There is a strange phenomenon that exists in the life of a musician. Similar phenomena exist in other fields, and they all boil down to one thing: when you are surrounded by something on a daily, hourly, all-encompassing basis, you tend not to notice it the same way others do. When non-musicians find out what I do with my life, most of them think it must be such fun to be surrounded my music–eating, living, breathing, consuming. I’d imagine the same thing happens to other people who have so-called “fun” jobs: chefs, movie critics, artists, dancers. It’s a strange thing to be a person who works closely with a “special occasion” art. A friend of a friend holds a prestigious job working in the kitchen of a great restaurant in Atlanta. He’s a fantastic cook, paid to cook all day and create amazing food–but at home he eats plain, bland food. Going to restaurants as a hobby–something that most of America does with great gusto–hardly appeals to him. The same thing often goes for me: I spend my whole day immersed in music; it pervades my consciousness enough that my off-time is riddled with anxiety and a sense of responsibility. I often find that I avoid concerts and recitals and even listening to music when I’m not actively playing it, because, honestly, it all seems like a lot of work. It’s hard to keep a fresh perspective on that which forms the main fabric of one’s life. What seems to an outsider like it must be a perpetually inspiring daily life has the potential to morph into something just as humdrum as the next office job. When the doldrums strike–and they do–I find that I often have to force myself to love what I do; I have to really listen to a recording or drag myself to a concert, even if I’d rather watch the latest episode of “The Good Wife” on my couch. I know that when I do overcome that inertia, when I do get myself out to hear music and to get engaged with my art, the energy and the verve for music that drove me to this field in the first place will come back. I just got it back again after a hard, down, bleak period, and I found it after my boyfriend forced me to listen to Oistrakh’s recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto on the way to a dinner date. I didn’t feel like listening to anything but stupid pop that night, so I grudgingly accepted his choice of CD. Once it started, I couldn’t ignore that searing sound and that electric intonation, that sense of purpose and certainty and passion. Suddenly, instantly, everything that had been a slog in my daily practice was reinvigorated, and I knew why I’m doing this again.
A piece on the Examiner website shows me that this type of ebb-and-flow cycle in musical inspiration and interest is hardly unique to me. Examiner.com’s music critic, Stephen Smoliar, writes about his visit to a piano recital given by students of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Student recitals are hardly unusual events, and they are rarely considered noteworthy by any one other than the relieved student, the student’s teacher, and the proud family and friends in attendance. Most of them are lucky to find a smattering of non-family audience members in attendance. To most of us, student recitals don’t intuitively hold anything of interest for those of us looking for really inspiring music-making, so we overlook them. Smoliar, though, found himself unexpectedly stimulated by the diversity of works presented in the recital he attended, and he found particular interest in a student’s performance of Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse, a work that he had come to be “frustrated by” after hearing too many performances that put technical details ahead of emotional resonance. The performance Smoliar heard was an unscheduled one; the pianist closed out the recital in a sick colleague’s stead, resulting in an unannounced change in repertoire. Smoliar was therefore not looking for what he found in the recital, which was a fresh voice, a fresh performance that forced him to notice something new in a piece he had given up on. Says Smoliar of the student’s performance, “She captured all the tension of the collective anticipation of Watteau’s voyagers, performing with a sensitivity to how the music connoted that anticipation, making this one of Debussy’s most erotic and engaging compositions.” That’s how it happens–in a split second, an unexpected performance or chance encounter on a radio station can excite the dormant love for music that is in all of us.
I once heard someone describe the musician’s life as being like a years-long marriage. Most of us get into this business because we are driven by a force of nature, a passion that propels us, but, somewhere along the way, things get hard. The things that were once glamorous are now mundane, and it’s hard to reconnect with the initial electrical current that brought us together with the music we’ve chosen. When practicing is something you have to do, suddenly it’s work. Couples who have been married for a long time often speak of the need to fall in love with a partner over and over again, of choosing to rediscover the same person day in and day out. Musicians need to do the same: we need to actively choose to love our profession. If we don’t, the hard days and the long days and the days without inspiration can add up and snuff out the desire to make music that lives in all of us. Smoliar’s piece should serve as a reminder to all musicians to remember to get outside the practice room and to open up our ears to the inspiration that is all around us. You never know where the next dose will come from–it could be your city’s next symphony concert, a student recital, an old recording, a conversation with a teacher, a book sitting on your shelf. What we should all know, though, is that our inner music needs some help every now and then, and all we need to do is to be open to finding it.
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