After many months of being silent on this blog, of very clearly not cluttering it, it suddenly feels like it’s time to write. Life since my last post in January has been full of new ventures and adventures. I embarked on a degree program with the Global Leaders Institute in Arts Innovation and also have been busy with the life of my local community and family. I have no idea where any of this is going to go, but I’m enjoying exploring and learning new things. I like to think I’m becoming comfortable with the current ambiguity of my path, and many days I am. But of course I’m still playing the horn, teaching privately, and coaching chamber music. I’m not sure I would feel like myself otherwise.
In the midst of all the busyness of my life, I’ve been trying to find ways to simulate the long stretches of time I used to have in childhood and early adulthood. Time to sink in. Time to be with my horn or the piano, time with a friend, with a book, with a poem, with a pen in my hand, whatever it may be. The nature of the time we live in is that too much comes at us too fast, and before we have time to consider anything, something else is coming at us. Tying this to the degree program I’m a part of now, I often wonder if this isn’t one of the main challenges of our time and that the arts have right now. So I’m asking myself how we might collectively make room to encounter the things that are worth encountering—how to preserve spaces, or create spaces, that allow for the composting and sifting we need to do as artists and human beings. One of the important ways I find that kind of space, in addition to music, is through literature and poetry, so I thought I’d share of little of what I’ve been reading (sometimes, I admit, in 3-minute snatches).
In the GLI program, I’ve been studying logic models and funding models and learning how to understand and analyze an organization’s structure. These are helpful tools, no doubt, but putting things related to the arts into boxes is a new mental exercise for me and sometimes it feels necessary to go read a poem. There’s a poet I love named Mary Szybist who (fortunately, for my current state of mind) wrote a poem entitled “It Is Pretty to Think” in the form of a diagrammed sentence. I can’t help but wonder if an Impact Business Model Canvas could be an interesting container for an experimental poem…? In any case, I’ve loved revisiting her work. I have her second collection called Incarnadine. It is extraordinary.
I’ve been so glad to come across the work of Garth Greenwell. I’ve just finished his new novel Small Rain and I keep up with his newsletter on Substack called “On a Green Note.” He studied as a vocalist at Eastman School of Music and his background in music is clear in his writing. I love the way he writes about poetry, art, and music, and in Small Rain he weaves those kinds of contemplative deep dives into the narrative of his protagonist. Brilliant.
Assembling Tomorrow is also in my stack. It is by two professors at the Stanford d.school Carrissa Carter and Scott Doorley. The premise is that we are living in an age of runaway design (tech and AI for instance) and that we as a society should start to think more about how the things we create in turn create us. The authors discuss and show (sometimes using pieces of speculative fiction!) how we can think more imaginatively about the possible futures, positive and negative, that our inventions and designs could create for the generations to come. If you don’t have time to read the book, maybe you’ll like this interview of the authors by Lee C. Camp of the podcast No Small Endeavor.
Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is another one I’m enjoying slowly making my way through after having read her Teaching a Stone to Talk last year.What I like most is watching the workings of her mind unfold. My own mind is not nearly as adept, but I feel a kinship with how she views and moves through the world. This is a good pairing with Robert Macfarlane’s Wild Places. His power of observation and use of language stun me. I also highly recommend his books Underland and The Old Ways. All of these books will take you to places that allow you to feel time as deep and geological.
I just received Abbie Kiefer’s poetry collection Certain Shelter in the mail and devoured it quickly, but I’ll be returning to her beautiful poems over and over. These poems revolve around the loss of her mother, her own experience of motherhood, and the decay of an industrial town in Maine. She holds so deftly all the paradoxes—beauty and decay, joy and grief.
Lastly, I keep coming back to a book I finished last year, Akiko Busch’s How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency. It speaks to the conflict between needing time and space for our minds and souls and whatever we are creating to deepen and wander, and the pressures and expectations (and sometimes the requirement) to constantly share. This is probably a familiar sensation for artists of many kinds, and I loved spending time considering the gifts of being unseen.
Here’s a picture of my stack which includes a couple other books that have been important to me recently.
I’ve spent a good deal of the past several years thinking about starting over, beginning again, wondering where to begin or when to begin or how to begin. And of course, this is a good time of year to think out loud about beginnings.
Many years ago when I was living and working in New York, one colleague of mine, during a conversation about being a musician and about practicing, said to me, “we have to start again each day, don’t we?” One of the best things about my life in music is this opportunity, this imperative really, to practice what the Buddhists call beginners mind, to approach each day with an attentiveness and inquisitiveness. I’m not always very good at this, but the mere act of coming to the horn each day for a warm-up feels like a starting over of sorts, a kind of blank sheet of paper. This was amplified for me after the injury I experienced in 2017 as I was forced to begin again in a profound way after extended time off. I’ve continued over the years to experience this due to circumstances that were chosen (the birth of my second child; our move to Chicago) and unchosen (injury and its complications; the pandemic). I’ve often felt myself to be in a prolonged holding pattern, wondering what I could or should be doing. It has been a time of big life change and hard stuff mixed in with the joyous and exiting stuff—just the way a good life should be I suppose.
(As an aside, what makes a “good life,” and the idea that it may not be about avoiding as much pain/discomfort as possible, is explored in depth in Miroslav Wolf’s book A Life Worth Living. In addition to reading the book, I also listened to Kelly Corrigan’s podcast series about the book where she discusses it with Kate Bowler, another podcaster/author I adore, and the actress Claire Danes. Yes, I adore her too. I loved all of it and am still re-listening to parts of it.)
This past year I’ve had the opportunity to gain a little momentum, thanks to the encouragement and support of my husband and my parents and others in my community. I took work that felt out of my post-injury/post-Covid comfort zone, plunging ahead despite feeling not quite sufficient. It has been equal parts uncomfortable and growth-inducing. The self-doubt was real, yet I did get through (even enjoyed it!), and I have gotten stronger.
But the quotidian interruptions to progress and smaller setbacks keep happening, and I am having to readjust my mindset and expectations all the time. How many times do have to be reminded that this (both horn playing and life) isn’t like going up a staircase, and it never will be? I am a fluid being in fluid surroundings. Life just happens and I have to figure out (almost always with help) how to respond.
I know that my Musician’s Well community is a group well acquainted with beginning again—starting to play after injury, or with adjusted expectations/abilities, or starting something new outside of performing life. There are so many ways to begin again, and so many ways to recover. And as Sean Mullen (the rector of St. Mark’s Church in Philadelphia, my beloved former parish) said recently in a beautiful sermon on the last day of the year, “there is always another beginning to hope for.”
Happy New Year to all of you, especially to those of you who are feeling the fatigue of re-starts amidst circumstances you may or may not have chosen. May we be able to hold all of it—both the stress and the possibilities, and be able to find a little bit of rest and stillness in the moment whenever we can. And may we find some lightness in the knowledge that there is always another beginning to hope for.
“The body doesn’t know itself at the moment.”– Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp is someone whose work I clearly should have known well already, given my years in New York, my love of dance, and her prolific output. But thanks to her interview with Terry Gross (of Fresh Air) as well as a recent PBS documentary about her, I’m catching up.
Despite the pandemic, and despite the fact that she’s nearly eighty years old, she’s been busy. One of her projects was choreographing via Zoom. This was not a “dancer in a box” undertaking with each dancer filmed and the piece edited together later. It was live dance over Zoom, complete with time lag, and spanning time zones from California to St. Petersburg.
In the PBS documentary, we get to see Tharp in action and I was captivated by her energy and ability to move in ways that would surely put me in bed with a heating pad.
In her interview, Terry Gross asks what Tharp feels like her body is capable of as she approaches eighty years old. In part, she says that with the last year of pandemic and the disruptions of routine discipline and day-to-day activities, “the body doesn’t know itself at the moment” and that she couldn’t truly say what she could ask it to do until she re-familiarizes herself.
I think for many (if not most) of my colleagues, this feeling of unfamiliarity with the body as it pertains to our profession, and needing some “on-ramp” time is a common sentiment.
No matter the amount of dedication or discipline or practice time one has, it is impossible to fully replicate in the practice room the physical demands of an active performing life. I think there are some things that can be done to help, but there is no replacement for the actual work of rehearsing and performing together. This is true for all musicians, but maybe especially so for brass players.
As some of us start back up again, and as performing arts organizations resume some level of activity, there is so much to navigate in terms of keeping musicians and staff as safe as possible in this pandemic environment, which often means packing more work into smaller periods of time, limiting personnel (like associates, assistants, and subs), and experimenting with fewer (or no) rehearsals. Also, many organizations want to make a statement (understandably) as they re-enter live music making, which might mean playing lesser-known and/or more demanding repertoire. In short, the demand placed on the physicality of musicians is often greater than it was in the Before Times, all while musicians are re-familiarizing themselves with the feel of the stage and playing with others.
I don’t have the answers as to how to balance the needs/desires of organizations and the physical needs of the musicians to safely and sanely re-integrate, but I do think that, even while musicians can and will adapt to a changed work environment, they should advocate for themselves however they can during this process of getting to know the body again in the context of the ensemble and the stage.
In the meantime, I’ve picked up Twyla Tharp’s book Keep It Moving. The chapter entitled “Make Change Your Habit” contains some of my favorite advice from her so far. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the book later, but in the meantime, I hope those of you lucky enough to start performing again are having a smooth journey back onto the stage!
Earlier this week, I received my first dose of the COVID vaccine. My appointment was at an old department store repurposed as a vaccination site. It was huge, and it was certainly the most people I’ve been around since the last concerts I played in February of 2020, and I’m thinking that many others were experiencing the same sensation as I was being around so many people. Most people were alert and looking around, and I don’t remember seeing anyone glued to their phone. In front of me in line were twins I estimated to be in their late seventies—same height, same hair, same eyes smiling over their masks. They were both dressed in purple sweaters. When they walked up to the line, the volunteer said, “I’m guessing you’re together.” Good guess, they said. Two young women accompanied an elderly nun in a wheelchair. One man who chatted with me in line was trying to remember if he’d ever shopped at this store, when it was a store. One of the volunteers, when I asked how he was doing said, “Well, I checked my pulse this morning and it’s still going, so I’m good!” The woman who administered my shot asked how old my children were and we both agreed that those who became first-time mothers during this past year had it hard.
All these little interactions buoyed me. I was bouncing off people in un-predetermined ways and times!
If there’s one thing that we have all thought about during this past year, it is community—in all its various forms—and how important it is for us. We have wondered: What does community look like when you can’t be together? How do we care for each other from afar? And for us performers, how do you create an online/distanced community in a field where we have depended on in-person attendance and density of audience? We are re-imagining how to engage with each other, what being a part of something looks like, and even though our online connections are a pale version of the saturated in-person experience, it can work, and people have created meaningful bonds and even developed new loves and interests. So, without disregarding the disintegration of much in our lives, it’s worth acknowledging the successes.
This spring has not brought me all the feelings that spring is supposed to bring. There’s something about experiencing the same weather as this time last year, but still feeling so much uncertainty a year on. It has made the long haul of this time (especially for musicians) seem a bit longer. Some of us are starting to perform again, but some of us cannot, either because the work isn’t yet there, or perhaps because of other circumstances (like childcare, for instance).
In looking for ways to keep my own spirits and motivation up and maybe even to keep growing, I’ve been remembering the times of my life when I grew the most, whether I knew it at the time or not. Those times have always been in the context looking outside myself and being involved in the world: a chamber music group, an orchestra, a festival. But I’d venture to say that, just as important as these more obvious scenarios were the smaller settings and exchanges—a friend, a mentor, someone who shared thoughts or ideas and deepened my understanding of the world, or of music, or of myself. I’ve been fortunate to have a few of these kinds of relationships that changed me and the course of my life in profound ways.
It has been very easy during this past year to withdraw, and for those of us who are sometimes inclined to keep to ourselves anyway, the tendency is easily amplified. Although solitude is necessary, and we can all use a healthy dose of it, no one grows or changes only in a vacuum. We need each other. Sometimes the “other” is a book or other kind of content that is already out in the world. I have been changed by words I’ve read or films I’ve seen. But often we need something more—a person, or a group of people, with whom we try to work out our thoughts or quandaries or ideas. We need people who ask us questions and who share their own questions with us, people who can share a different perspective or reaction to whatever we might be considering. So many of these interactions and relationships are initiated and developed in a serendipitous way, one that doesn’t depend upon the time of a Zoom call, but I’ve experienced a little bit of serendipity during this sequestered time, and I’m looking forward to more of that as we (I hope) move towards something more like normal.
In the meantime, can I sink deeper into the communities and relationships that I’m already a part of? What more can I offer? How can I be more present to those people? And is there another community or relationship that needs to be created or sought out?
How many times have I sat down to write this story? There have been at least a handful of concerted efforts, and dozens of more scattered, haphazard attempts.
One of the times I started writing this, the world was in what I thought was the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic (it was only the beginning). I had recently had a baby, and my son was doing an online math class with his second grade teacher. The day was a windy, rainy day. The day before was overcast and mild. The day before that, the Blue Angels flew over New York and Philadelphia to show support for hospital personnel and health care workers who put themselves at risk.
Another day I started writing, my nearly eight-month-old daughter was nearing the end of her nap. It was a bright, chilly fall day. My husband took my son to the beach so that he could fly his kites. It doesn’t seem to be a mere coincidence that flight, any kind of flight, has captured my son’s imagination started during the pandemic, when we are all essentially grounded. He’s made dozens, maybe even hundreds of airplanes, parachutes, and kites out of trash bags, construction paper, paper bags. He uses skewers and kitchen twine and hot glue. Now he makes kites from ripstop nylon and carbon fiber spars. They fly beautifully and he’s a natural at flying them. I’ve tried my hand at making one kite. It was fun, but I think I’ll leave it up to him.
Even now, as I try to will words onto paper that would tell of my injury, my mind wants to wander other places, to describe instead the shape of my days during the pandemic—the hardships and unexpected joys. But I’ll get this story out eventually. Today, there is no concert life really, not only for me, but for most musicians, and the future is uncertain. Horn playing is down the list of things that command my attention, yet I’m able to make time (most days) for at least one short session a day, sometimes two, and it feels good. Even though there are no concerts on the horizon for me any time soon, practicing brings a slice of normalcy to the way I feel during a time when my world has changed in profound ways.
Back in the spring of 2016-2017 season, I was nearing the end of a one-year position with the Philadelphia Orchestra as fourth horn, a position I’d held before during the 2008-2009 season. Both years were good years for me and I felt comfortable and happy in that position. Following each of my one-year positions, there was an upcoming audition for the permanent position on the horizon. I didn’t win it in 2009, and here I was again.
I went into the 2016-2017 season saying to myself that I had to figure out a way to still be able to play at the end of it. Ironically, playing the job for a year doesn’t necessarily put you in a good place to win the job. Anyone who has played fourth horn for an extended period of time knows the joys and challenges of the position. One of the biggest challenges for me, aside from keeping my high chops, was to remember what I sound like in a solo setting and to feel comfortable hearing myself play onstage above the texture of the orchestra. Beethoven 9 has a substantial fourth horn solo in it, and I had a run of the piece coming up on the Asia tour in the spring of 2017. So, between that and the upcoming audition, I had good reason to take any chamber music or high horn jobs that came my way so that I could keep my soloistic skills honed.
One of the things I booked during a light orchestra week was to play principal with the Pops. The week before I was to play with them, I developed a canker sore on the underside of the lip right where the mouthpiece sits. I’m prone to canker sores and have always just played through them. It hurts, but it’s always been fine. But this one was particularly painful and inflamed. I felt I needed to let it rest, so I took a couple days off to give it a chance to heal. But it didn’t heal during that time. After a couple days of rest and no progress, I decided I’d just have to play through it after all, like I’d always done before, so I picked up the horn again to get ready for the following week. It did not go well. My first rehearsal with the pops was painful and I felt weak. The week got progressively worse, and I asked my colleagues and the personnel manager if I could move down in the section. I probably should have bailed altogether, but it was a particularly busy week all along our part of the northeast corridor, and no one was free, so I decided I’d take it easy on fourth horn—warm the seat and play only what was necessary. On the last day of the run I felt pain. Not just canker sore pain, but an unfamiliar uh-oh pain.
What followed was a panicked time of getting out of more work, eventually bowing out of the tour, booking appointments with a doctor and a physical therapist in Baltimore who are specialists in chop injuries, and talking with people who might be able to advise me. The diagnosis was not a tear, but a muscle strain. I would need to take a full six weeks off work—two or three weeks of no playing, then I’d slowly build back. It was a torturous time, not knowing for sure what I was dealing with and how much damage I’d really done.
I was able to play with the orchestra again in a limited capacity in July. My colleagues were incredibly supportive and helped arrange things so I could play what felt alright to play, but not overextend myself.
The audition was coming up in October of 2017 and my goal was to be in a position to take the audition if at all possible, even if I wasn’t yet feeling one hundred percent.
I got through the summer season and was managing. I could play, even if I was tiptoeing in certain ranges and being conservative with my loud dynamics. I threw myself into getting better, and getting better as fast as possible. I did everything my doctor and physical therapist told me to do, plus daily journaling and tracking of my practice times and what I played. I had a spreadsheet of the excerpts and spent a certain amount of time each day both in meditation and visualization. I was seeing an acupuncturist and taking Alexander Technique lessons. But I was still only about seventy percent, I’d say, when the audition came. I didn’t have power in the high range yet, and I was still on the conservative end of louds in all ranges. On the day of the audition I took three Advil and went for it. I drew upon every ounce of everything that I am and truly gave it all I could give on that day. I did not win or even advance to the super-final round. What I had to give was not enough.
But life continued as it always does. I had my opera job, which I really enjoyed, and I had a good amount of subbing with the orchestra lined up for the rest of the fall. In November, Mahler 1 was on the docket. I was feeling alright, still stepping gingerly sometimes, but I was managing. I could keep on like this, I thought, just being smart about what I took and then, in time, perhaps I’d be back to normal. The week was going fine, as I recall, but on Thursday things changed. Thursdays, during a normal week (pre-pandemic), is the orchestra’s double service day. There’s a dress rehearsal in the morning and the first concert that night. I felt good at the start of the rehearsal in the morning. We ran the piece, though, and after we were done, even though I had tried to conserve, I felt done for the day. I was very tired that night, and at some point in the piece I felt a similar sensation to what I’d felt back in May. I had an overwhelming sense of dread at feeling that old sensation. I took it as easy as possible, left out what was doubled, and played what was not doubled. When the concert was over, I went to the personnel manager and tearfully told her I had to take the rest of the week, but in my heart, I knew I was putting it down for much longer than that.
Over that previous summer, I’d been in touch with a trombone player who’d had very similar symptoms to mine. In his case, he had taken three months off and a year later was doing really well. I had been told by someone I trusted very much that strains take a good six weeks to heal, so it had been on my mind that perhaps the two or three weeks I’d initially taken away from the horn had not been enough to allow the strain to heal completely. Three months, I thought, should be more than enough time for anything to heal. So, that’s what I decided to do.
It was a time of unraveling, of disentangling my ego and identity from the horn. It was also a great relief. After the months of stress and of strategizing about how I could be in the best shape possible for the audition, time away from the horn was exactly what I needed. It was a relief not to have to worry every single day about how my lip would feel and what I might be able to play or not play. I loved not having to make the time for practice each day. I don’t remember much of what I did, but I do remember embracing the slower pace and enjoying home life. Sometimes I wonder if three months wasn’t a bit much. Rebuilding was no joke. But I do know that the three months was good for my soul.
When the time came, in late January or early February, I started very slowly. I had a loose plan for practicing and rebuilding, which I followed, but I didn’t feel quite right. It was very slow going and there were confusing sensations elsewhere in the embouchure. So I began reaching out to people for help again. I remember wishing someone could just tell me what to do.
I consulted with one person who was very kind and had some interesting ideas. In the end, most of it didn’t work for me, but one very important thing came from this consultation: it spurred me to get a second medical opinion, that of a noted neurologist in New York who works with musicians. His diagnosis was that it was never muscle damage. It was nerve damage. This made some sense to me. The part of my lip that was damaged had lost some sensation. The random pains I was feeling elsewhere—he was unsure of that, but I’ve come to think that it might have been referred pain. Also, I’ve often wondered if it’s possible, when one puts so much of one’s awareness into an area of the body for so long, does it become overly sensitive? Are there more pathways linking that region of the body to the pain area of the brain? I don’t know. But I came to think that maybe that was case, that maybe I needed to find a way to get my head out of my lips!
I reached out to another person recommended to me. Much of what was said had me topsy-turvy and I had to leave a good portion of it. But there were some key points that were very helpful for me, specifically in getting my focus on moving air, going for sound—essentially, getting my focus “out there” rather than at my lips.
Throughout all this, from the beginning of my recovery to the present, I’ve found the work of Ariel Weiss, my Alexander Technique teacher, to be invaluable. Very early on in my injury, Julie Landsman (another person whose guidance and support has been of extreme importance to me) had suggested I see her and I’m so glad she did. Ariel has helped me know where to place my attention, how to respond to unpleasant sensation, and how to stay connected in practice and performance, among many other things that have been helpful in my daily life.
One thing that became clear in the many months of rebuilding was that, as good as it can be to reach out to many people, it was really important for me to have a couple people who knew my playing and technique very well pre-injury. They kept things grounded and real for me, and helped me to parse out the helpful information from the unhelpful (for me) information. It was impossible, stripped down and confused as I was, to find my way through on my own.
During this time I was the beneficiary of so much support and kindness. Many, many people talked with me and shared their own stories of injury and recovery and insights they had gained. This eventually inspired me to start a website devoted to these kinds of stories, “Musician’s Well.” Even stories that were very different from my own gave me hope that everything would be alright one way or another, and that even if I ended up not recovering my full capacity as a horn player, I could still live a full and vibrant life.
Over the remainder of 2018 and into 2019, I was able to play and work more, both with Opera Philadelphia and as a sub with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the summer of 2019 I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, and I had to turn down work during the first trimester from pregnancy sickness. And because of my compromised immune system from pregnancy I became sick more easily which led to me having to miss some work. But in the fall and into January and February of 2020, I took whatever I felt I could handle, which was most of what was offered to me. I knew that come March 2020 when my daughter was born that I’d be looking at another break and slow-down of work.
Little did I know.
I’m so thankful for that work I had in January and February of 2020. It felt good to play and I felt I was on a good trajectory. The last concert I played was nearly a year ago as I write this, and so many musicians are struggling and on forced hiatus. My feeling of not knowing what the future holds for me as a musician is suddenly what a huge portion of musicians are feeling. In the earlier days of the pandemic, sometimes this feeling of dread or panic would pass over me, or a feeling like I was living in some alien world. Among other fears that would come to mind, I would wonder if I’d played my last concert. The feeling would pass and I kept picking up my horn day after day. I’m still picking it up and still hoping for the return of everyone’s concert life—and my own concert life—in the future.
On the day when we heard news of a vaccine from Pfizer, my son suggested I change the overly verbose name I gave to the kite I made from “You Are My Sunshine” to “Light at the End of the Tunnel.” There is, of course, a long way to go still. I don’t know if the world will feel “normal” anytime soon, and I don’t know if I will feel completely like “myself” again, or my old self, anyway. Perhaps both the world and I will both be forever changed and maybe that will be alright.
These days I practice in our unfinished basement facing a large tapestry that my husband hung ceiling to floor to absorb some of the weird angles of the space. There’s a photograph of the ocean printed onto it from our 2019 trip to the Pacific Northwest. In the distance are enormous rock formations and the water looks turbulent and restless. I think of its brutality, its constant shifting, how it’s always present. I think of the healing properties of salt water and the movement of the air. Sometimes I imagine as I’m practicing, the sound of the horn as a kite being held aloft by the unceasing wind.
This story of mine feels broken, fragmented, and unsure of itself, but maybe it doesn’t need to feel finished or even particularly cohesive. I put it out there right now, as flawed as it is, in the hopes that whoever feels drawn to this story, and whoever might need this story, will be able to pick up the pieces they need for themselves. After all, underneath the brokenness is another story of a growing wholeness, with or without the horn. I still prefer wholeness with the horn, and work every day towards that, but I don’t know how this will play out. In the face of so much uncertainty, I take into my hands whatever is given to me to do each day. That includes so many little things—listening to my son read, nursing my daughter, doing the dishes, getting dust bunnies from the corners, playing the horn a little while, and today, finally sharing this unfinished story with you.
It’s been a very long time since I posted here, but life has been happening in earnest. I’ve had a baby (my second) and the world has been changed by COVID-19.
The pandemic has hit the performing arts especially hard. Never in a million years did I ever imagine a scenario that would so quickly decimate the livelihoods of so many of my friends and colleagues. It is a stunning and disastrous change.
Many arts organizations are inching forward (with a couple notable exceptions like the MET) and finding creative ways to produce content. But many musicians, and especially freelancers, could be forced to leave the profession completely. I’d encourage you to read this article by Adam Krauthamer, the president of the Local 802 (the musicians’ union) in New York. In it, he makes a compelling case for government aid for musicians and performing artists.
I can hope that society will come out of the current predicaments with a renewed sense of—well, everything—but also, the importance of live performing arts after having been without it for so long. I can hope that the creativity the pandemic has forced us to have will re-invigorate our performing lives and institutions. And I sincerely hope the classical music world will survive and thrive so that future generations of children will experience the gifts that music can bring to their lives.
Below (with a focus on New York and Philadelphia—the places I have spent most of my career) are a few ways to support musicians, but please also donate to your favorite performing arts organizations so that they can weather this time. If you cannot give in a monetary way, keep your eyes open for ways to support musicians and their work in whatever way you can.
And last, but not least, please follow CDC guidelines and the advice of epidemiologists and scientists. Wear a mask and social distance so that we can get the virus under control. And when the time comes, get vaccinated!
Hope to see you in the concert hall before too long!
My son and I have been listening in the car to A.A Milne’s Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh—all four-plus hours of the audiobook, on repeat—up to Saratoga Springs and back, on the way to school, to the store. We are, both of us, quite obsessed. Stephen Frye and Dame Judi Dench are among the stellar cast of this Audible production.
One of our favorite passages describes Eeyore:
Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, ‘Why?” and sometimes he thought, “Wherefore?” and sometimes he thought, “Inasmuch as which?” and sometimes he didn’t quite know what he was thinking about.”
We recite this together at random points during the day and laugh like crazy.
It comes as a relief to laugh at bewilderment, as bewilderment is a familiar presence to me over the past sixteen months in the face of my horn-playing-related injury and all the upheaval and uncertainty that come with such a situation. Thankfully, over the course of this summer I happened across some ideas that have struck me and often lend a sense of clarity and empowerment to many of my moments.
Experiment #1: Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset
“We can’t all and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.” – Eeyore
I thought I had a pretty healthy outlook on talent vs. work, and the potential for progress and change, but Mindset by Carol S. Dweck made me even more aware of the importance of one’s deep-seated beliefs and attitudes as a parent, teacher, and someone who wishes to keep progressing on several fronts. Among many topics, Dweck discusses the pitfalls of praising talent (as opposed to praising effort) and the difference between the fixed mindset (the belief that “your qualities are carved in stone”) and the growth mindset (the belief that “your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others”).
She writes, “Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable). That it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.”
With examples of those who were thought to possess nothing special but excelled nonetheless, and of those who were thought to have innate abilities but did less than predicted, she offers inspiring stories and words of wisdom for whatever role one may find oneself in: parent, teacher, student, business person, or someone who has not quite found his way yet (like Eeyore above?). There is something for everyone.
Experiment #2: Engagement vs. Expression
“It’s all your fault, Eeyore. You’ve never been to see any of us. You just stay here in this one corner of the Forest waiting for the others to come to you. Why don’t you go to THEM sometimes?” – Rabbit
“Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?” – Winnie-the-Pooh
This idea of the goal of engagement rather than expression all came about because of a workshop I attended this past summer with the poet Scott Cairns.
At the beginning of this workshop, we began to discuss the question of what poetry is. What makes a poem a poem? We all threw around and discussed some potential definitions. Then Scott made a statement to the effect of “a lot of people think that poetry is about expression, but it isn’t about expression, it’s about engagement.” As A.A. Milne might have written, it is something more Sustaining.
This attitude of engagement, as opposed to expression, has the potential to clarify and simplify, I’m finding. How is day-to-day life changed by having engagement as the goal? (I ask myself). Does it help to prioritize activities? Does it explain why and how certain endeavors might be falling flat or at least not reaching their full potential?
This aha moment has extended to my life as a horn player as well. One of the greatest lessons of my recovery and rehab has had to do with this very idea of engaging. Connecting with other musicians – my colleagues and those who have been through challenges – has been a huge source of help and inspiration. I stand in awe of the generosity and support and wisdom the music world contains. I know our musical community to be much richer and more resilient than I ever knew before.
In the actual act of playing, engagement has a role to play as well. With the help of my Alexander Technique teacher Ariel Weiss, I’m learning the benefits of staying connected to “out there,” and (with practice) I’m learning to catch myself before I collapse inward, micro-analyzing the chops and being over-sensitized in an unhealthy way. The goal is to keep the body sensations in the mix, but not the focus – staying open, sending the sound out to someone, allowing my surroundings/audience to be something I’m willing to engage with. I’m in the mix. I’m not lost or ignored. But there is something greater to focus on. My job is to “clarify the aim,” as Ariel says, and to stay connected to that. I’ve had to practice daily a profound letting go – letting go of the worries about how I’m progressing, and especially, what I should feel like. She says, “those thoughts are completely understandable, but not helpful.” So I look outside myself to find what is more sustaining.
Returning to the world of poetry, the word “sustaining” came up in Scott Cairn’s memoir A Short Trip to the Edge about his journeys to Mt. Athos, the center of Eastern Orthodox monasticism. He writes that poetry “is not a means by which we transmit ideas or narrative events we think we already understand, but a way we might discover more sustaining versions of them.”
Sustenance. What can we give to each other/ do for each other/ create for each other that will be sustaining? What else is living for?
(“And that is really the end of the story, and as I am very tired after that last sentence, I think I shall stop there.” – Narrator, Winnie-the-Pooh)
The first batch of stories has gone up on “Musician’s Well,” a new website that showcases stories of musicians and their recoveries from injury. I’m so thankful for everyone willing to share their experiences, and also, to Mark Morris (who took the photo to the left) and Honey Lazar for their beautiful photography.
I think each story is beautiful and important and worth sharing, and that each is a story of resilience, persistence, and adaptability. In this first batch, there is a piece by Megumi Kanda, Principal Trombone of the Milwaukee Symphony; Steve Proser of the Utah Symphony; Dennis Najoom, retired from the Milwaukee Symphony; Steven Cohen, a New York City freelancer; and an anonymous freelancer who shares experiences working with Laurie Frink and Arnold Jacobs. There are many more stories in the works, not all of which are brass players. Wind and string players and pianists will be represented soon as well.
I’ve created a Facebook page for Musician’s Well, so please feel free to “like” it and share whenever stories are posted so that these stories reach those who might benefit from it.
There are moments when I forget what possessed me to read Dante’s Inferno while rehabbing after an injury. It was probably not the best choice to read about navigating the circles of hell while living the ups and downs of rebuilding, trying to decipher mysterious sensations, working through the frustration of feeling very much not like myself, and not always being sure how I will get to where I am going. Then I remember what possessed me to read it: the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. I had just listened to him read his translation of Beowulf and wanted to hear him read something else, anything else, preferably another old story, something far removed from this moment in time. Hearing him read makes the ancient words become relevant and vibrant, and makes me feel more alive in my own skin.
I’d often listen to Heaney read (along with his fellow poets Louise Glück and Robert Pinsky, whose translation it is, and who incidentally wrote one of my favorite poems “Shirt”) on my way home from dropping off my son at school. I could hardly listen to parts of it, so tortured are some of the scenes. Then I’d go inside and sit down to practice, talking myself into blowing freely into the horn without fear of pain or discomfort, deciding which sensations warranted attention and which did not, checking myself in the mirror to make sure things looked normal and easy and ergonomic, recalibrating myself again and again, then I’d lean back in my chair, glance over, and see the cover of Inferno, a shadow figure on the cover bent double in front of a red-orange background, an abstract-ish pitchfork in his back.
I’d ask myself several questions. Couldn’t Pinsky have translated Paradiso first? Why is it that I’m drawn to stories centuries old at this moment? And why am I sitting in this chair again, doing whatever I can to play music again – and not just any music, but, let’s face it, largely old music that fewer and fewer people see the value in?
To attempt to answer the last question – honestly, playing the horn is the only thing I’m formally trained to do, so there’s that. But, of course, it’s more than that. Most of the repertoire is masterful and beautiful, yes. It is worthy of not being forgotten, yes. But the thing is this: music changed me. It made me, over years of steeping myself in it and pursuing it, who I am. It cracked me open and showed me a much wider, more varied and nuanced world than I ever thought possible. In this moment, the old music, the old stories, they show me something larger than this point in time. I can experience humanity, that of others and of myself, in a greater context. (This, by the way, highlights the importance and value of the artistic and musical contributions of our own time – the continuation of the art form.)
Linda Grace, a wonderful Rolfer here in Philadelphia I often go to see, recently suggested I check out the work of Joaquin Farias, a neuroplastician who works with those suffering from dystonia (which is not what I’m dealing with, but I’m finding some of the thoughts in his books to be interesting and potentially helpful). There are some videos on his site that are stunning and inspirational to watch. In one of these videos, a patient giving a TED talk quotes the Italian writer Italo Calvino:
“The hell of the living is not something that will be [italics mine], if there is one; it is what is already here, the hell where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the hell and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and learning: seek to be able to recognize who and what, in the midst of the hell, are not hell, then make them endure, give them space.”
I won’t be overly dramatic by equating my process of rehabbing/rebuilding with hell. It is not that. But it’s not a walk in the park, and it certainly doesn’t feel like time off. It is a multiple-times-daily battle, the effects of which linger and threaten to permeate every moment of my existence if I let it. I’m working on it. I’m also working on toning down the battle imagery. But some days, hell doesn’t feel like a too-distant metaphor. So, if you’ll allow me the first-world exaggeration, supposing this time of recovery/rehab could be equated to some sort of very-mini-hell, what is not hell?
What is most definitely not hell, apart from my loving and supportive family and friends and mentors, are the people who have experienced injuries themselves who, each in their own way, shed light, hope, and possibility. Their stories of finding a way through, and their generosity in sharing them with me, are what I hold onto. They are my lifeline.
So, I am creating a space for them. A website to be exact. I’m collecting stories of those willing to share (anonymously or not) and making a place for this well of knowledge and experience to thrive, providing valuable information, guidance, and hope to those who might find themselves faced with an injury, rehab, or debilitating condition.
So, stay tuned! I hope to write about the website launch in the next month or so. Also, if you are a professional musician interested in contributing your experiences to this project, please contact me.
In the meantime, we’ve begun our yearly trip to Colorado where I’m practicing many times daily and (although Seamus Heaney is, sadly, no longer around to participate in a reading of it) hoping for Robert Pinsky to translate Paradiso very soon.
There was, once upon a time, a period of my life that was quite turbulent, or at least it felt quite turbulent to me at the time. It felt as though whatever I was going through had never happened before in the history of humankind. But my mother, in her wisdom, gently said to me, “there’s nothing new under the sun,” quoting from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. I don’t think she said this to downplay what I was feeling, but rather, to help me understand that we all share in this experience of living on earth and to take comfort in knowing that what I was feeling and thinking had been felt and thought before – that someone had lived through (and survived) what I was living through. This is, after all, the reason we read (or should read) the great stories of humanity, why we study history, and why remembering is important. When these stories are lost, forgotten, or erased, we lose something of ourselves. And we lose an opportunity to think and act with generations of experiences (both the good and the bad) behind our actions, rather than with only our limited lives and perspectives as guidance.
Yet I still find myself alternating between feeling that the world is falling apart in a way that it never has fallen apart before, and thinking that, well, it’s just falling apart in new ways. Or perhaps it isn’t falling apart. Perhaps the world is merely suspended in an ongoing cycle of decay and new growth, just as I am keenly aware of my own new ways of falling apart as I age, even as other aspects of life are constantly enriched and ever growing. I am suspended and spinning. Losing some things, gaining others.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “suspension” recently as I’ve had to put down my horn because of an injury I sustained back in May that has refused to heal the way I hoped it would. It became clear last month that the only thing to do was to stop playing for a while, give my body time and space – and to surrender to the idea that there IS time and there IS space for all of this. So, I feel myself completely suspended and without certainty. I don’t mean to be melodramatic. It is, after all, just a horn. Not a body part, not a loved one. But at the same time, I can’t deny that this is what I have worked for most in my life, what I’ve poured myself, my time, my dreams, my resources into, and it is unsettling to feel somewhat stripped of that identity for a while. I have every reason to believe that I will recover, but I would be lying if I said there is no voice inside that sometimes asks “what if it doesn’t come back?” or “what if I’m never quite the same?”
At the same time, it is also true to say that I am depleted from the efforts of the summer and early fall, when I tried to rebuild from this injury that had never quite healed in the first place, and there is a certain amount of relief in thinking of other things. And so, I sit and do projects with my son. We are crocheting together these days and folding origami cranes and ninja stars (his favorite). I go for walks each day, feeling myself simply as a person walking, rather than as someone on a mission. I have my wonderful students to teach, who themselves teach me so much.
One of my students recently said to me that she felt she had so much catching up to do. I understood why she felt this way, as this is how I often feel. But what if we changed the metaphor? What if we recognize that, no matter where we are in life, we always will feel a certain amount of incompleteness. There will always be something needing to be done. It’s the nature of living. What if I embrace my own unique path, embrace my own pace, and find a place to rest, even while suspended in midair?
I think often of the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, given to me by a friend and mentor during another unsettled time of my life. I will leave them here for you – and for myself. Even if the religious language does not resonate with you, perhaps the idea of the last two lines will infuse you (as they do me) with a feeling of being at home, even within a state of flux and uncertainty, and help you to “accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”
My son and I have been listening in the car to A.A Milne’s Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh—all four-plus hours of the audiobook, on repeat—up to Saratoga Springs and back, on the way to school, to the store. We are, both of us, quite obsessed. Stephen Frye and Dame Judi Dench are among the stellar cast of this Audible production.
The first batch of stories has gone up on “
There are moments when I forget what possessed me to read Dante’s Inferno while rehabbing after an injury. It was probably not the best choice to read about navigating the circles of hell while living the ups and downs of rebuilding, trying to decipher mysterious sensations, working through the frustration of feeling very much not like myself, and not always being sure how I will get to where I am going. Then I remember what possessed me to read it: the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. I had just listened to him read his translation of Beowulf and wanted to hear him read something else, anything else, preferably another old story, something far removed from this moment in time. Hearing him read makes the ancient words become relevant and vibrant, and makes me feel more alive in my own skin.
There was, once upon a time, a period of my life that was quite turbulent, or at least it felt quite turbulent to me at the time. It felt as though whatever I was going through had never happened before in the history of humankind. But my mother, in her wisdom, gently said to me, “there’s nothing new under the sun,” quoting from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. I don’t think she said this to downplay what I was feeling, but rather, to help me understand that we all share in this experience of living on earth and to take comfort in knowing that what I was feeling and thinking had been felt and thought before – that someone had lived through (and survived) what I was living through. This is, after all, the reason we read (or should read) the great stories of humanity, why we study history, and why remembering is important. When these stories are lost, forgotten, or erased, we lose something of ourselves. And we lose an opportunity to think and act with generations of experiences (both the good and the bad) behind our actions, rather than with only our limited lives and perspectives as guidance.