Good morning!
Today is piano day and I should make short shrift of my blog and get ready.
Have I been practicing? Not really, but I have been playing. I skipped a day this week, but have been at it with Sr. Mompou most days. Improvement? What's that? At least I am doing it, even though Jeunes Filles Au Jardin is about as much of a mystery as it was the first day I looked at it. It's a mystery to my fingers. As well as to my mind.
I heard Dudley Moore, movie actor as well as serious piano player, say an interesting thing once on the television. He thinks the memory that enables us to go to the instrument and play something we've learned is not necessarily stored in the brain. He felt that it was somewhere along the spine, I believe, and I agree with him. Just think about it when you sit down to play; your whole body is engaged, your whole person, that is, brain and body. And it probably is the body who remembers and plays the piece, tooth and toenail.
When I was young I might feel that I'd memorized a piece, but sometimes in a recital I'd "come to" and feel a total blank. I think that at those moments I did throw my brain into gear and it said, in the words of 2011, "Wha?" Where was I, in the world, in the piece of music? I had no idea. My body had been playing and my brain should have left well enough alone.
I have had piano teachers, one notably, who said that one should be able to recite the key signature, notes, chords of any spot in a piece at any time, USING THE BRAIN, of course. I don't know that I could ever do that but maybe that is why I never made it to Carnegie Hall. There have been plenty of times when it would have been handy to be able to do that. "Oh, yes--I just played C sharp, A, and E in my right hand and A in the left and that means that next I play ..... because I am in measure 34 of the first section...," ooops, couldn't do that. And the more I might stop to try to THINK my way out of my dilemma, the worse I might do.
I am trying to get Jeunes Filles Au Jardin into my SPINE and actually the chakras thereof. That is probably where the music really is, and Dudley Moore didn't quite think that or say it. I must employ my chakras more consciously and they will let my poor brain trail along in their wake, and I'll have that piece memorized.
I love the chakras. They come in all colors and they make sounds like chimes. The chakras are vortices that are not actually ON the spine; they are just outside it within the aural body. Could we say that they are of spirit AND of flesh together, perhaps just the place where those two essences meet to make us what we are?
Yes, I shall actively involve the chakras today to see what I have been missing. I just need to remember, to think about it every morning, and I know that. I know it, and still I get up, tend to dogs, go out to get the paper, make coffee, read the paper, come to the computer, feed Theodore when he gets up. And the chakras are left to fend for themselves. Thank God, they seem to know what they're doing. And I need to pay attention. YAZZYBEL
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