That’s no violinist, that’s my (then) wife!

You know the old joke.  A suspicious friend asks, “Who was that lady I saw you with last night?”  He replies, ‘That was no lady, that was my wife!”  Oops.

Anyway, Googling myself I came across this photo taken in 1986(!) at Florida State University on the www.floridamemory.com site.  It’s captioned “Eric Edberg, cellist kisses a violinist.” (Yes, another comma is needed, but I’m quoting.) Who was Allison Guest Edberg, then my wife and now my best friend and ex-wife.  I remember the session; Florida State was sending us to perform somewhere and had a staff photographer take some photos, I think.

Here’s a more serious pose:

I would rather die than play this up bow!

“Where’s the melody?” asked Nathaniel Rosen (“Nick” to anyone old or familiar enough not to call him “Mr. Rosen”), the 60-year-old cellist who, after studying with Gregor Piatigorsky for over a decade and becoming principal cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony, won the Naumburg and Tchaikovsky competitions in the late 1970s and has had an international career ever since.   Cellist James Waldo, a very accomplished Mannes College graduate student, and pianist Elena Aksenoya had just performed the exposition and development of the Mendelssohn Sonata in D Major in a master class hosted by the Violoncello Society of New York at the elegant Kosciuszko Foundation townhouse on 65th Street, just east of Fifth Avenue.

And so began an animated session in which Nick, with passion, humor, and regular-guy directness, engaged five young musicians in exploring the possibilities of more fully bringing to life  the music they were performing.  “Jab when you have the accompaniment, and bring out your left hook when you have the melody,” he exhorted James, using an apt metaphor for accents, particularly since Nick was sporting a bandage on the palm of his left hand (due to recent minor surgery as he later told the audience).

Balance between cello and piano in sonatas is always tricky, especially since the piano has grown substantially in size and power since the classical and romantic repertoire was composed, while we’re playing essentially the same cello, only slightly souped up with a higher bridge, the end pin, and steel and alloy strings.  Nick got both young artists listening to each other more closely, got the piano softer most of the time, and suddenly there was a genuine quality of interaction in their playing.  What had been fine playing with good ensemble was now a give-and-take dance, or, given Nick’s pugilistic metaphor and the energy of the piece, two boxers going back and forth.

Nick worked as much with Elena, the pianist, as with James. He coached her to play the opening hymn-like rolled-chord chorale of the slow movement with more shape, playing the melody along with her on his cello, showing her where to roll a chord more slowly for more emphasis, sometimes conducting.  James got ready to play the first cello entrance rather early.  “Piatigorsky used to say that when a string player player puts the bow up that far in advance it’s as if a soprano stood with her mouth wide open a measure before she starts to sing.”  He had him wait.  “No, wait more!” Nick interrupted.  “Now, give your sermon.”

“It’s always great when you attend a master class and see the students smiling,” Jeff Solow, the Violoncello Society’s president, commented to me at the reception.  He’s right. Giving a master class is an art unto itself;  the agenda of the teacher becomes clear early on.  With some, it’s to put the students down and make themselves look good. Others give a brief lesson, half mumbling, that the audience can’t hear, as if they wish the audience weren’t there at all.  Rostropovich’s classes, as my former teacher Bernard Greenhouse put it once, were “great theater.”

Nick spoke almost always to the musicians, occasionally to the audience, demonstrating frequently without turning the class into a listen-to-me-and-how-much-better-than-I-am-than-you affair. He made direct, to-the-point comments, and offered many metaphors. “You have to make the audience feel what you feel,” he told one of the students.  (The implication was clear that you have to actually feel something.  How?) “There are many ways to do it.  I always tell myself a story.”

The proceedings were often leavened with slightly self-deprecating humor. “I better watch the music for this one,” he told us before Yves Dharamraj played the first three movements of the Britten Suite No. 2.  “I’m not going to say I don’t know this piece.”

Pause.

Grin.

“But I don’t know this piece!” (laughter)

Yves, who I last heard play in the early 1990s when he was a young boy studying at the Interlochen Arts Camp with Pamela Frame, is developing a significant career while he finishes his Juilliard doctorate, and gave a stunningly assured, elegant, thoughtful, and musical performance of the Britten.  “You can’t talk about this piece without talking about Rostropovich,” Nick said, “so let’s talk about Slava.”  A great actor, Rostropovich was someone Britten could count on to give a dramatic performance. Nick explored ways Yves could make his own performance of the opening Declamato both more dramatic and more rhythmic.  “What’s the tempo?” he asked, wanting to feel the the underlying beat more strongly in both this movement and the Scherzo.

It’s an adventure to watch a master class when the teacher is coaching a piece or he or she doesn’t play.  Not everyone will do it, but when a major artist is willing, it is fascinating to see how his or her approach is brought to bear, what is noticed, what is emphasized.  (Interestingly, I heard Janos Starker coach a student on another Britten Suite this summer, which he said he didn’t know.) What did Nick talk about?  Drama.  Rhythmic integrity.  Practical ideas for bow distribution.  Regardless of whether Yves would ever want to be as extroverted a performer as Nick, he clearly enjoyed this interaction in which Nick pushed him to make music more passionately while simultaneously challenging him to play more strictly. (Casals’s motto, “Freedom and order!” comes to mind.)

Rounding out the evening was Matthew Park, a highly gifted sophomore at the Manhattan School of Music, who gave a passionate account of the last movement (and later a portion of the slow movement) of the Rachmaninoff Sonata with the fine pianist Alexandra Beliakovich. Beautiful playing. Nick worked with them to bring more shape, and better balance, to their performance.  At one point he told Alexandra to play the right-hand melody in the solo opening of the slow movement as if it was a singer ignoring the accompanist, and to let the rest of the notes be “just accompaniment.”

Suddenly the playing shifted and the line sang out in a new way.  It’s to experience transforming moments like this that we go to  masterclasses.

And, at a Nick Rosen class, for lines like this, as he excitedly dealt with the big b-flat to e-flat descending fifth at the climax of the slow movement: “I would sooner DIE than play this up bow!  If I did that on stage I would stop and and tell the audience, ‘I’m sorry, we have to start this movement over!’”

It is good to see students smiling in a master class.

(Le) Poisson Rouge

Finally!

Since it first opened in 2008, I’ve been wanting to experience (Le) Poisson Rouge, the “multimedia arts cabaret” on Bleeker St. in Greenwich Village, in the space that once housed the Village Gate (with a Duane Reed drugstore there for part of the interregnum, a friend thinks).  Alternative presentation of classical music is one of my strongest interests and a theme in the first-year seminar course I teach at DePauw.  So a visit to LPR during this visit-my-daughter trip to New York was a top priority.

Last night there were two contemporary-classical events, each a CD release party.  At 6:00, Nonesuch hosted a reception in the Gallery Bar for Alarm Will Sound’s new album, “a/rhythmia.”  Then at 7:30 PM the incredible flutist Claire Chase performed a concert introducing works from her debut solo album “Aliento” in the main space.

My daughter and I arrived about 6:15 PM to find the front staff, friendly early-twenty-somethings, surprisingly unsure of exactly what was going on.  The Alarm Will Sound party was free, but the Claire Chase event was $10 or free with a $50 annual membership, which grants admission for two to all free-for-members events.  The kids working the front didn’t know this, though;  one told the other to look it up on the website.  Then they didn’t know how to sign me up for a membership.  One went off and came back with the slightly rumpled Justin Kantor, the cellist (about 30 or so) who is a co-founder and manager of the club.  Justin, who I recognized from some how-to–play-the-cello videos on the web, had the membership forms, gently explained to the kids what to do, and had a nice chat with me before going back to work.

As all this was going on, my friend and DePauw colleague Cleveland Johnson, who is on leave directing the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship program in NY, emerged from the darkness.  He’d emailed me earlier in the day about getting together while I’m in town, and I’d emailed him back that I was going to LPR that evening.  Turned out he was as well, and was there with his daughter, a graduate student at Columbia.

“Alcohol is our patron,” Justin and his business partner like to say, and this became clear quite quickly.  The Gallery Bar was beautiful, the drinks fairly (although not overly) expensive, and the food menu inviting.  By this time it was, say, 6:30 or so, and nothing was yet happening regarding Alarm Will Sound.  “Things here often run late,” Cleveland, a LPR regular, explained.  “Some things don’t start for an hour after they’re scheduled.  And you never know how crowded it will be. You can show up for something you think no one would come to, and there will be a line around the block.  And then you come early for something you think everyone in New York will want to attend, and there’s hardly anyone here.”

My daughter and I were going to order food, but I spotted a buffet table with food waiting to be uncovered.  About 6:45 PM the coverings came off and guests started helping themselves.  The sound system was still playing something that was definitely not Alarm Will Sound.  A bit before 7:00 PM the new album did start playing, but by the time the Johnsons and the Edbergs migrated to the main space (about 7:15 PM) for the Claire Chase event, there were still no CDs or group members or Nonesuch execs around (or at least identified).

Now this event was well organized and produced.  To our delight, there was a table with CDs and flyers, and the CDs were free.  Now that’s a release party!  (On the other hand, I think they could have sold a bunch of them.)  The main space is visually extraordinary, and the stage had alto and bass flutes on piano benches.  I didn’t look at my watch, but it must have been quite close to 7:30 PM that Claire began her program, performing works for flute and electronics (two using prerecorded tracks, one with live processing including some looping) by Dan Fujikura, Nathan Davis, and Du Yun.  It was an extraordinary performance by an artist who has consummate technical command, musicality, and emotional involvement. The pieces were fantastic.  I was especially moved by Dy Yon’s Run in a Graveyard, which was given it’s world premiere at the event.

The lighting and amplification was brilliant;  a lot of money has gone into this space.  There was a two-item-per-person minimum, so despite being pretty full from the Alarm Will Sound party, we ordered food from the $5 appetizer menu along with drinks.

Now I had been wondering how things would work in a cabaret setting.  Surprisingly well.  The music was amplified, and the audience, at least for this event, was remarkably quiet and attentive, even while eating and drinking.  The wait staff was quietly efficient.  I look forward to hearing an unamplified acoustic event there and see how that goes.

As soon as Claire’s performance ended, the doors between the Gallery bar and the main space were opened.  After good conversation with DePauw music alum and extraordinary flutist himself Eric Lamb (who is a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble which Claire co-founded and serves as the Executive Director for) we headed out through the bar, a bit before 9:00 PM.  Now there was a table with Alarm Will Sound’s new CD;  I bought one.  The band (or some of them, there are 20 in it) had come and gone.

My daughter and I had a lovely walk uptown to her dorm, and made plans to see the 50th-anniversary hi-def digital restoration of The Wizard of Oz this afternoon at a nearby theater.  Of all the movies in New York . . . well, what could be a more nostalgic father/daughter outing?  It’s what we both want/need today, I think.

Great links about LPR here, here, here, and here (the last is on the design firm’s site and has a gallery of photos).

The Stella Adler Studio

I’m in New York because it is DePauw’s week-long fall break, and my daughter is living here, a first-year drama major attending the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where she is studying in the Stella Adler Studio. I came up Friday night.  Yesterday (Saturday) was NYU Parent’s Day;  I’m in town until Thursday morning.

How my daughter came to be placed in the Adler Studio, I don’t know.  She auditioned for Tisch in Chicago, was accepted, got a scholarship, and was informed she was in the Adler Studio.  OK.  She wanted to go to school in New York, Tisch has a fantastic reputation, and it worked out financially.  But there was this lingering question in my mind:  was this studio (there are several she could could have been placed in) the best place for her?

Well, that’s what I call a wrong question, with no answer possible (or at least discoverable).  Better put: is this place really a good fit for her?  Will this training give her the tools she needs to fully express her considerable gifts?  We she be nurtured as a person as well as rigorously challenged as an actor?

Having attended yesterday afternoon’s Parent’s Day presentation at the Adler Studio, I can answer that question in the affirmative.

The New York Adler Studio is in one of those grimy-looking New York buildings with narrow staircases and hallways, no money wasted on interior design or recent paint.  You know, the kind of place where real artists work.  (I remember when I attended Juilliard in the late 1970s, in what was then still being referred to as the “new” building at Lincoln Center, it reminded me more of a bank building than what I thought a music conservatory should look like).

Artistic Director Tom Oppenheim gave an inspiring talk explaining the Adler Studio’s history and evolving philosophy.  I was struck by his emphasis on how growth as an artist (he probably only said “actor,” but if so I’m generalizing it on purpose) is inextricably linked with growth as a human being.

In classical music, we don’t talk about that much, and to our detriment, I think.  The 20th-century emphasis on the abstractness of music, and the philosophy of performers “realizing” a score (as Ravel put it), of being executants who should play exactly what is on the page and do nothing more, made it almost impermissible to discuss the “meaning” of a piece of music, or a musical event, without being laughed at.  I’ve only heard a very few people, at least in classical music circles, explicitly discuss how who one is as a person affects how one plays music.  Or how the music one plays (and how one plays and listens and responds) affects who one is as a person.  And yet this is at the core of art.

Tom also talked about the Adler Studio’s core value of social engagement and relevance.  As we think about what’s not working in classical music, isn’t that a big part of it?  I’m nuts for the writings of musicologist Christopher Small, who emphasizes the the inherently social nature of musical events.  I could go on and on, and will at some point here.  Read the Adler Studio philosophy yourself.  Genuinely stimulating, it has me looking anew at my own work in exploring ways to combine traditional classical approaches with the humanistic ways of approaching improvisational music making I’ve experienced in the the drum-circle work of Arthur Hull and David Darling and Music for People.

Several of the faculty talked about their work, with a group of second-year students serving as a demonstration group.  We saw examples of movement techniques, voice and speech work, character development, and the Adler technique.  All fascinating.  I want to go to acting school, too.

This presentation/demonstration, along with some lengthy discussions with my daughter about the work she’s doing, have me feeling great about the hands she’s in.  (And for added reassurance, it was nice to see a major film star, who is an extraordinary actor and not just a good-looking celebrity with a flash-in-the-pan career, sitting not too far from me, beaming throughout the presentation, clearly delighted that her or his child is in these hands as well.)

Adventures in air travel

6:45 PM, October 16

OK, this is irritating.  I’m sitting in Café Patachou (a fine place to be stranded, by the way) in  the central area of the Indianapolis International Airport, waiting for my delayed flight to La Guardia.

I booked the flight through Northwest, and when I went online at school today to get a boarding pass, information came up that the flight was delayed from 6:40 to 7:40 PM.  This didn’t bother me too much, since some more time at home to sort laundry and finish packing my carry-on offered welcome relief.

So I called my student who was driving me to the airport (in my car) and told him to come by an hour later than originally agreed.  No problem.

Once home, I checked the flight status online in case of further delay.  But now the news was we’d be departing at 6:48 PM, only eight minutes.  Yikes!  I called Colin and said get right over, and packed like a madman, all the while suspecting that 6:48PM was unlikely, but nevertheless feeling it was essential to get there soon just in case.

On the way to the airport, we called Northwest and the automated voice announced at 7:10 PM takeoff.  OK, better safe than sorry.  Not enough time to hit a non-airport place for dinner on the way, but what the heck.

At the airport, there was no Northwest flight to LaGuardia listed at all.  Not even a Northwest counter.

WTF?

A closer look revealed a Delta flight with the same number and (original) departure time, headed to LGA.  A trek to the Delta counter brought me the Delta sign including, in small letters, “now serving Northwest.”  A friendly agent at the counter confirmed that the Delta flight was the Northwest fight, which is actually operated by Piannacle, whoever they are, anyway.

And now the flight was scheduled for 7:50 PM.  So on to Café Patachou for an omelet (delicious, by the way, and the service friendly and efficient).

I hopped on to the Indy airport’s free wireless.  That’s nice, free wireless.  But the screens one goes through to find the button to log on are, clearly, purposely confusing, and try to seduce you into downloading movies or games or who knows what.  Eventually I found the very small hidden button allowing me to log on.  Triumph, and no money inadvertently spent.  Heck yah, I’ll navigate a maze for free wireless.

As long as I was web surfing while eating, the connection was great. Lightning fast. But once I decided to write this post?  Barely any service.  WordPress took forever to load, there was only one little bar in the connection icon instead of a bunch, and I gave up and switched to Word.  And started writing this post with the words, ‘This is irritating.”

9:00 PM

Now we’re in the air.  I left the restaurant at 7:03 PM, plenty of time to get through security and to the gate for the 7:50 departure.

But now the departure sign said we’d be leaving at 7:20 PM.

WTF?

Just a touch worried that I might miss the flight after all this, the stronger emotion was a healthy skepticism.  But still I moved “with alacrity” as we who assisted at est events were once urged to do.

The security line was, to my relief, like a ghost town.  No waiting.  It still took a while to get through, since I travel with a bipap machine (for sleep apnea) which always has to be tested for explosive residue.  The woman manning the xray machine just sat there looking at something in one of my bags for so long, and with such a blank expression, that her colleague at the metal detector asked, “Are you sleeping over there?” (My question exactly, but I didn’t think it prudent to make any antagonistic comments.)  Once they finally were done with me (the bipap still just a bipap), a very brisk walk took me to the gate. 7:15  and the boarding process was just getting under way.

Hah! I was right.

Once in that tube you walk through to actually get to the airplane, gridlock.  No movement.  The captain came out and told us that we couldn’t leave the runway until 8:15 and that there was no air conditioning on the plane and it wouldn’t be fair to make us sit in the plane under those conditions.  (Well, that’s a lot better than the horror stories of hours on the runway I’ve heard.)

So back to the gate area.  We finally took of a bit after 8:30 PM.

Meanwhile, I ran into a colleague from DePauw whom I like very much.  We had a great chat diagnosing some of the many ills of DePauw’s money-draining purchase of the Walden Inn in Greencastle and the Inn’s current ineffective management.  That settled, we moved on to what each of us would be doing and attending in New York this fall break week.  It was a great way to pass the time.

All my problems should have such a happy ending.

“They look like a fucking Mahler symphony”–Marking Parts

Some string teachers have parts to the standard and not-so-standard repertoire marked with detailed fingerings, bowings, and, sometimes, added dynamics and even rubato markings.  These parts are given to students to photocopy, or, in earlier times, to serve as a source to painstakingly copy, like a pre-Gutenburg monk working with a Bible.  Apt simile, because it does give the teacher an at least temporary god-like status.

If the teacher is famous enough, then his or her markings are put into performance editions.  Leonard Rose, Ivan Galamian, and Janos Starker come immediately to mind–each have well-known performance editions.  Bernard Greenhouse had parts one could borrow and photocopy (most of those parts now reside in the amazing cello collection at the University of North Carolina Greensboro).  Like Starker’s, they were/are full of ingenious fingerings, some which work well for me, some which don’t. (The Rose editions from IMC are often idiosyncratic;  his fingerings sometimes only made sense to me when I saw him play them.  And sometimes the ones that don’t make sense just don’t–they are misprints.)

Pablo Casals and Gregor Piatigorsky, both giants of generations younger than Rose or Starker, did not edit performance editions, because their interpretations were often changing, with fingerings and bowings evolving.  When I studied with Stephen Kates, he not only did not have set fingerings and bowings, he also was always having me continually experiment with alternatives, and did a lot of experimenting himself in my lessons.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.  Having studied with Kates and before him with another Piatigorsky student, Denis Brott, I got hooked on creatively re-imagining a piece each time I played it (and this makes my later excursion into improvisation all the more understandable). So I don’t have parts with set fingerings and bowings, and quite often my students wish I did;  the process of experimentation can be exasperating and confusing to a young person who just wants something to play well. And who resents having so much responsibility thrust upon him or her self.  It’s a good question–how much responsibility should a student have to take for coming up with fingerings and bowings and at what point in the student’s development?

All this brings me to conductor Kenneth Wood’s recent post on the value of conductors having and marking their own sets of parts.  A symphony orchestra cannot experiment in a free-for-all-way. While a great conductor manages to incorporate and empower the unique voices of (especially) the solo players in the orchestra, and can be affected by the energy and culture of the ensemble, (s)he needs a strong vision.  The stronger the musical vision, the better.  The group needs to be led, not only facilitated (although I believe great conductors both lead and facilitate, a distinction I’ll explore in anther post).  Detailed bowings, phrase markings, and other directions in the parts make the process of realizing the conductor’s vision immensely easier.  Ken writes about being told early in his conducting life that all conductors should have their own sets of parts and how overwhelming and financially impossible this seemed to him.

However, over the years, I noted that, indeed, many of my senior colleagues did have their own libraries, meticulously edited and marked, which they sent around the world wherever they conducted. Of course, my former teacher, David Zinman, earned a great deal of press recognition for his early recording of the Jonathan Del Mar edition of the Beethoven symphonies. When we had the opportunity to ask him at Aspen about the use of the new edition, he informed us that he had used his own set of parts which he had prepared for this project, and that they were so marked up that not much of Del Mar’s work could still be seen. “They look like a fucking Mahler symphony,” was his typically short reply.

Ken points out that, for example, while Thomas Beecham famously used little rehearsal time, he had detailed sets of parts from which the orchestras he conducted played.  In his post, Ken explores the necessity, the drudgery, the expense, and perhaps most importantly, the musical growth that comes from acquiring and editing one’s own orchestral parts.

(By the way, Ken’s blog is one of the most interesting I read on a regular basis.  And how he manages to write so much, so often, while keeping such a busy schedule, often leaves me uncomprehendingly awestruck.)

The work of relaxing

Good morning so far.  Started with prayer and meditation, including progressive relaxation, where you start with your toes, let go of any tension, and gradually work through the rest of your body.  I first experienced progressive relaxation in the est training back in 1980;  they didn’t call it that, as I recall, but that’s what it was.  “Locate a space in your feet . . . locate a space in your ankles . . .”  When it would come to “locate a space in your genitals,” I’d feel a vague discomfort or tinge of shame.  Almost 30 years later, it’s nice to note that I can “locate a space” in my genitals and they are just there, like my toes or fingers.

I haven’t regularly meditated for a long time.  What prompted me was the realization that perhaps the best gift I can give to myself, and those around me, is to reduce the stress in my life.

I’m one of those people whom for various reasons, such as childhood traumas and evidently genetics, tend to overreact to circumstances, worrying a lot, sometimes obsessing, and then feeling overwhelmed and avoidant.  “Generalized anxiety disorder.”  “Major depression with recurrence.”  Medications help.  A lot.  But they don’t do everything.

A nurse at my doctor’s office called yesterday.  My cholesterol is too high and the doctor wants to talk to me about going on a cholesterol-lowering medication–a statin drug, I presume.

I love my doctor.  He is calm and patient, really listens, and doesn’t stiffen when I ask lots of questions stemming from my reading about health issues, especially reading that challenges orthodoxy.  He doesn’t get defensive or exasperated or dismissive  when I pass along ideas from my sister, a physician. He also makes sure that there is time blocked off in his schedule every day for “call ins,” people who are sick and need to be seen that day.

If I (or any of his other patients) was sick, I could get an appointment today.  To talk about my cholesterol, I have to wait three weeks to get in. Fair enough.

I asked the nurse, who is mailing me the full test results, about my HDL (the so-called “good” cholesterol) and my triglycerides.  My HDL is 51, my triglycerides aroung 100.  That’s a good (if not ideal) ratio, from what I’ve read, and a growing number of doctors and researchers think that triglycerides and the triglyceride to HDL ratios are a more accurate predictor of heart health than total cholesterol or the level of LDL (the “bad” cholesterol).  My triglyceride to HDL ratio is about 2, which is good. My blood pressure is usually around 110/65 or so, often a bit lower, which is very good.

There is a lot of controversy over how much statin drugs do, and in what populations they do the good.  The best summary I’ve found is this famous (among those who are involved in the debates about cholesterol) Business Week cover story, Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?.  One hypothesis gaining momentum is that much of the good that statin drugs do, for those they do help, is in reducing inflammation.  In other words, as I understand the argument, lowering total and LDL cholesterol doesn’t do all that much, but reducing inflammation does.  (For example, there are lots of heart attacks that happen to people with low LDL, and lowering LDL through non-statin drugs doesn’t consistently improve heart health.)

So here’s the thing for me.  I have a good HDL level and a good HDL/triglyceride level, excellent blood pressure, and an excellent resting hert rate (around 60 bpm).  So there’s no sign of inflammation (as far as I know).  In the research I’ve done–and I’m pretty good at find good summaries of research–I haven’t found any evidence that statin drugs have been proven to have any benefit for middle-aged men without heart disease, fairly low blood pressure, and a good blood lipid profile other than an elevated LDL level (by the current orthodox standards).  And there are lots of potential side effects.

So I will go in and talk to my doctor, and probably test his patience once again as I challenge him to convince me that there are proven potential benefits to taking a statin drug for a person with my lipid profile and blood pressure, and that those potential benefits outweigh the risks.

Clearly, the standard of care is to put anyone with high LDL on a statin, and I imagine that for some doctors, there’s a fear that if you don’t do that, and the patient has a cardiac incident later on, you could be subject to a malpractice complaint.  I don’t know his position, I’m just speculating, broadly.  But if we can’t agree on this, I’ll be happy to write him a letter to put in my chart thanking him for advising me to take a statin and explaining that I refuse to do so.  Then if I do keel over from a heart attack, he’s protected.  (His lawyers or insurance company researchers could also just read my blog.

I’d like to improve that triglyceride to HDL ration and bring it below 2, raising my HDL level further, making it a higher percentage of my total cholesterol;  there seems to be growing evidence that the the ratio of HDL to total cholesterol is also important.  But I’m absolutely confident that I can do this through making my diet more consistenly healthy  and exercising regularly (which I have not done for years).  I’ve had some serious falls off the low-sugar, low-flour bandwagon in the last six months, and this is good motivation to recommit to healthy eating and exercise.

Back to meditation.  Stress is as big a risk factor as there is for heart problems, as well as triggering anxiety and depression.  I’m not willing to change the circumstances of my life–college teaching, running a concert series, beng the senior warden at the Episcopal church I belong to.  I can, though, take responsibility for and be intentional about how I respond to the stress factors in my life, and meditation and prayer are important components of that.

So on to the work of, well, relaxing.

(By the way, while I’ve done a lot of independent reading on health issues, I’ve learned the most about what issues to research from Jimmy Moore’s blog and podcasts. He’s the one who introduced me to the triglyceride/HDL ratio issue, for example.)

Sarah Palin

Why do I like Sarah Palin so much, despite being a big-government, leftist, pro-gay marriage, pro-reality, kind of guy?  I watched her rambling speech about “stepping aside” from the Alaska governorship and was utterly charmed.

While watching it.

I my early twenties, surprised by my affection for Ronald Reagan (whom I always voted against, rest assured), I developed a hypothesis that it is certainty, a lack of self-doubt, that creates what we call “charisma.”  I was, at the same time, becoming well aware of music teachers with a cult-lke following, and saw that they, too, share an aura of absolute certainty in their own views.  There’s something hypnotic, something captivating, and that certainty, combined with passion, inspires devoted followers, many of whom abandon their own rational thought processes.

It doesn’t seem to matter if the charismatic person is consistent over time; the thing is whether he or she is full of certainty in every instant.  In everything I’ve read about Pablo Casals’s teaching and conducting (and the little I’ve seen in video clips), he was adamant about about details in the moment, but could give drastically different advice in different sessions.  His interpretations constantly evolved, and he didn’t do edited editions.  He was open about the evolving nature of his views, yet extraordinarily decisive and committed in the moment, whether performing, conducting, or teaching.

Reagan was the “teflon president” to whom nothing seemed to stick.  He was absolutely amazing.  No matter how correct the press may have been when trying to play “gotcha” with him, he smiled and shrugged everything off.  The “great communicator” told his audience how to feel about him by showing them he wasn’t concerned.  No defensiveness.

When I think about Sarah Palin’s speech, it makes no sense.  She’s not going to run for reelection, so she’s a lame duck, so therefore all she could do with the rest of her term is to waste taxpayer money traveling on foreign trade missions, etc., plus she’s being picked on and has legal bills, all of which is distracting, so she’s resigning.

No one, the implication is, can be an effective executive official if she or he isn’t going to run for another term and/or is controversial, is criticized unfairly in the media, and is charged with real or imagined ethical violations.  Which would mean that just about every elected official should go out and resign.

It would also mean, of course, that if she was elected president (and I don’t doubt for a second that she wants to be president), in her second term she’d be a lame duck, so she would resign, which means that there’d be no point in her running for a second term because all America would know she wouldn’t finish it.  Therefore, she’d be committed to being a one-term president, and would be a lame duck from the day she took office.  So why be president in the first place?

While I watched the speech, though, it all made sense and I just liked her more.  I felt she was sincere.  I was inspired by the selflessness of the gubernatorial point guard passing the ball of executive authority to someone better positioned to score the point.  She was so positive and upbeat about it all.  Yes!

There’s no doubt that with this amazing, Reaganesque ability to create her own upbeat, heroic energy that Sarah Palin can remain a powerful force among conservatives, especially those who believe in the small-government, individualist values that she (says she) promotes.  While resigning from the governorship seems to most political experts to be political suicide, it can be spun into public relations fairy dust, just wait and see. How wide a spell it will cast is another story, but it’s one yet to be told.

Palin has a Clinton and Reagan-level talent for being charismatic, and that can’t be underestimated.  Her future?  Who knows. Both Reagan and Clinton could point to many prior political accomplishments, especially successful governorships.  That was then, this is now, and the future lies in the future.  Anything is possible.

Texting in a movie theatre

A friend writes:

Now a word of puzzlement.  The fellow two seats from me was texting almost continuously during the film.  For the life of me, I could not understand why anyone would pay $9.50 to see a movie and then want to text. After about 30 minutes,  I finally had enough and asked him to put it away, which he did.

I don’t get to movies much, and so I haven’t encountered this phenomenon in person.  My friend makes a good point.  Why pay money to watch a movie and then not watch it?  Or deprive yourself of the pleasure of fully escaping into the world the film creates?

Cellorexia

Last night I was listening to some stuff on Itunes and a recording of the Prelude of the first Bach Suite started playing.  I really liked it, but couldn’t figure out who was playing (it was labeled only “Bach1″).  Was it a friend, a former student, something ripped from somewhere?  (People send me things.)

It was very different than how I (usually) play it: a faster tempo and many more, and longer, slurs than the historically-informed bowings than are my general preference.  I use all those qualifiers because I don’t always play the same way and sometimes experiment a great deal.

So at first I hoped that maybe it was me, but after a couple of measures I knew it had to be someone else;  it just didn’t sound like me, or my cello.  I know my own playing, after all. As my admiration for the performance grew (“I wouldn’t do it that way,” I said to myself, “but it sounds fantastic”) and the movement reached the final, triumphant g-major chord, I felt a mix of joy (in the wonderful playing), envy, and self-disappointment.

“I wish I could play that well.”

Let me tell you, it just sucks to go through life as a professional musician wishing you could play as well as the colleagues you really admire.  “I’m not good enough.  I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough.”  On and on and on.

Other people like my playing.  Why do I have such a problem with it?

Many classical musicians have what I, as a cellist, call “cellorexia,” an anorexic-like negative emotional reaction to whatever we play.  No trivialization of eating disorders is intended here;  in its severest form, finding fault with and hating everything you play (and quite often yourself, too) can take an enormous mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical toll. It drives some to drink, some to drugs, some to quit, and tragically, results in an occasional suicide.

In my twenties, my perfectionism and fault-finding were such that even a performance that resulted in a standing ovation, many genuine compliments, and sincere expressions of admiration from respected colleagues could trigger a depression that could last for weeks.  I can still find myself thrown into a period of  disappointment and frustration.  These days it’s usually a performance that was more, well, human than I would have preferred it to have been.  (In other words, I really did mess something up!)

An anorexic looks at her (or him) self in the mirror and doesn’t see the beauty, doesn’t see the emaciation, just sees imaginary fat.  A cellorexic (or violinrexic or pianorexic) remembers a performance, or listens to a concert recording, and hears only flaws.  This happens to some extent with every classical musician I know;  many of us just don’t listen to recordings of our concerts, or adopt (at least in theory) a one-year or five-year waiting period. (Me?  Can’t usually wait that long.)

Anyway, I’ve wandered through life always feeling my playing was pretty good but on some fundamental level inadequate.  I’ve learned how to mask it.  As a young man, with arrogance.  As a middle-aged man, with a smiling stage presence and a “never let them see you sweat” approach.  How human beings can be so emotionally complicated, I don’t know.  I’m at a point where I can perform and genuinely enjoy making music while at the same time part of me suffers.  “This isn’t good enough; it sucks.”  It’s been getting better;  I’m coming to accept my limitations and continue to work on improving, but with less sense of desperation.  I’ve given up on achieving a Starker or Harrell-like command of the fingerboard, or at least expecting myself to have it.  Helga Winold, who taught alongside Starker for many years at IU, once contrasted him with the rest of us “mere mortals.”  I’ve pretty much made peace with the fact that I am a mere mortal;  maybe I’ll be a cello “god” next lifetime, but not this one.

I guess we could say I’m a recovering cellorexic, slowly but surely healing.

Back to listening to that anonymous Bach, performed by that cellist whose playing I wished I could match.

On the last chord, he or she changed bows, ending with an up bow.  That’s odd, I thought, the only person I’ve heard do that is Yo-Yo (if I remember correctly).  There had been some audience noise, and as the chord finished the audience broke into applause.

Applause?  Wait a second, I thought.  A year ago I performed this suite with a dancer, played with a more romantic, slurred approach than usual, because it beter matched the fluidity of her movements, and, because of the dancer’s final gesture, changed bows on that last chord.  Could this performance I liked so much have been my own?  Could some of that audience noise have been the dancer on the stage?  It wasn’t my cello, but wait a second, I used the Luis and Clark carbon fiber cello for that concert because it was also hooked up with a pickup mic and pedals for some of the other pieces.

So I went into detective mode and found my Itunes playlist for that concert (which I had recorded but hurridly and sloppily labeled when I imported it into Itunes) and discovered, to my delight, that it was me.

That feeling of “I wish I could play that well” transformed into “I can play that well?”  To paraphrase Mr. Obama, “Yes I can.”

Unlike an anorexic, who always knows it’s him or herself in that mirror, a cellorexic can, every once in a while, experience the more-than-pleasant surprise of hearing his or her own recording without knowing who’s playing.  It’s happened to me just three times before.  Twice I put an unlabeled cassette in to play, loved the cello playing, started wondering who it was, and somehow realized it was me (in one case it was because of mistakes in the orchestra in the first movement of the Dvorak concerto).  The third time I arrived at an aunt’s house and a recrding of the Brahms E minor sonata was playing.  “Who is that,” I asked.  “That’s you,” she replied, surprised I hadn’t recognized my own playing.  It was a tape of a recital that I, or more likely my parents, had sent her.

Once I know it’s me, though, the spell is broken.  Or the curse is reawakened.  I start listening for perfection, catch tiny things, and feel disappointment.

But those occasional moments are sure nice while they last.

This story may seem more than a touch narcissistic.  “I listened to this great recording, couldn’t figure out who it was, and it was me.”  OK, I am a touch narcissistic;  I am a performer, after all. (Leonard Bernstein, I’ve read, once replied to a reporter who asked LB his response to charges that he was a nacrcissit by explaining, “Of course I am!  I’m a conductor.”)

The point of sharing my story (I hope) is that if you don’t like your playing, it may well be a lot better than you think.

[edited a couple of times for proofreading corrections]