Adam Tendler's Blog, page 21

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

July 2, 9:04am | 10m | watertrees

Couldn’t write last night. Just too sleepy. So this morning, first thing, sitting on the porch of my family’s home in Vermont, I’ve opened up the little iPad. Coffee brewing. So much rain yesterday that some towns have experienced flooding. But I love rain on this property because streams and springs appear. The brook in the back, which you have to hike for a couple minutes to get to, transforms really into a raging river. Little waterfalls appear in the banks. I can hear water now. My family—my mother and stepfather—moved here during my sophomore year of college. The summer before it, I believe. My freshman year, when 9/11 happened, we all still lived in the house I grew up in, over in a neighborhood a few miles away now, where each house had the same construction. But even that box-like house encompassed a world of wonder for me. I imagined elevators inside it, haunted caverns, a potential amusement park outside. I treated it and the neighborhood around it like a wonderland. And even there, I found a way to walk a little ways to the forest at the top of our street, going as deep as I could into it until possibly coming out on the other side, where I imagined meeting the ghosts of Indian chiefs. And in another direction, I would venture a wooded area with a stream going through it, and a little trail, that my mom and I called: “WaterTrees.” Looking back now, WaterTrees probably served as a clandestine party-ground for high-schoolers and rednecks, but it felt fantastical to me, full of mystery. I always wanted to walk a little further than I had the time before, impossibly far. Where would the trees open up to, I wondered? How would the landscape change? I never really said goodbye to the old house, at least not to the extent that my mother did; actually unpacking it into a trailer-bed and closing the door on an empty home. She described the difficulty, and I don’t know how I would have or could have handled it. It surprises me now to think that I didn’t put up any resistance at the time to just letting it go without seeing it ‘one last time,’ or saying a 'proper goodbye.’ Maybe the new pressures of music school and the separation anxiety of leaving Vermont had me properly occupied that, honestly, it didn’t really occur to me that an entire chapter—maybe a whole book—had begun to close. But I instantly fell in love with the new home, a house that my mom and stepfather built and a property that they bought, miraculously, for virtually a song. And from the first time I came here, to now, I always walk the property. The paths. And I go down to the brook and walk alongside it. But I always stop at the same spot, and turn around.

July 1, 1:09am | 5m | banishing

During runs and long drives i tend to think about programs to play. Today, driving from New York to Vermont my mind went buzzing about possible programs focusing on Robert Palmer, including what might end up on the album of his music (and of course obsessing over various disappointments over various compromises), and one that has dominated my mind for a few weeks now. I keep coming back to the same title for the program, despite myself: “unfashionable american program.” It seems the most honest and the most, I don’t know, acknowledging of the idea that I get that few people really like, or like to play in any serious setting, some of the pieces I would play. And all the time I confess to playing mostly unfashionable music. Speaking of fashion and status, i regretted instantly today posting a status on Facebook noting (but not specifying) the myriad feelings I experienced when banishing an email from New Music USA to my spam folder. Of course I told myself, “but what if someday they award me a grant, and I’ll never know?!” And then I thought: but they won’t. And really, they won’t. I like to think of myself as having several friends in several circles in the new music community, and yet I have yet to see one of them receive an award from that organization after applying. And certainly all of my proposals have bit the dust. So in a way, the organization has no relevance to me. I think that in music, we receive a certain conditioning that functions in hypotheticals and copacetics. Anyway, I felt bad because someone who works for the organization actually seemed—offended maybe? hurt? And of course I do know people who have either tangentially or directly received some kind of benefit from the organization. So I took it down. Meanwhile, my last proposal to them—after conditioning of my own—resembled mostly a surrealist play in self-sabotage. It included excerpts from texting dialogues, the word “fuck,” and a confession that I didn’t entirely know what the project would look like. Astonishingly, it joined a history of other rejected projects.  Lately, everyone I know who I’ve asked about whether they’ve received funding from them has said they didn’t even apply. In Vermont now. I think I’ve already gained four pounds. 

june 30, 12:02am | 8m | fantastique

mostly embarrassed today by our dirtbag president. any principal of any school who tweeted half of what he does would lose their job instantly. hopeless really about the future, because each indignity just ebbs out into sea of other indignities and a sad tide of these combined, hazy memories. who cares? everyone i know can agree on feeling a desensitized relationship to a general feeling of low-level agony and despair. 

sweating now. nightly bath. listening to native american chants and drumming. my poor neighbors. they see too much. a giant moth circles the room and keeps landing on me. and biting me. moths bite? 

an early lesson began a day of volleying back and forth, uptown and downtown between teaching and meetings. during one meeting at my school, with the executive director and the c.e.o. of tido, the receptionist (okay the moth just flew into and onto my face) interrupted to say that i had students waiting for me. interesting, because i don’t actually teach there on thursdays. they had the wrong day. it occurs to me that maybe i should write the executive director to tell her that they made the mistake, not me. 

obsessing over robert palmer’s second piano sonata, for the sole reason that, for complicated reasons, i cannot record it for an upcoming album of his music. of course my mind tells me now that the whole album will thus fail. in fairness, i envisioned it as the opener and most beautiful piece on the program. and now i don’t quite know where it will go. well, i have a couple ideas. heading to vermont tomorrow. oh, so anyway, i finally returned home for another meeting and thought that i would definitely not practice today, nor did i imagine i would tomorrow, a travel day. but then, i got in some time after all this evening with the pieces that require the most faith and exercise— right now that means the beach “gavotte fantastique,” a showpiece unlike anything i’d ever choose to play (but i’ll have fun with it in probably a couple days), and the crumb, which continues to inch forward. inch. i do think i could memorize it. however, i don’t know if i will. oh, but anyway we’ll end up leaving a little later tomorrow, and so i have the morning to practice. i hope i do. for clothes, i plan to throw all my laundry into a duffel bag and just do it at home. i keep thinking that others regard me as a person who lacks any class, self-control, discipline or morality, but then, i also fall under the false impression that the volume of my own thoughts means that others can hear them. 

june 29, 12:34am | 9m | brahms

every day, several times, i think of composers who lived at the same time as brahms. somewhere along the line i started using him as my measuring device for historical reference. today, teaching the third (and my favorite) satie gymnopédie, i thought of how brahms lived at the same time as its composition. i’ve thought that exact thought before. do you think he knew about satie? and what could he have thought? i tend to skew modern. like, did he know of debussy? did he know of schoenberg? stravinsky? what about any of the americans? well, i could just buy that damn jan swafford book that i’ve wanted for about a decade. on the reverse—how did composers of the world regard him? i can’t imagine going about my day knowing that brahms kicked around somewhere out there. what did that feel like? anything? 

i’ve never even really loved brahms, honestly. a couple pieces i adore, and others i like and respect, and others i completely don’t get. but he has always fascinated me. the insane technical exercises, which i incorporated into my hours-long routine at indiana. the crippling self-doubt. the secrecy and need to control the narrative, thus burning pieces and letters. the mythic childhood in a brothel. the alcoholism. the shocking abandon of his harmonic choices. the strict adherence to symmetry and theoretical sequences—retrogrades, inversions, etc.— that sometimes lead to crushing dissonance, but that work in the end. his faith. his stubborness. and of course, that beard.

i see him at a giant piano in a giant house. a giant person with giant hands. what those eyes had seen. who those hands had touched, and what they shaped. 

june 28, 12:32am | 9m | pepperoni pizza

very little to say. first order of business—i like the way the coffee smells that i bought at trader joe’s for $7. i feel like it really speaks to me, this coffee. it smells and tastes exactly like how i want coffee to smell and taste. so i do have that to say. today felt like mercury-in-retrograde, but only for bach playing. i don’t know—i felt like a ice princess splatted out on the ice. the strangest thing! instead of scales, i would do these impressive scale-like runs of clusters, each finger covering at least two notes. i couldn’t accomplish such a feat if i tried. i’d like to blame the weather, or maybe the air conditioner. started teaching a new student today, a young girl with bright red hair. it occurred to me tonight, especially as i prepare to substitute a lesson with a young beginner tomorrow, that i haven’t any method to speak of. other teachers i know have a definite starting point, it seems. a five-finger position. a rhythm— “pep-per-on-i pi-zza.”, but i really do sort of wing it every time, and differently. ate forty-five pounds of pasta for dinner, also from trader joe’s. watched a couple minutes of america’s got talent as i ate, mostly because i imagined my family watching it 300 miles north in vermont. f had business drinks. he hates that show. it totally compels me, though, and serves as a window into what people—like, actual pulled-from-the-sidewalk people—seem to what from a performance, or rather, how they wish for someone to entertain them. i’ll never quite get used to our cultural fetishization of the audition. i suppose it has existed for some time (think, flashdance or fame), but as for reality-show audition porn, it seems like an exceptionally 21st-century phenomenon. i always imagine how quickly the audience would boo me if i went out there and performed, say, anything from my repertoire. who would think that entire arenas could define ‘talent’ so capriciously. talent is relative, it turns out. context. 

june 26, 11:01pm | 6m | chickens

sunny today, but spent most of it indoors. met a friend for coffee in the morning and invited him back to the apartment so he could play on the piano a little. he improvises brilliantly in any style you ask. remember when i said that i couldn’t imagine just sitting at a piano and playing? like, out in public or in someone’s home? well, this dude does, and he does it well. in his presence, i consider my bonsai approach next to the exuberance and joy and abandon he experiences when he plays, and it seems in those moments like maybe i don’t even play the piano. i sat on the couch and snuck a photo and then a video of his playing. the rest of the day i spent alone with the piano. eyes crossing. looking at the computer or phone far too often. feeding an addiction. made two hot dogs for lunch—trader joe’s. i prefer nathans. also made dinner. lemon in my beer. feeling lonely in general. two chickens killed tonight in vermont. mom called, on the verge of tears. “heartbroken,” she said, which breaks my heart. an eagle swooped from the sky and took not one but two. no one saw it happen, but just discovered a heap of feathers. this hawk also allegedly killed another of mom’s chickens a week ago. so, from four to one. “scared to death,” mom said, describing the sole survivor, holed up in her chicken coop. these poor chickens. 

june 26, 12:28am | by the door

spent much of today moping because i wanted, or envied i guess, people marching or drinking or standing on sidewalks. maybe i just envied the idea of it. maybe i just missed the memory of it? i don’t know. but like a pretty horrible gay, i just had it on the television while practicing, and then turned even that off when i realized we’d just likely stay home. i did get through all of my music, though it did also take all day. also began the book about charles tomlinson griffes. the author writes in such a florid, high-camp romantic tone (original publication, 1943) that i almost have no idea what each sentence actually means. many of the words i’ve never seen in my life. but i’ll press on. and i continue to read carolyn brown’s book about cunningham and cage, usually in the bath, though i suppose i don’t ‘need to’ anymore. when i go home i should also grab to re-read kyle gann’s book about 4'33" since i will ostensibly record it for Tido in London, and i actually want to feel historically (re-)prepared. tonight, while taking that bath with carolyn brown i listened to george michael’s listen without prejudice vol. 1, the ultimate coming out album, and a document of early 90’s gay AIDS rage. i used to listen to it a lot. i love the cover. and then i rented but did not watch i am not your negro. okay, so with all of this i mean to qualify some sense of 'pride’-ness in a day spent mostly indoors. i even took a nap at the peak of depression. also occurred to me tonight while playing beach and macdowell and griffes that i would like to play a program of this kind of americana. no modern or experimental qualifiers. just something so stunningly unfashionable as early twentieth century american romnaticism and exoticism. you know, if you do exactly what they say—exactly exactly exactly what the composers say—it works. however, anything less, and it crumbles into parlor music. so if macdowell says to do something ppp, then one has to really fight for ppp. but anyway where could this program happen? i dipped into my “fuck you, nevermind” list of presenters who habitually ignore me and reached out to someone who for years has blown me off. what can i say—indignity draws me in like a moth to a flame. pride sex. big breakfast. pasta dinner. a quiet sunday when everyone in town seems lit by rainbows, sitting-in or speaking out. caught a glimpse on social media of the dude who unfriended me a few months ago because he realized i’d unfollowed him on instagram. prancing with a trail of fawning fags. he once told me he wanted to write a book (he had a book deal already, and did write the book—well, actually someone wrote it for him) so he could “make money while he sleeps.” at the time, i struggled to find a publisher. for my own book, and eventually self-published it. the same dude who once invited me to go to provincetown with him the following day. i packed my bag and waited by the door at 9 a.m., and like out of a movie, he never came. by 3 p.m. i found out he’d already left, with someone else. when i think of my twenties in gay hell, i think of that afternoon. and to think, sometimes i miss those days?