Designed to be affordable mini manuals for pieces commonly studied, practice guides are packed with miniature exercises, technical reminders, and tips on approach. The first one, La Cinquantaine, is available now for $3.50 here. Stay tuned for more, and drop me a line if you have any requests.

In terms of answering this, I teeter between the Pema Chödron mindset of non-attachment, staying in the present moment and being ok with wherever you are in life and the more emotional, westernized school of thought where the primary competition is within yourself…

…and you end up beating the hell out of everyone else if you’re consistently disciplined and aggressive in your practice.

Really, it’s just two sides of the same coin. I define beating the hell out of everyone else as living well. Being happy. Setting your own goals and reaching them. I beat the hell out of everyone else when I was hired to teach at a community college. It was my victory because it was an outlet for the desire to teach non music majors. I have no desire to teach at Peabody or Juilliard- not because they’re not great, because they are. I want to teach music to people who are not already inclined to love it. I like the hard sell. That is where my evangelism is most potent, so that is the environment I seek. From the outside, it might have looked like the meagre shadow of success, but I know better.

Alas, I digress.

This morning, I saw a story on SportsCenter featuring Thomas Robinson, a player for the Kansas Jayhawks.

It reminds me to the vigilant against certain bourgeois and self-indulgent tendencies of the music world. You know, the practice room temper-tantrum where you consider quitting because a note vexes you. The list of excuses for not doing one thing or another. The frailty of allowing a setback to derail you. The moaning about how things are not ideal and wading knee-deep in self doubt.

I know these tendencies well because I fight against them every day, winning only part of the time. I use tendencies found in musicians as an example, but their analogues are easy to identify in every life. What a load of horsesh*t. (a technical term)

It was good to start my day with this story. I am reminded of the people I love, and those I’ve lost. My heart could burst; because though I can easily devote my efforts to them, there’s no escaping reality: they’re the ones who actually carry me.

Fact: I had to counsel a 9-year-old to lay off for a few weeks because she was developing tendinitis as a result of tension and misuse of her 4th finger.

Fact: I began dealing with tension-induced injuries around age 12. My current ability to play comes courtesy of luck, surgery, yoga, miles of KinesioTape, ibuprofen, vigilance, and a complete rework of my technique requiring me to pause my professional career nearly a decade ago. Because of this, I am much more susceptible to the kind of injury that requires time away from the cello. I am constantly in defensive mode to prevent this.

Fact: Tension is crap technique.

You are not an exception. You are the rules that you play by. Choose wisely.

I think the reason I’m “self made” is because I’m impatient. While everything I do is long-term process oriented (developing a studio, creating a brand as a teacher, improving as a cellist, publishing, learning to work on bows) and takes time to germinate, I’ve never felt like I could trust someone else to act on behalf of my very specific and urgent compulsion to be productive.

Of course, self-made also means self-failed or self-mediocre as well as self-prolific or self-bankrupt. I have the most difficult time discerning the line between what my business is worth and what I’m worth. It has to be this way to a certain extent, but it can be a lonely day combing through one’s sent mailbox, searching for the words that have so gravely offended the recipient as to not merit a reply.

All of this is preface to a conversation I had the other day. Mustering up the courage to cold-call (or email) contractors, schools, and other relevant parties is a ritual for people like me. While my me-ness is absolutely impossible to disguise, there are certain abatement measures available should I decide appearing not entirely weird will further my cause.

I’d emailed this man over the holidays and gotten no response. This was especially troublesome, as an acquaintance of mine who has done nothing except advocate for me in the DC scene had made this introduction. The combing of the sent mail, the agonizing over my offense and foolish appearance. Artists always have this inner debate: how to appear competent and relevant while looking for work.

Finally, I decided that if I looked like an idiot, I’d go all the way and look really stupid. I sent another email asking if he’d gotten my first. Not 60 seconds later did I have a response. “Never got it, not in my spam folder. I’m at my desk, please call me.”

Well, at least there’s that. I gave him a call and he wanted to know all about me. We established that we knew some of the same people and got talking shop a little bit. When it came down to seriously talking business, he started with this:

“First off, business sucks. Nobody’s working.”

In that instant, and for a few hours afterward, I felt a little less alone.

Moments like that give me the improbable optimism to cast my net each day. Most times I get “no”, no response, or my personal favorite: a brusque email from someone drunk on the comforts of their current position. But there have been times when I’ve cantilevered myself over the abyss and ended up doing things like living in London, traveling the country teaching my heart out, or moving 2500 miles to chase the small yet insistent instinct that it was just what I needed to do.

If there’s anything I’ve gotten from writing this blog over the past 5 years- and anything I hope you get from it- it’s that going after the stuff that feels right in your bones, the stuff that is authentically, inconveniently, uneasily rumbling around your brains and keeping you from good sleep…is what makes life worth living. It’s where art comes from. Inspiration. Curiosity and surprise. Second chances. Third and fourth ones, too.

As many chances as you need. And though I’m closing on a typically lofty rainbows and unicorns note, know this, too: this is practicum. A thing you do. Swashbuckling doesn’t always attract a lot of attention, but you’ll know it by the quality of your sleep.

I wrote AMCM to try and fill some of the gaps in the “how-to” canon. Mostly, I thought we needed a text featuring a bunch of pictures and the occasional justification/explanation for certain bits of technique. There’s another volume in the works- I have all of the content down, but this time I’m trying to publish more conventionally to see if I can get wider distribution.

In the meantime, I’ve become increasingly aware of how few cello DVDs there are, and based on the reviews, many on the market have let some aspiring cellists down. Given that, I thought I should try my hand at letting them down, too.

Just kidding. My goal is to make 2 DVDs, one for very beginners and another for intermediate students, designed to include elements from AMCM and also provide a template for successful practice. Other features will be “play along” sections, where I’ll lay down a scale or cello II part of a duet for you to practice with.

So now I want to open the floor up for discussion so that these videos can be really useful and the kind of thing students will want to play over and over again to keep mining for information and support. I have a few questions, and if you have suggestions, please post them in the comments section.

1. In general, what do you want to be included? What’s superfluous?

2. Should I have multiple cellists in the video demonstrating, or just me?

3. If you have any of the other “how-to” DVDs, what would you like to see done differently? The same?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this. As soon as I’ve crunched the numbers, I’ll put up a Kickstarter page and begin scouting locations. My goal is to have this sucker in the bag by summer’s end.

Lindy hop as metaphor: my instructor constantly has to remind me to wait for a lead and then follow it to the end of the momentum, as I’m awfully clever at guessing what I think will happen…

…and even if that’s not what my partner means, he’s forced to do it anyway. Probably a good approach for the hustle of a self-employed artist. Probably not so good for anything else.

This week’s exercise in letting go: spins in the kitchen and closed eyes on the metro to let the yaw of the train push me where I’m supposed to go.

Let go.
Let Go


Perhaps it was growing up around a dad who seemed to know how everything worked (right down to the subatomic level) or maybe I’m just a junkie for the pedagogical process, but I’ve always wanted to learn how to rehair bows and work on instruments. I’ve haunted benches from Los Angeles to London and Paris, Atlanta, Baltimore and DC, hovering over tolerant luthiers who probably wished I would just go away and let them work in peace.

Well now the apron is on the other…ah…thing. I’m going to leave that in because it was such a spectacular failure of a sentence.

On a recent trip to Potter’s, I mustered up the courage to ask if there was room on the bench for an apprentice. Much to my delight, Mr. Potter himself came out to hear my plea, and I left the store an hour later with a long shopping list and a mind swimming with excitement.

The shopping list included things like laminated steel knives, a hank of hair costing no less than $200, an alcohol lamp, rehairing jig…The prospects were bright, but the math was making me worry a little. I took to Twitter, half joking about organizing a Kickstarter campaign to fund this new project. Within an hour, I had an offer of patronage. Within a day, I had the funding! Within a week, I’ll have my supplies!

Although luck is a primary characteristic of my life, I am still dizzy with gratitude and surprise.

I intend to post more photos and videos as a general rule this year. Keep an eye out for some gnarly “my first rehair” attempts in the very near future.

If anyone else is interested in furthering my training with a donation of materials (low-end bows to practice on, spare hair, miscellaneous supplies) or funding, please email me!  Once I am able to do respectable work, I intend to donate some of my services to schools whose music departments are in need. You can also contact me to suggest/sponsor a school in your area.

image courtesy of drbows.com.

Now and again I go for a jog without music. After the crunchy/clear headed/isn’t this moment grand thing passes (and it does, without fail), I return to the usual fragmented contemplation that running is supposed to help alleviate.

Cresting a hill today, an equation popped onto my mental chalkboard, the results of which were too terrible to consider at the time. To distract myself, I ran the rest of the way home mentally revising the fingerings to the Eb Prelude- the cellist’s version of coming up with the last digit of pi.

A few hours later, I sat down to balance my year-end ledger, and I decided to casually scratch out the figures on a tablet.

It was worse than I thought. Since I have owned my current instrument, I have easily put three times more money into it than it is worth- not counting strings. Tack on $10k if we’re counting those.

I love numbers, but sometimes math stinks.

Part of what makes my blog a little different from those of some other professional musicians is that I tend to expound about the sorts of things that highlight my frailties rather than serve as promotional material. It’s a niche I claim- and I don’t think there’s a line of folks waiting to take it from me. Truth be told, I find promotion and marketing to be intensely unpleasant, especially because I’ve grown up in the filigreed hierarchy of old-school cred. Where you have a booming studio because of your reputation. Where you get gigs because you’ve waited your turn and established yourself. Plus it just seems like bragging sometimes. I don’t do well with the abundant exclamation points, needy backstage/onstage photography and automatic subscription to kickstarter campaign emails just because I once sent you a note asking if I needed to bring a stand to the session. We know you’re good. It’s cool. This is not true of all blogs, but pro nouveau is becoming more ubiquitous from what I can see.

The advent of internet advertising and gimmicky bargain “music schools” has radically impacted the teaching side of my life. While my adult beginners are reliably deferential, parents routinely ask me why my first lesson isn’t free, or why I don’t charge $25 an hour, or why I use scary, antiquated German manuals and prescribe constant practice instead of Cello Fun Explody Easy Good Time (vols. 1 and 2) and act as a source of entertainment for their overextended children.

I’m old school. And I’m willing to out-wait the kitsch and fire-sale teaching studios until my place in this new venue is solidified.

Yay! I’m so hardcore! How does she do it?

I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m not doing it. The last few months have been a horror show, professionally. So dire in fact that I began applying for 9-5 work in nearly any field related to music within 25 miles of The District.

At first this seems to be de rigueur. You want work? You go looking for a job. The thing is that most set-hour work precludes the development of a weekday teaching studio and performing schedule.

Can you come to my house at 5 on Tuesday? 

No. No, I can’t.

Can you play the gig next week? It’s 3 hours away. Load in at 5, sound check at 8.

No, sorry.

So it was with a heavy heart that I wrote cover letters and submitted applications. I always say that you go where you’re pointed, and I do not want to land where that rocket is trying to take me.

Still, I summoned up a cheery face for one position at the Library of Congress. Here is an excerpt of the job posting.

____________________________________________________

Now I wouldn’t be at all qualified for that, would I? I gleefully typed out responses to their questions, knowing that whomever would read them would detect my readiness to jump into the position and immediately get to work.

Weeks passed. I heard nothing. I emailed. Still nothing. I asked a friend who works in another division of the LOC. He said it’s typical and that sometimes they don’t even hire anyone but don’t tell the candidates. I get it. The government is huge and interpersonal finesse is the first thing to go. He also told me how the candidates are chosen for promotion onto the interview round. A computer goes through your cover letter, resume, and responses and tabulates a score based on keyword hits.

I scanned my entry and it seemed to have the right stuff: masters, music, cello, performance, French, Italian, German, seminar, administrative, organizational, logistics, concert, performance notes, guest artist.  

Finally, I called the LOC and was guided to the voicemail of the head of the correct department. The next day I received an email informing me that 98 was the cutoff score for advancement in the process and that I had scored…

97.

What stung is not that I had fallen short of their standards, but that I had strayed so far from what matters to me and supplanted it with something that painted my nightly dreams with anxiety and feeling like someone was standing on my chest. This job would have been a concession. Not because it wasn’t a good position, but because it was a fast train away from the very thing that makes me brim with purpose and meaning.

Failures like these are always teachers. In this case, it reminds me to fail for things I actually believe in. So I’ll stick my neck out again, like one does only for the most desperate and aching kind of love. And if I become a casualty of these efforts, I’ll at least convalesce in the comfort of knowing I am pointed squarely in the direction I should be going.

Practice is good. Common sense tells us it’s necessary for progress and essential to maintain our skill. In my lessons, I rarely teach people how to play- it’s mostly about diagnosing what makes something difficult and then developing strategies and routines designed to break down the difficulty. I teach people how to practice. The playing comes fairly naturally after that, for the most part.

What do you think about when you’re practicing? What’s your goal? How do you know when you’ve succeeded? Here, let me give you an example.

I sight-read duets with most of my students. It’s a brutal experience for some of them- the ones who need it the most. You see, when you plow through something you’ve never read before with the general idea of making it to the end alongside someone else, there is a set of goals unique to this kind of practice. While we always want to sound good, the real priorities are something like:

1. count

2. listen

3. don’t freak out

…and the other stuff, I say screw it. Toss the bowings on the floor. Don’t get attached to playing the right notes. In a duet, the right note at the wrong time is still the wrong note with the added benefit of being in a different part of the music than the other person! Your scales and long tones are where you work on color, control and pitch. Your études manifest dexterity. Your ensemble music brings sophistication. Years of listening and playing earn you interpretation and poise.

So when you sit down to do whatever it is, I say have a goal and also maybe a set of non-goals. Stuff that can fall by the wayside because you’re at work on something else.

When you’re practicing for pure tone, maybe the metronome gets turned of until you can reliably produce an improved sound. Then turn the thing back on. Don’t even think of quoting me as someone who marginalizes that little ticking box of death and destruction. You know my thoughts on this. Emmy love metronome.

When you’re working on dexterity, maybe the tone goes off the rails a little. Set the metronome to a reasonable speed and get the thing on time. Cleanly. Obviously. Without anxiety. It may sound a little stupid or basic. Fine. Let it. Then, after the passage is nearly automated, allow your ears to once again search for the tone quality you’re after.

Just about all practice is good. Heck, I did everything wrong for ages and it still benefitted me. But especially for those of us who don’t have unlimited time and energy, setting priorities for practice can streamline the process and yield more meaningful results. Plus, it allows you to chart very specific progress without total perfection. A scritch-scratchy run through of your Suzuki piece that is perfectly aligned with the metronome is a blistering success if you’re working on your sense of time. Getting through Flight of The Bumble-Bee at 1/16=40 is the ultimate thrill if you want each note to ring like a bell. So focus. Pick something specific to work on and try not to be seduced by the other stuff until you’re in good shape all around.

It’s like one of those old-fashioned plate spinning acts. Maybe some aspects of your playing wobble while you’re paying attention to one piece of your technique, but before long, you’ll be able to get them all going at once with just a little concentration.

I was watching SportsCenter when the coverage turned to NASCAR, whose championship was determined last night by the narrowest margin in history. It came down to the wire with Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart, who had been in something of a public war of words (and fenders, and pit crews) as they emerged the frontrunners.

Stewart won, and Edwards intercepted him on his victory lap to offer congratulations. The relief between the men was palpable, and I believe the sincerity of the gesture. At the press conference, Edwards referenced the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. How fantastic. Leave it to NASCAR to evoke Victorian nobility and excellent form, reminding us to “…meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.” As you slog away at your instrument, or sit through an impossible meeting, or encounter any situation where dread seems most apropos, take heart. This is yet another opportunity to get better.

If 

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Veterans Day.

This morning, I was scanning what people had to say in their blogs and various social media outlets. One guy, a friend of mine, said something to the effect of “Happy lip service day! Too bad we keep making cuts to the VA budget…”

While I agree that few budgets should be preserved ahead of those designed to take care of our servicemen and women, the tone of the comment was bothersome.

Stepping onto my soapbox for just a moment, I’d like to challenge people who offer vitriol and outrage to find the underlying convictions that drive those clever quips. Find them and instead of being another whining voice, go DO something about it. You want better for our military? Then write to your representatives. Every month. Donate. Get involved. Buy the next person you see in uniform their cup of coffee. Thank them and shake their hand. Go to a base and volunteer. Buy a round at the bar. Correspond with a deployed soldier. Send care packages. Be relentless and vocal in your support, year round. Most of all, take a cue from the very people your griping is designed to assist. Don’t assume someone else is going to do it.

We may not be able to quickly reorganize how our government pisses away the money our vets have rightfully earned, but in the end this is about people. Individuals. You can make a big difference in the life of an individual if you put your mind to it. Resist the urge to be a complainer. Most of all, try and muster a good mood. Brass tacks, you’re the reason they do what they do.

I spent today with a retired US Army Colonel. We toasted the occasion and our good fortune with an ’07 Peirano Estate Cabernet.

Happy Veterans day to all of us, even the complainers.

By hook, crook, bell, book and candle, I managed to infiltrate the ranks of the jazz department when I was at CSUN. Classically trained folks are usually a liability in such settings: stuck to the page, desperate for someone to just tell us what to play. I carved something of a niche for myself as the weirdo who was not afraid to improvise- but needed to hone those skills so the resulting cacophony matched my bravery. Much of my take on music and musicality can be attributed to Gary Pratt, whose classes were the stuff of legend. After each one, my brains ached and my heart was pounding with the wonderful combination of ambition, fear, curiosity and geekery that drives creative people to persist even though what we do is nearly impossible and why can’t you do something sensible with your life like pharmaceuticals or administration and besides you’re certainly no wünderkind and your arm is numb and probably setting yourself up for failure stop giving us heart attacks you idiot.

Gary was the one who encouraged me to persist. He was deadly serious. And wickedly funny. Just not to be messed with. His cred is deep, and he told us stories that ended up as cult axioms among we fortunate few who got to hear them, too late at night, outside Catalina Bar and Grill or the Jazz Bakery.

One such story came after this trendy drummer played a show that all of the hot shot students went to. Most of them were blown away as this guy frantically slaved behind a drumkit that must have had 19 cymbals and may have needed its own generator to power it. He was all the talk the next day when we had combo class. I thought I was missing something by not really digging the frenetic performance. I’m all about Art Blakey and Max Roach and Jimmy Cobb.

Gary strode into the room with his usual gravity, and we all waited to see what was on the docket.

“Some show the other night.”

Everyone started talking at once. Chops! Double bass drum! Even 5s over 6! Cymbals! Rim clicks run amok!

I don’t remember how the story began or if it was first or second hand, but it ended with the pronouncement:

“Drum solo sounded like some old tennis shoes in a dryer.”

Hee hee. I don’t deserve to be in the same conversation as Professor Pratt, but in that moment I felt closer to being a good musician than ever before.

Sometimes, more is just…more.

e.

I love The Wire. It wasn’t always that way- but now that I have come to see such good in Baltimore, it means something different to me than when I first watched it a few years ago. We were talking about favorite characters the other day, and of course McNulty came up. I mean, how could he not? So when P said something to the effect of, “…he thinks he knows what happiness is but can never find it.” it got me thinking.

My relationship with happiness is a complicated one. Any of my friends, regular readers, and probably people who meet me on the street could tell you that I am completely permeable. The opposite of thick-skinned. I’m a big feeler. I’m also of the opinion that happiness is to a large extent, a choice. Easy now, quickdraw. I’m not saying that it’s simple, or that melancholy does not have a place. I suppose I think it’s a something of a habit to try and get into. A matter of not surrendering to the instinct to crumble or become resentful; a mental contract with oneself to police the inner narrative as best you can to remain buoyant and functional. It’s not an insurance policy against misery. It’s more like a tether that keeps you attached to a balanced view of things, so at least when you’re absolutely subterranean with despair, you know that there is something else out there for you to behold.

I think about happiness all the time. Not only because many of my students are adults who take up the cello as a fulfillment of their own desire to be happy, but because one could take my life story and easily narrate it as the sad tale of the wandering cellist whose life has been plagued by insult, injury, broken dreams, and falling down in public. Instead, I see my life as astonishing and charmed. Sometimes it takes a while for the heartache to crystallize into something I can rebrand as beautiful, but it’s a process worth investing in. It helps me get out of bed each morning, and makes me a good giver of pep talks. I got pep coming out of my ears, but it’s not for lack of melancholy- it’s because I know it so well.

My class and I watched a rather silly Mahler documentary the other week. Of the few salient points was the discussion of what sad music, written under conditions of obvious duress, does for the wounded soul. Conductor Christoph Eschenbach recounted the tale of his entire family being carted off to exile and eventual death in the Nazi camps, and how the pain in Mahler’s music created healing in his own soul. He called it “A minus and a minus makes a plus.” I’ll admit that in times of discontent, I reach for Beethoven and Shostakovich with the well-practiced mechanism of anyone with a dependency. Sometimes I’ll even “hurt myself” with some Copland just so Feist or Radiohead can heal me up again.

This well-documented kinship through pain reaches farther than music, and I’ll venture to posit that Art (yes, with a capital A) is magical in its ability to take the ugliest that humanity has to offer and at the least gives it a place to go and at best contributes beauty and solace in its perspective. It makes sense that I was nearly sick with grief when I was recovering from my arm surgery: I had nowhere to vent the discouragement and anxiety that routinely try to ruin my days.

Back to the topic at hand. I think part of the problem with talking about happiness is one of semantics. What does it even mean? To me it’s along the lines of contentment. There’s an open quality to it, but it’s different from joy and downright distal to elation, which is fun but unsustainable. Like so many things, it’s actually there all along, but you just have to stop looking for it like some miraculous parking space in front of the ball park. It’s more like turning the car off right where you are, in the middle of the highway, and hearing the sound of the other drivers’ horns as your new favorite song. Maybe it’s about being right where you are and being ok with it. Maybe happiness is a way of looking at life instead of something one can acquire under the right set of circumstances.

McNulty was the character most of us rooted for when we watched The Wire. So smart. So full of swagger. Handsome devil, to boot. I ached when I would see him sliding into self destruction after the things he most desired slipped from his grip time and time again. Oh McNulty, your travails are not for nothing. If you’d stop looking for ways to escape, you’d see how much better a room is just because you’re in it.

If all of my droning on is too much, maybe this is another way to look at it:

As a kid, people always asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. Maybe they could already detect my ill-fated and inconvenient relationship with music and were testing the waters for a more rational direction. It was around the age of 12 that I could say with eye-rolling certainty that I was going to be a cellist. Before then, the answer was Navy carrier pilot or US Marine. Oh, the looks I’d get! And the questions! To this day, I can’t really imagine a cooler answer, though people seem to think what I do now is novel enough.

I admire those who serve, and part of me has always been disappointed that I didn’t summon up the temerity to at least give the Marines a shot when I had the opportunity to. Still, nothing like regret to propel productivity: my Hopkins research was dedicated to musical interventions in veterans with PTSD. It’s a small gesture, but it’s the best I got for now.

As part of my geeked-out fandom/compulsion to serve, I began a military scholarship a few years back. Lessons for active military or their children/spouses are either free or heavily discounted, so long as I can get to them. At first I hesitated to implement this idea: compared to what these folks do, my life as a wandering minstrel seems a little…trivial. But it’s all I have to give, so I’m going to give it.

Once a week, I drive down 95 to the USMC base at Quantico. It’s a breathtaking place. There is something beautiful about Humvees with cannons strapped to their roofs greeting you at the entrance, and the hut of slightly bristly guys checking IDs and asking cellists what sort of business they have on base.

“Teaching the Colonel’s wife, sir. Want to have a look in the case?”

“No thank you, ma’am. Have a good lesson.”

The road winds around, first to the right, then in a series of easy S-turns until you get to Quantico Town. You pass countless earnest looking joggers and signs like “USMC Center for Irregular Warfare”. As much as I would like to investigate what’s down that path, I turn and slowly snake my way up to Neville Heights. I pass the General’s house, which is large enough to convey the respect his station has earned, but not showy in the least. Most houses display two flags. As an unrepentant aesthete, I confess I roll down my windows and enjoy the reassuring sound of the fabric whipping around in the breeze.

We have our lesson. It’s normal with the exception of the banter. Instead of football, we talk about HMX-1 or setting up a tour of the Pentagon. I can’t help myself! I summon up some discipline and it’s back to scales and Schroeder, breathing and left hand supination. I get back in the car and drive through base a little slower than I need to, wondering if there are good plane watching spots down any of the roads to my right, stopping again to listen to the flags.

I love what I do. I recognize my improbably fantastic luck every day and twice on Sundays. I live a life of almost zero sacrifice and no compromise, much of it tacitly furnished by extraordinary people I’ll never meet doing difficult and dangerous things. That I could deliver even a small measure of gratitude to them in person makes me happy.

Getting good at something happens in cycles. My latest learning adventure has been Lindy hop. After my first 2 lessons, I was emboldened. I dove into the deep end and got crazy serious about it. I’ve had a few rough nights where I didn’t feel super coordinated or leads did things like try to give me a lesson at a social dance or critique my style post-mortem. But really, it’s been a steady climb up the hill.

Then Monday happened. I danced almost exclusively with really good leads, and I felt like the worst dancer alive. Click here for visual. With some perspective, I came to my senses and realized that the guys were just pushing the envelope of my capabilities because I’ve gotten better. Coupled with my ever higher standards, feeling successful again is going to take much more work. Just as it should. Still, I thought that readers would get a kick out of a stick figure journey through the Cycle of Learning, which I present to you in solidarity and support of whatever it is that you’re trying to learn, yourself.

The first phase is infatuation. You’re in love with the idea of doing the thing. You watch the thing, you take lessons at the thing, you feel a sense of optimism about your success at thing. Yay, thing!

You steadily get better at thing. Since you started at zero, pretty much everything you do is gravy. It all feels edifying.

After a while, you hit your first speed bump. The sting of failure burns your nose and makes your eyes water. While some quit, the sort of hardy individuals who toil their way through this blog are likely to persist. Onward and upward, we say! New heights await! Go forth, undeterred!

And so you go. You may hear words like intermediate. improving. advancing. And these words perfume your experience and cloud your vision (both necessary to the process, mind you) so that the next plummet comes as a complete and utter shock. This is the death spiral for many. I quit the cello when I hit this. After a quick affair with the clarinet, I realized that the cello was the one and made a hasty return to lessons and discipline. I was so bad at clarinet that they actually moved rehearsal to a day and time they knew I couldn’t make. This tickles me now, but I was something of a headcase for a few months in 4th grade as a result.

So this emotional freefall is not a reflection of actually diminishing returns. It’s the goal that’s moved on you. As you become a more sophisticated student, you get a better grip on the task at hand, and this phase is one of readjustment to conceiving the picture as a whole. Think of it like stepping away from a pixelated image. Sure, it feels like you’re moving backwards, but it’s only because you now have a sense of what the actual thing looks like. That’s what we’re after. It’s my opinion that this pain is necessary. After all, if it didn’t hurt, it wouldn’t be learning. Humble pie is high in fiber and other nutrients that feed the soul. Trust me. I’ve been dining on it as a cellist, teacher, dancer and human for, oh, 30something years. It doesn’t make for perfection, but it sure does keep things interesting.

It’s important to suffer like this. Wheat from the chaff and all that. The best and brightest are always learning, always balancing the levity and confidence it takes to persist at and, in the case of things like cello and swing dancing, perform publicly- and the openness required to actively seek out faults and go after them aggressively.

Keep going. I’ll see you out on the floor. When all else fails, just shake it.

As part of my expanding private studio, I’m brewing up a little sample lesson/Q&A session in Rockville on the 25th. Here’s the flyer for the event: spread the word!

I’ll have 2 cellos and of course, refreshments. Everything is better with food, no? While we are advertising in some DC Parent-style magazines, I am always so excited to take adult students. If you have questions or want to RSVP, please email me and I’ll make sure you have a slot.

I’m in DC 2 or 3 days a week these days, so if you would like to set up lessons, I’m actively seeking to fill some holes in my schedule.

I first came upon this text when I was working at Baxter Northup in LA. I was so taken by it that I presented it to Rivers Cuomo when Weezer was first promoting the Green Album. The press had been less than kind to them after Pinkerton (the ultimate fan favorite), and he had been legendarily reclusive in part due to the fickle reception of his efforts. I thought that he would especially appreciate the harsh words reserved for Beethoven’s 5th.

For the first installment, check out some of the choice impressions of my main man, Bela Bartók:

“…Bartók’s compositions, he would find that they each and all consist of unmeaning bunches of notes, aparently representing the composer promenading the keyboard in his boots. Some can be better played with the elbows, others with the flat of the hand. None require fingers to perform nor ears to listen to. . . .The productions . . .of Bartók [are] mere ordure.”

(Frederick Corder, ‘On the Cult of Wrong Notes,’ Musical Quarterly, New York, July 1915)

“The bulk of the Bartók Violin Sonata seemed to me the last word (for the present) in ugliness and incoherence. It was as if two people were improvising against each other.”

(Ernest Newman, London Sunday Times, March 26, 1922)

Right.

I had a pretty significant health scare back in the spring. It was to the point that they thought I may have had less than 5 years left. I remember seeing the doctor’s number on my phone about 20 minutes before I had to give a huge group presentation at Hopkins. I picked up and I knew he was going to give me bad news. They had drawn what seemed like gallons of blood from my protesting arms.

Sure enough, he broke it to me as gently as he could. He had never seen such profoundly bad results. So bad in fact that he wanted some more tests to exclude the possibility of “artifacts” contaminating the samples. I agreed to come in the next morning and ended our conversation with the fake bravado of someone I am still kind of trying to become.

After a sputter of hysterical tears, a strange thing happened. A list appeared in my head. Like, a yellow legal pad with my own handwriting scribbled on it.

That night, walking back from my parking garage, I quite literally stumbled onto the body of a homeless man who had died a few blocks from my place. As a believer in signs, I took it as an importunate message from the universe. The list was still right there, between my eyebrows and hairline, just under the skin-probably visible if you took the care to have a close look. I went online and searched “swing dance” “Baltimore”. It was 7:15. The class began at 8. I got there at 7:58, and I danced my face off.

There will be another blog about Charm City Swing, and how much I love it and the people who run it. For now, just know that dancing was on the list, and they helped me check it off. As it turns out, the samples were contaminated. I’m fine. Now that I’m dying of the more likely ailment of being alive and will probably overstay my welcome on this planet (as is my custom), I still think back to that list.

I came across a different kind of list on Twitter, courtesy of @GuyKawasaki’s news/human interest aggregator, Alltop. These are the 5 most commonly reported regrets of people who are on their deathbeds.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Living a life designed to avoid these regrets is dangerous. You end up dancing a lot and showing perhaps a little too much fondness, a little too soon. You completely fail to be cool, and get in the habit of looking silly while taking time to actually smell the roses.

In that horrifying moment when I was certain I was terminally ill, there was another list: the things I would not be able to do with only 5 years left. Now that those things are at least a possibility,  I think it’s only right to continue on in the spirit of feeling improbably lucky to be alive, so that when I’m actually on my deathbed, I might search for regrets and come up with nothing. Sure, I’ll probably fail, but as is the theme of this blog (and my life), it’s the spirit of the gesture that contains all of the beauty.

She told me we were playing the Chopin piano concerto No. 2 (check), Overture to Der Freischütz (no check, but do-able) and Borodin Symphony 2 (what?). I went to my beloved IMSLP, downloaded it, and played along to YouTube.

Ok, first off: 1/1? That’s not even real. It’s like the key of C# major. I do not accept it. Pretend music is in that key. Ok, maybe not, but you must appreciate my sense of outrage at this.

I scanned the pages and listened to the recordings twice. It’s one of those pieces that looks pretty innocuous in terms of notes, but it completely gets you with the combination of weird time signature and his whole, “I’m not going to write this melody the way the ear thinks it should go” complex.

Everything has to be a little jaunty, eh, Borodin?

This reminds me of a story. If you listen to the cello melody at the .32 mark, it sounds like it’s interrupting itself or can’t get on the necessary footing to be something you’d walk out of the concert hall whistling. He means well, but I find it a little silly. When I was studying Elgar with Andrew Cook, I was trying really hard to differentiate my interpretation from Jackie’s. In my youthful efforts, I ended up adding stresses in all kinds of weird places, causing Andrew to wave his hand from across the room and dismissively say, “You sound like you’re throwing up all over yourself.”

I can laugh about it now.

And I do.

Back to Borodin. I practiced the tough parts slowly, then ran whole movements multiple times. It was about 3 hours of solid gnarl on the loaner cello Perrin & Associates has lent me while my ax is in for some major work. My fingertips burned and my right shoulder threatened tendinitis, so I reached into the cabinet for some Scotch ibuprofen and I kept playing. The sun started going down, so I went for a quick jog around the harbor, listening to more Borodin and compelling my burning extremities to last a few more hours. A shower, some kinesiotape and two glasses of Cab Franc later, it was back to the grind.

At 9:19pm, the phone rang. I’d been invited to late dinner down the street. It tasted like Borodin with a side of Borodin sauce.  I’d been brined in that symphony. The next day I went to rehearsal, and though it wasn’t perfect, it hung together reasonably well. My fingertips were swollen, my arms ached heavily at my sides, but I had learned the symphony in a day.

I do not recommend it.

I don’t teach many young peeps. The few that I do manage are always characters, and my two Monday kids are no exception. Yesterday, Noah and I were talking about his impending move to a full size cello, and he was lamenting the flatness of the bridge on his current instrument at school. I told him that he could always ask for a Belgian bridge on his new ax. He snatched a scrap of paper and jotted it down. “Anything else I should ask about?” he asked. “Sure. Get a Larsen A on whatever cello you do end up with.”

“Isn’t that a felony?”

Bahaaa. Larceny. Excellent.

Then I went over to Laura’s, where our girl is valiantly recovering from fractured left hand fingers. We did some ear training and theory to keep her moving forward while giving her injured paw some rest.

Now, some students (especially those without prior piano instruction) occasionally volunteer “H” as a note when I quiz them on a scale. I usually give them the eyebrows and they giggle at their mistake. Laura nearly knocked me off my chair when I played B, C, and then…”Is that O?”

O?? O??? My teaching life flashed before my eyes. How could I have led her so far astray? O!

I looked at her and laughed. “No. That’s not O. There is no O.”

“O. . .pen D?”

Right.

All was well.

I get such a kick out of these kids.

Coming soon: Learning a symphony in a day. Possible, but not recommended.

When you walk any distance at all in the rain with a cello strapped to your back, the water drips down the case and soaks your butt.

I’m noticing a trend among younger students. When I ask them a question that requires critical thinking, introspection or deduction they first respond…

with silence.

And then I press them a little. Perhaps goad them with, “Go on- just tell me what you think.”

more silence.

Then, “I don’t know.”

It’s more worrisome than infuriating, although it sure does make teaching a drag. I remember WIlliam Pleeth talking about what made Jackie so special to teach. He said it was like a tennis match, where she returned all of the energy he poured into the lessons with equal verve. I am fortunate to have many private students who do just that.

Learning involves risk. While being smart is sexy, the process of getting there tends to involve the less glamorous task of actively seeking out areas of weakness and rummaging around in them, hoping to weave the new stuff into the already extant facts and notions.

The problem with many college students is that this is not the process they’re after. “Getting a degree” is a thing; a single act. It’s seen as an obstacle, and if you get around it, a magic door opens and your strategy-less ass is suddenly successful.

When I ask an open-ended question designed to get some synapses firing and I get the dreaded, “I don’t know.”, I hear a silent consequent:

… “because I don’t know how to think.”

I am doing my best to sympathize with the 19-year-olds that populate my classroom. If a student doesn’t know how to do something, there’s no sense in having a punitive attitude as an instructor. I think most teachers would concur that teaching is a compulsion. Very few of us make much money, and we are always asked to do twice as much as we think is possible in half the time allotted. There is an idealism to the profession if you do it right. If a single student walks away with Mozart’s sense of humor or the burden of Brahms’ magnificent weight, I am overjoyed.

So I am set to the task of teaching them critical thinking via music. This class would either thrill or horrify the enforcers of curricular standards. There is a real chance that several students will not pass my creampuff class. It’s literally MUS 100. Not even 101. I’m trying not to take this demonstration of the failings of education and culture personally, but it’s hard going.

But worthwhile. These kids may have given up on learning, but I have not given up on them.

I was recently asked if I’d always had faith in my path as a musician.

It’s a good question, and one that provoked some decidedly non-soapbox/swashbuckling answers. Folks come here for a dose of upstream boldness. And I suppose in this post I still deliver, but Emily Dickinson might call it delivering slant.

What does having faith feel like? Is it the absence of questioning and doubt? Or is it marked by the outcomes of those questions and doubts? I find that most of my crises of faith have been instigated by other people. It’s easy to have lots of opinions about things you have no control over, isn’t it? Still, I am not so impermeable that I don’t worry when people ask me what I want to do “when I grow up” or “for a real job.”

My concern isn’t whether I’m doing the right thing or if I have the skills. I’m doing what I am compelled by nature to do- I have tried, halfheartedly, other things. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. As for having the skills, I probably have about half the skills I need to be as good as I’d like to be, but the learning process is as satisfying as the teaching and performing part.

When my students call me crying or the lead singer wants to bail on the gig, I have the pep talk ready. Tribulations and moments of despair forge a deeper bond with our craft. When I’m asked about my faith in myself, I can respond candidly:

I may not always be comfortable or assured that I’ll succeed, but I am positive- I have complete faith- that this is what I’m meant to be doing. It kind of goes back to one of my favorite sports analogies: even if you’re striking out, it means you’re swinging for the fences. It means you’re in the game. Asking tough questions gives swashbucklers like us the opportunity to answer, after some rumination, with a steady voice.

I have neglected this blog lately, but for good reason. Between teaching private lessons, starting the new college gig, performing, and attending more dance events than is actually humanly possible, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks.

Just the way I like it!

I’m thinking about doing a workshop series here in the mid autumn. Say, October? The weather will be splendid so travel should be a cinch. Of course, it will have to be scheduled around USC football games. The air has the first signs of crispness, and the tree in the back yard is already surrendering its green to a pale yellow. While I can go on at length about colors changing and the different light, I really know it’s fall when I hear this. If you’re not a CFB person, try not to hate me. If you are, I’ll see you bright and early this Saturday.

I work really hard when I write. It’s some of the most enjoyable time I spend (tied with practicing cello, dancing, and flying). A few years ago, I hassled the folks over at Strings into letting me scribble a bit for them. I am still astonished that they keep calling me back for more, given my, ahem, particular writing style. Each time I submit an outline or draft, I get more adventurous: a conversational cadence here and there, using words like “persnickety” and the classic “zesty”, etc. And each time, they shoot me down.

And I get disheartened. And then I get over it because they are paying me for a product. And I have it within me to produce that product.

The same is true of writing at Hopkins. We were confined by the APA rules. I refuse to call it APA style, because the only thing that sets it apart is its complete lack thereof. I can see that it is valuable for researchers and clinicians who are not moved by Updike and Lawrence and are in need of some guidelines for publishing reasonably cohesive prose. Still, I find that an elegant turn of phrase leads me to read and absorb whereas drier stuff is more like reading simply to endure.

It was a muscular exercise in restraint to stick to the APA guidelines. And even then, my professors would always offer a few comments; some appreciative, some bemused, others in finger-wagging admonition. Fair enough.

So this latest assignment from Strings is a whopper. It’s a huge series devoted to technique: my wheelhouse, my love, my darling. Were I allowed to write these pieces in my customary fashion, I would never produce an outline. I tend to ruminate for a while and see the end point- sometimes even the last phrase or two. Then I go methodically forward from the start, making sure each subsequent step points squarely to that final thought. It is the way I conceived this post, in fact. An assignment this size is a big commitment for a magazine, though: and they wanted a detailed outline.

Agony.

They sent me a copy of the violin version of this piece, and I loosely adhered to it, but decided that once again I’d venture closer to the edge with my archetypal style. (there were exclamation points and irony! contradictions and hyperbole! intentional assonance!) My phone rang a few hours later, and my editor’s voice rang clear:

“Leave the personality for later.”

Oof.

Because I am a grown-up, I immediately gathered myself and did what any self-respecting mature writer would do: poured myself a Scotch and pouted for 2 straight days.

My editor emailed me a few days later wanting a check up and I replied, “Yes, I’m working on it. Less me.” He replied: “Just less up for interpretation. Clearer.”

I pouted for another 20 minutes and then it hit me: I don’t have to be any less authentic to my style. This is making me expand my range, add a facet, work harder! The real trick is going to be getting my voice across through this new set of constraints. And I accept that challenge, b*tches.

After that, I did what any self-respecting nearly grown-up writer would do: I made myself a cup of tea and got down to work. I received a call from my editor (who had just gotten off the phone with Yo-Yo Ma moments earlier) and he said, “Yes. This.”

Yes.

This.

I’m playing with BRB at Cyclops on the 26th! Get your passes here, and stop by and say hi! It’s an absolute smorgasbord of musical goodness, with a combination of sweet local talent and out of town bands.