Adam Tendler's Blog, page 20

july 10, 10:32pm (london) | 5m | binge and purge

I’d like to say that everything went the opposite of my fears. That we knocked out pieces in one take. That I relaxed after five minutes. That I feel much better tonight than yesterday. In reality, I feel like an utterly shit pianist. Maybe a half hour into the first take, I started wondering: “So if I quit and offer to pay back all the expenses of my trip, will they say yes, and how long would that take?“

I get self-fulfilling prophesies. I get positive attitudes. I get shaking it off. All of that. But just because the format of these recordings, in essence, a perfect take, at least visually from start to finish, lest one starts again from the beginning, is the stuff of nightmares. And I don’t know if it ever happened. Indeed, more than once I reached the end of a six-page piece only to fall all over myself in the final bars. So we’d start again on page one. The pressure, the lead-up, the internal monologue—it doesn’t get better from take to take. In fact, the microscope draws in, the body senses every micro-move, it questions, it tallies consequences, it feels bad for the technicians. 

At least that all happened for me. Maybe others can turn it off. Or maybe this kind of thing doesn’t happen to other people. 

And so frankly I wanted to cry, and from piece number one, had no clue how we’d get through today’s set. But we did, and the producers, all of them brilliant and lovely and wonderful, congratulated me on a good job. I could barely say anything in reply. 

Performing live requires the development of a certain skill set to negotiate the dissonance between our expectations and hopes (based on our ability, right?), and the reality of what actually happens on stage. Did the fear manifest? (Probably?) Did it evaporate in the face of adrenaline and focus? (Working on it.) I still navigate that thorny path every time I play in public. Every time. But recording, I think, requires an entirely different skill set. One of trusting others, actually. One of staying cool, not spinning out, not taking things personally. The whole process stems from shaving down the imperfections into the illusion of perfection, and so one has to come into it knowing that the imperfections define the process. The baseline for the experience is, I’m afraid, mistakes. For me, though, I take the whole thing very personally. It simply doesn’t feel good to run up against a wall with, say, a sprinting Alberti bass, and to watch the hand resist. Maybe in a couple months or a year, that particular wall will fall, and maybe I won’t even see it happen when it does. Technical problems all talk to each other in the background of our brains, after all. They strike deals, make amends, establish treaties—peace talks. But, you know… this Alberti bass worked in practice. But it just didn’t today. I could blame the weather, or I could blame myself. A million ornaments stopped my hand dead in its tracks. Again, maybe if I did the same session in a week, month, or year, I’lll realize the blocks have disappeared experiencing the healing properties of performance trauma. But for the time being, it feels like shit, hitting that wall. All day, and right now, I wanted to cry simply to release the ball of energy and emotions growing and pulsing within. I really, in all honesty, don’t want to digest it, but would much rather purge. Be rid of it, even at the cost of nourishment. 

july 10, 12:25am (london) | 8m | nerves

distinctly different nerves for tomorrow than nerves i typically experience. Like i don’t quite know what to do or how to prepare. Or like, I’d be anxious to play these pieces in a recital tomorrow, but yet I’ll play them for a recording, tomorrow. The threat of posterity. Or maybe I would play them fine in a recital. I played them for Adam, after all. Every slip means so much to me right now, though. Each feels prophetic and deeply wounding. Spinning out, really, thinking about it. I could’ve/should’ve/would’ve spent the evening reading or looking through the scores but didn’t. It’s just past midnight and I’ll go read in bed, my book about Griffes because I finished the one about 4'33". Just took a bath. Did practice today in a rented room. Maybe I can use my experience exploring and navigating the city today as an example for tomorrow. When I left the house, for instance, everything seemed so foreign. The sidewalk, the streets. I checked the map on my phone every few paces just to check my direction. I entered the tube timidly and triple-checked every choice. But before long, I buzzed through the tunnels and streets with confidence, bag tossed over my shoulder. Exploring. Ate brunch. Rehearsed in a dingy practice room in a building with ancient bars over the windows. (I loved every minute of it.) The walk home from the subway station tonight felt totally different. I didn’t check the phone once for my direction. I stopped at a little grocery for some water and walked back with the two bottles tucked under my arm, feeling weirdly local. So I have to trust that a similar groove awaits me tomorrow, and that I’ll fall into that groove. Over drinks tonight with other pianists I found myself quiet and listening. Maybe nerves for tomorrow again, the riptide of my own thoughts, or maybe the same old “do I belong here?” thoughts with their symptomatic paralysis. But I did think that certain people like to demonstrate what they know, and find strength in relating everything to the encyclopedia and autobiography in their brain, and that I don’t enjoy those people. Or at least, I don’t participate well in those conversations. I have to notice if I act like that, too. I’d like to think I’m too busy trying to be funny.

july 9, 12:08am (london) | chicken

Smooth travels, if you ignore the three hours on the runway waiting to take off. On the plane to London I obsessed about my weight. I felt myself growing bigger, remembering the voracity with which I attacked a Big Mac, fries, McNuggets and Coke a few hours earlier. A large Coke. It had to look like a competitive eating competition. I felt especially guilty after a weekend in Vermont, connecting spiritually with four roaming chickens on the property and feeling quite secure that I might never need to eat chicken again. Well, it didn’t last long. Also had chicken teriyaki on the flight. But guiltily so. My secret ingredient. The temperature dropped and I asked for a blanket. Obsessed over the screen from my last hernia operation, a sense of aching beneath the flesh of my left pelvis, so I also felt like that part of my body must have started falling about too. I have almost finished (for the second time) Kyle Gann’s excellent book about John Cage’s 4'33", preparing to record it later this week. Questions abound for me, as ever, but it feels good to sink into the ethic of the piece. It helps also to train my mind—or rather, just to remind it—in the direction of impermanence, nonpriority, of moments in time, always imperfect, always happening. Marc tonight said that in these sessions we aim to “capture a moment.” I must remember that. Not capture a specimen. Not capture an example. Not capture an ideal or standard. Just a moment. Moments happen all the time. Played the entire program for Adam yesterday over the course of two hours. Helpful. And now, I write this in my underwear in a flat in London. It’s a miracle. Pride weekend, which made for a three hour trip from Heathrow to this flat. But Marc and I had fun in the car, conversation that switched back and forth between probing and banal, which suited both our fluctuating needs. A truly heroic guy. The cleaning lady still worked as we entered the flat. Eventually, with just her and I alone, and the kitchen sort of untouched, I began washing dishes, or something. I dumped a cup of yellow liquid down the drain and she screamed. Actually screamed. In broken english she described the crime, but I didn’t understand. “Was it yours?!” I asked. “A drink?” The more she described that I had dumped cleaning liquid, the more I didn’t understand the problem. “I want you to go,” I finally said, but she insisted on cleaning, grumbling, sighing and throwing things. And then she left, after saying something about the dishwasher, which I later deduced as a message that she’d left it on. I napped—unusual for me but necessary today. Woke up in a stupor, but grateful. Fish and chips tonight with Marc and the previous pianist who recorded for the platform. Brilliant artist, and successful. I feel, truly, lucky. I regret saying that I looked forward to Tuesday night, when the recording (of the music) will have wrapped. Marc corrected, “You look forward to 9:15 Monday morning,” by which he meant fifteen minutes into the first session. Of course he’s right. He actually does know me quite well by now, especially after our first sessions, and he might remember that it doesn’t take much to get me completely in the zone. Forgot power adapters but bought some at a small bodega (do they call them that here?). And some Haribo gummis. The shower has a full-length mirror. Fridge stocked, courtesy of Peters. Again, truly lucky. I will, in time, see friends here in town, but tonight, quiet. Will continue Kyle’s book, and sleep, listening to Max Ochs’s lilting, raga folky guitar.

july 6, 12:53am | 1m | foil

tough day. got away from me. the practice that happened felt surprisingly rough. spent most of daylight teaching in a panic, heart pounding, light sweat. tomorrow, another day. drank a little bit tonight—diet coke and red wine, and a gose. handfuls of cinnamon toast crunch after dinner (pasta and salad). but some people—my students—left my presence inspired, i think. and i visited a composer friend. maybe i just have post independence day blues. 

i don’t tend to listen to recordings of the pieces i’ll play, but like most things i ignore and avoid, i’ve created a pretty stiff narrative of what i can’t see (or hear)— i.e. everything probably goes twice as fast and flows like water. i want to feel good about myself but today i just don’t. 

visiting that composer friend at the chelsea hotel, he said that he believes people “need a foil—that thing they need to work against all the time, a kind of anchor, to remind them of when they’re not doing that thing.” he stopped for a second and then added with a laugh, “like sin! you need the sin so you know when you’re not sinning.” he couldn’t have said that on a more appropriate day to a more appropriate person. 

july 4, 1:25am | fidgeting

fidgeting because i practiced only a little today, since we traveled and since it’s fourth of july. but i did what i wanted to do. low point: scratching the jeep in an attempt to buff out another scratch. high points: petting chickens, maple flavored coffee, taking an inflatable raft to the center of the pond, a little barbecue, my mom’s redwhiteandblue dessert of strawberries, blueberries and angelfood cake (that will stay cute for the rest of my life), and our serene ride back to the city under a sunny sky and through quiet vermont farmland. wore a Jefferson Airplane tshirt and starsandstripes socks.

but through it all i fidget; stretching my fingers, cracking this or that knuckle or wrist, contorting my arms. if i stop i feel a kind of atrophying. but sheesh. fidgeting and restless, typing this on my phone, naked in bed. god forbid i close my eyes.

yesterday we decided at the last minute to zoom to montpelier to see the fireworks. they began as we descended into town from the interstate. we double parked in the first parking lot we could find and watched.

then, when the fantastic display ended, we got in the car and returned home. a bear showed up on the porch, knocking over and emptying out a birdfeeder, dwarfing everything that came before it.

vermont is so beautiful it makes me worry about the fate of the world. like, i worry that it won’t stay beautiful. i don’t know, i always find my mind wondering about the long line. where everything’s ends up, from a book on the shelf to the gravel below my feet. where does it go? or end; i suppose i mean.

too shy to ask my doctor for anxiety pills for my flight. shouldn’t i not feel bashful about talking to my doctor?

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke

the whole city’s engulfed in smoke