in this tender night

an unfortunate incident worth noting:

david fedderly: have you ever lost someone close to you?
me: yes.

this was on tuesday, two days after attending my great-grandmother's funeral. now of course, he didn't know that he was touching on a nerve as live as an exposed telephone cable. but there i was, in my lesson, doing everything in power to keep myself from erupting in tears. not surprisingly, though, i played better. whether or not roger's piece was as he was describing, it mattered to me all of a sudden. it meant something.

now this is an adage that is all too familiar. music is supposed to convey every experience, every emotion and its our job as musicians to make that audible and palpable to the audience. this concept is something that came much more naturally to me years ago, when i was less afraid to confront my emotions through my playing (save performing on stage, which i guess, is all that matters --- i get really emotional and raw on stage, it seems) and he's been pushing me to the edge, one that really frightens me. but i think, at least i hope, that its necessary.

my great-grandmother's death was a huge blow to me. a friend of mine said to me, "do they even make great-grandparents anymore?" and it was a fair thing to note. i guess a little family history was needed: my grandparents died when i was young and therefore, when everyone was young --- my mother, my uncle and my great-grandmothers. i think we all took the places of loved ones lost. they were my new grandmothers. my father remarked to me that he thought it was funny that there were more pictures of me in my great-grandmother's house than almost anyone. more of me then in my own house. i was the baby. and then that part of my life was gone.

i've talked about death before and i don't mean to go into a great deal of detail. i just think it was important to note the connection between those parts of my life. they are, forever, inextricably linked. hopefully, conveying that emotion to the audience will help me find a peace i've been looking for these past few days.

tell me again, what is the name of this place? ohio. it means "beautiful".

you know, some things just never work out right, or the way you want them to. and personally, when it happens over and over again, i tend to get suspicious. i will give you an example. i have just come back from a long weekend in cincinnati, which was wonderful, by all accounts. and just when i thought i was going to make it through unscathed, i get a call from my parents telling me that my great-grandmother had passed away that morning. and cue imani's guilt factor! i have a happy habit of being away, trying to act like a normal human being and have fun when someone close to me dies. true, one has nothing to do with the other but there are other circumstances. let's just say i've never been able to handle it very well.

but that's not really the point of this post. even with that bump in the road, i had a great time. it was good to be in a place that i had never been, meet new people and catch up with old friends. and ohio is beautiful. being the country girl i am, i miss, well, being in the country. or at least seeing things that take my breath away. (yes there are not a lot of those moments here in baltimore) and standing in eden park overlooking the ohio river as the sun set was a moment i DRASTICALLY needed. it was a wonderful four days and it was a little tough to come back.

exacerbating that was the fact that the Peabody community et al, will not get off of my back. my old job is hounding me to find stuff for them which i don't have a problem with (well except for the hounding), people are calling me up about recitals (still!) and everything is falling apart. how is that possible? i mean, honestly? no one wants to come back to that but i'm going to deal with it head first...after i sleep in through Stone's 1900-1945 class (sorry Dr. Stone, i really need to sleep)

so i guess the moral of the story is that good things and bad things are not independent of each other, they happen, sometimes one on top of another and you just have to deal with it the best way that you can. my way is remember all the good things in my dreams until i've squeezed all of the goodness out of them like an orange.