even when they're alone, they're not really apart.

fourth corner trio, on the steps in mt. vernon, january 2009

fools rush in, where wise men never go

it's been a while. i've been busy. very busy, but i don't know if that's important at all. have you ever had a period in your life where you're confronted with revelation after revelation? that's what now feels like. sort of.

it seems like i arrived late to the game. all of a sudden i'm good --- at a lot of things. i've been playing bassoon better than i ever have in my going on thirteen-year career of playing the instrument. i mean, all of a sudden, POW! and let me tell you, it is changing everything. i practice so much more, PK says the best things about me and i don't worry so much about being overlooked (not like that was ever happening, anyway). i go to my house, sit down, practice and feel good about myself. too bad this is probably the most bassoon playing i'll be doing for a while. i don't want to think about that though, it's depressing. maybe it's me going out with a bang?

peabody and i are having a tumultuous relationship right now. on the one hand, everyone loves me (it seems) and i've really come to know, meet and love a lot of people. it's endearing. on the other hand, i have the biggest case of senioritis and that is turning into serious apathy. the funny thing is i don't graduate for another year. but it feels like the end. this marks the conclusion of my bassoon playing degree and academic classes for me (which actually finished quite some time ago). next year is all about me writing my thesis and applying to Ph.D. programs. so for now, when things come up that i don't want to deal with, i simply don't deal with them. it's kind of relaxing but i feel i'll have to reevaluate that in the near future.

so as far as actual things in my life, we just get back to the busy. i have concerts tomorrow, thursday, saturday, sunday, the following tuesday...the list goes on. plus things around the peabs will be intense with audition week, mahler, traviata, etc. and i have visitors coming which will be great though it will clog up the tiny house. we've handled it before so this will be no different. lots of happy things around the bend but lots things that will be made to kick my ass.

more revelations, maybe?

next, i will read a selection from walt whitman's "leaves of grass"

it was cold, but worth it. nothing like doing the cha cha slide to "ain't no stoppin' us now" on the field at war memorial plaza in 18-degree weather with thousands of strangers (and being one of the people who started it) and just feeling happy about life and one's country. it's too late for me to explain now, just know it was worth it.

and i love you back.

sleep in heavenly peace

it's been a long and busy month. that's the only way it can be explained, i think. for the first time in a really long time, school kicked the shit out of me and i did not come out unscathed. if you looked at my grades, you might not believe it but i struggled. i did get a 20-page thesis paper out of it ("What have we done between us?" Guilt, Innocence, Musical and Sexual Violence in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia and The Turn of the Screw) but that's slim pickings...

so for the past week i have been doing nothing but sleeping. had a great christmas with the fam, enjoying the beautiful weather in raleigh but mainly sleeping. sleeping for the reasons above but also because my problems have not really gone away. i lost my job last week which is financially crushing, i'm trying to make the transition if having a new roommate and i still have so much school stuff left to take care of. yes, not the most carefree break in the world.

i have much hope for the new year. 2008 by all accounts has been awful. so 2009 can only go up, right? i mean, my recital, my friends' graduation, the finishing of the academic part of my degrees and beginning of my thesis and obama! looks good from here. happy new year, mes amis!

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.

i will lift up my voice to the lord

one of the jobs of great art is to make us uncomfortable.

uncomfortable in the sense that it causes internal conflict, makes us rethink how we look at everything, questions our very being. you're supposed to come out of the other side, challenged, maybe even experiencing a catharsis, in the sense of a resolution. and it's an unmistakable feeling. this past sunday, i attended the performance of Bernstein's MASS at the Kennedy Center with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (the importance was not lost on me that the piece was written for the inauguration of that very hall) and let me tell you, i was uncomfortable. the work is not new to me but listening to the recording and seeing it live is like comparing apples to giraffes. the dramatic elements, i found, at times, spellbinding. and in the Celebrant's bel canto style mad scene, i felt the anguish to the point of fear. it was a feeling that i have not felt in quite some time. i left feeling differently about the piece (and myself), more so than i could have imagined.

now is the MASS a great work of art? that is not really for me to say. it is so underperformed and still, to this day, so controversial on so many levels that i don't know if it would ever have a chance to be considered as such. but i must thank the BSO and Maestra Alsop (and of course, Lenny, himself) for giving me something to think about. it has been a while.

post-script: i have not stopped listening to "A Simple Song" since. i think it is too beautiful. listen here
post-post-script: i just saw in my RSS reader that Charles Neidich is playing Quartet for the End of Time at Merkin Hall tomorrow. it's one of those moments that i miss NYC. as much time as i spent working with Neidich, i barely got to see him perform 20th century music.