2001-08-13 - 4:36 p.m. - quotidianus9 (ha)

I'm in such an evil mood.

I've been - well, emotional is certainly one way to describe it. It's more like flat-out depressed. Anyway, I've been that way for the entire summer, and while on the outside I seem to be getting better, inside, there's a hole, and it hurts, and it's getting worse.

Those of you not into self-pity and boring tracts of moaning should stop reading NOW and come back in, say, a year or two.

The beginning of the school year always brings a sudden change, which means that either I will feel much better or much worse in September. The way I'm going, I think it's the latter I'm headed for, although I can always hope for the former. Ah, and what's the cause of all of this?

A crushing sense of inadequacy in almost every aspect of my life, exacerbated by my approaching concert.

Because here's what a lot of people around me don't seem to get: I may be good for my age. But that's not good enough, because I owe it to the music to at least try to go beyond what my age is capable of; to be, in other words, good, not just good - for my age. Ambitious? Yes. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No, not usually - but I have only a week, so the odds become more than prohibitive. There is no way I can walk out of that room in a week and not know that I have in some part failed. Sure, if I slip up technically and embarrass myself in front of the audience, it will be worse. But how do I put into the music emotionally what I want to be able to put, especially when that sound is born of a career at least two-and-a-half times as long as mine (yes, I'm looking at you, Rostropovich!)

There's no way I will pull it off. There can be no way.

So that's part of it; my refusal to be simply my age.

Next is the lesson I had today. My teacher has it wrong: when I'm motivated by rage, when I go dangerously silent - I'm not motivated by hatred of him, by hatred of his dictum. No, it's the hatred I have for myself, for allowing myself to be put in a situation where I feel a fool, where he points out something that I should have done more of, that I should have done, period- and yes, perhaps his mannerisms do contribute, the way he laughs often, with just enough of a hint of mocking to enrage that sense in me which is already heightened, but not enough that I can honestly and rationally believe that he is mocking me (I know him better than that). But my mind isn't necessary, to feel anger and self-hatred: it's the baser reactions for which that hint is enough.

I hate this. This must end.

Friends, save me from myself-

J