels around the world sampling foods and pontificating. (The man gets to cook, eat, and write for a living? How jealous am I?)

Anyway, in this episode, he is in Japan, (Kyoto, I think) and he is given a chance to try his hand at arranging flowers and plants, Ikebana style, a style that emphasizes not so much the prettiness of the flowers, but the organic forms and lines of all parts of the plants: stems and twigs as well as flowers; how each element interact with the others; and being mindful of the spaces created between the lines.


It tickled me to see this world-weary, no-nonsense guy stare at the stems placed in front of him, trying to figure out what to do. He is always so sure of his opinions and to see him hesitate in front of some humble cut plants is refreshing. His guide, an expert in Ikebana, encourages him to just pick things up and find out where each plant is "happy." Soon, we see Bourdain muttering about is it happy here? I think I'll put this here, and cut this, and is it happy?

I am not the mystic-prone type writer, I don't sit at the computer waiting for my characters to talk through me and show me what they're going to do each day. But I think there is also an element about a creative process that is outside our control. It may not be a bad idea, at times, to step back from our work, and figure out if it is "happy." This advice is an especially good one for control freaks like me.

I wish you: happy manuscripts.

[CherryBlossomFestival_Japantown_Ikebana_04142008_951by javier.blazquez
CherryBlossomFestival_Japantown_Ikebana_04142008_993by javier.blazquez
Both pictures found on Flickr, Creative Commons.]