2001-08-16 - 9:18 p.m. - tristitia2

An artist on his best days is clinically depressed. That's one of the many things I took with me from today's marathon cello lesson - one of the neat things about my teacher is that he has like three students, and so if he doesn't have something scheduled immediately after you, your allotted time will stretch, which is about as far from my first teacher as you can get (and she was very... orderly, thinking: all right, two reps of scales- four minutes. thirty seconds pause. one run-through of x piece... x minutes. and so on...) By the time the dust had cleared, we'd spent four hours together.

We even spent two hours playing the cello.

Today, I was in enough of a state (stress, depression) that I lost my control over myself (I hate to do that: those of you who know me will be holding your hands over your mouths and restraining yourselves from shouting control freak!. This I know-) and burst into tears midway through the lesson- hence the two hours of non-talking in our lesson, where my wonderful teacher took off his "musician" hat and put on his "confidence-boosting-shrink" hat.

It helped that we had to move midway through our lesson. See, I'm preparing for a concert (which you should have picked up; if you haven't by now, you're daft.) So I had an hour and a half with my pianist and my teacher - then my pianist (who happens also to be my piano teacher and a crackerjack accompanist) had to kick us out. So we moved to my house and finished up.

The accompaniment session went... interestingly. I've been reassured that I'm playing better than I ever have before, but-

Digress with me for a moment.

As a musician, I have certain expectations of myself. This goes without saying. Ah, and having perfect pitch and a pretty good memory (although things don't stay fixed there, it does make memorizing pieces easier- I just can't remember them two years down the road) help with the following: I make a little recording of The Way It Should Be in my head, then play it in my head while I'm playing the piece.

Rarely do the two versions match up.

After all, I'm demanding the impossible- more than my best, all the time. Which is not something the human body, let alone my pathetic weak one, was built to handle. I mean... my recording of The Way It Should Be (henceforth to be known as "TWISB") should really be called- "TWISB, on a perfect day after fifteen tries for the CD, final cut."

So what's my reaction? Is it to acknowledge the impracticality of my goals?

Heck no! I get angry at myself. When I get angry, I: a) want to smash things and get murderous urges, and b) retreat into myself. Because I am generally a person of restraint (or would like to think that I am; friends, care to comment? there's a handy link at the bottom of the page- I refer of course to "notes," "guestbook," and "email" all.), it is the latter which my teacher notices.

Oh yes, I become a bit of a jerk with the cello.

So today, to make a long story short, I burst out crying as soon as I got home... mostly because my mother had decided to tell my teacher what was on my mind, but distorted it so that I had no choice but to explain...

-which is how I got into a long discussion about having reasonable goals, and about how important it was to talk with other people when I felt depressed, and how this was adolescence (great, more stuff I can use to trivialize my own feelings!) and how although it seemed like it would last forever, it wouldn't (yeah, I guess I knew that, but it doesn't hurt to repeat it, eh?) and how I could always call him.

Heavy stuff for a four-hour cello lesson.

And I still don't feel prepared, and I still think I'm going to disappoint myself come Monday. But - oh, who am I kidding? It's not any better; it's just that the wounds have moved inside, to come out again when I least expect them; I still don't believe that I'm essentially a good person, that I'm good at what I do, that I'm even basically competent.

But I can't let this destroy me. So I've got to keep talking-writing, because that's what sustains me; because although it hurts, I have a deep love of this ability to expose myself at will. And because, when I write about anything - the prose isn't good, my words don't sing, and I'm no poet - but for a moment I feel like I can do something, like I can transmit something to someone, and for a moment, I almost fancy that I've made the mundane (my experience, which I'm sure everybody else has had with minor variations) something a little more special. It's then I realize that my tongue will be the end of me, but for now, it's at once my salvation, my courage, my hope.

Then the illusion dissolves, and I'm left with my bluer-than-blue feelings*.

But for that illusion, I'd sell myself.

J

*don't you experience feeling as color? well, i do, and i get the sense from some of my classmates that my colors are more vivid than most my age but should fade to less garish hues with age-