Adam Tendler's Blog, page 24

june 8, 2017 | 12:05am, 2m | auxiliary

one week until dance performances begin with la dance company at the joyce. i’ll play music for piano by john cage, numbers 1, 2, 3, and then maybe 4-11 but i’d love for the next set to arrive in the mail—it should have by now—because those have auxiliary sounds both in and out of the piano, and i’d like to explore that. i would have to prepare new scores for these, but i welcome that opportunity. i love these pieces and knew i would. this performance feels like a bubble bath in that i simply look forward to it with absolutely no snags or reservations. just excitement and gratitude. rarely do i really, really look forward to something. i look forward to this, though. meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, the MacDowell woodland sketches have started to come together. little nuances pop out all the time. two onesies arrived in the mail yesterday, one of which i have on now, and f has threatened to throw them away. i knew that would happen. 

june 6, 2017 | 11:59pm, 9m | contact high

tonight, after a 16 year old student performed a tarantella in my studio recital, he returned to his seat and exhaled to himself an exhilarated, proud, exhausted, relieved breath, a kind of “whoo” exhalation, like he’d just landed on the ground after a skydive. and I thought to myself, catching this moment, “yes, that’s the feeling. that’s what I’m peddling.” that rush comes afterward, but only if the performance aligns with performer’s expectations. not everyone’s performance tonight aligned, so to speak. not everyone accessed that rush. i said to francesco on our way out, “if you’re super prepared, it’ll go okay. if you’re semi prepared, it’ll go not-so-great. and if you’re not prepared, it’ll be a train wreck.” this universal truth drives my practice every day, and keeps me up at night. i wonder if i have adequately sealed the space that keeps the floodwaters of embarrassment safely on the other side of the door, while also chasing that “whoo” feeling, too. but when i host a student recital, i get to observe the crucible, watch my students at their most creative, squirming out of mishaps, learning about the consequences of poor practice, but of course, most importantly, discovering pride and that sweet, just-off-the-roller-coaster-and-i-want-to-do-it again feeling. and with each student, i feell it too, a contact high for that continues from the first student to the last. falling asleep as i type. coming down. crashing. that happens too.

june 5, 2017 | 11:44pm, 4m | vacuum

crimson and clover, over and over. i’ve always liked that coda to that song. (stares at keyboard.) speaking of which, i could have practiced much more today. even though i did laundry, taught three lessons and led a rehearsal, and did indeed practice a tiny bit, it felt squeezed in and didn’t come close to what i needed to accomplish. i also made two hot dogs and two tamales. tomorrow we have housekeepers coming—plural, but the service specified, “one will clean and the other will not”—and the whole thing has me beside myself with nerves. what will they think of this cave of memories, this living accumulation of an apartment, this rainforest cafe of decorations from parties that never come down. my happy home. this treasure home. well, i plan to close myself off in the piano room, where they won’t clean. and practice. and then head off to teach. and lead a studio recital. someone dropped out today—actually her mother dropped her out. i’d had the young girl on the list and excited to play, and her mother introduced a million excuses as to why the girl couldn’t participate (including the impossible window of an hour-and-a-half between school ending and getting to the venue). i spoke little and shut the door hard behind me, regretting only that i said i’d see them in two weeks when i really meant i’d probably see them never. i break up with students who flake on recitals. last year i fired three on the same day for the same reason, and my mondays remained free this entire year. every day i think of this legend people tell about how glenn gould used to have a cleaning woman vacuum near him as he practiced. i get it. but i always thought, ‘ wait he had a cleaning woman?’ 

june 5, 2017 | 12:10am, 7m | wonder

i find that in movie theatres i tend to think about mortality. maybe this happens because so many people die on-screen all the time, and i really will think, like, “what about that guy?” and “what about that guy?” and then i think, “well, what about me? what will mine look like?” people in movies die often fantastical deaths, even the bit characters, and so i go down this kind of rabbit hole about all the ways in which i might, you know, go fantastically. might i step in front of a bus or walk off a cliff by mistake? when people drown in movies i almost have to leave. i go there; i inhabit that moment and think about how people really do go in that torturous way. also, in movies the earth often appears as a post-apocalyptic shell of itself, and so i then also think of the world’s mortality. where does it go? just how many wonder woman and batman sequels might we actually expect before—and i really think this—the world ends? or my attic in vermont. where does that stuff go? like, in forever time? i think often of these long lines and their expiration points. this happens even in conversations, when i think “how will this conversation end?” the second it has begun. window open in my kitchen and a cool breeze comes in across the potted mint and whatever else f has attempted to grow in our windowsill garden. and the wind wafts through because it has just started to rain. the last time it rained at night in our neighborhood, i happened to walk through it. the street reflected the lights and shadows of trees, with the west sixties and central park beyond it looking particularly sensual. i felt so lucky to live here. i often feel lucky to live here. today, just before entering the park, i took a picture of the wall of greenery, a kind of floating canopy at the park’s gates at 72nd. lush. a man posed for me though he didn’t realize it; hands in pockets, he looked toward the sky. i practiced, after a bath, for probably four hours, and didn’t get to everything. and then we saw wonder woman and i cheered at the end. and during. and the audience stayed planted in their seats watching the credits roll, which very rarely happens in new york, let alone after a super hero movie. 

june 4, 2017 | 1:08am, 4m | vanilla

ran and wondered if one of the… no, i choose to refrain from making my nighttime check-ins exclusively about physical ailments. i described these to a 70+ year old student the other day—my general health issues—as geriatric. he mentioned in the lesson that he had begun my book and made his way through more than half. two things happened for me: one, i thought he’d read it, so i wondered about the first time he’d claimed to have read it. and two, i shuddered to think of what he’d find in those pages. when i came out of the closet over ten years ago, i told everybody. anybody. when i moved to new york and started this blog, i built it on the foundation of oversharing. lately, however, i feel more reserved and walled in. each morning i wake up and regret that i’ve even chosen to write mundanities here each night before bed. and surely something else must have happened today. nine hours of teaching. a wilted spinach salad. a run in the park, a long bath while reading about cage’s percussion music. lying on the bed afterward. looking too much at my phone. macdowell as my husband takes a bath. chicken soup and melted mexican cheese on corn tortillas for dinner. we went to shake shack at 10:59 for ice cream and, having already paid and with the establishment closed with ours the final order, we waiting for our cups of custard to appear when a worker draped herself across the counter and said to us in a tone of exhaustion and generosity, “do you want a shackburger?” 

june 3, 2017 | 1am, 9m | semen culture

i should follow up i guess on how it went today at the clinic. the form asked in blunt terms when my last…i’m-too-bashful-to-write-it… (i used to write what i felt)…well, it asked the date of my ‘last,’ and i couldn’t remember. guessing, i wrote may 12th, but really who knows. never in my life have i hoped for an infection. at least it would solve a mystery. the clinic, meanwhile, only had a stack of playboys. heteronormative and sad. writing on my phone now, and of course my random number generator gave me 9 minutes. in bed as i write. we went to the movies. going to bed too late. today i thought of the term ‘normalized despair.’ this administration has given a new reason for widespread misery each day. i miss my friends. i’d like to know simple things like when they’ll play their next show, what review they earned, what they had for breakfast. but these trivial, wonderful things, once the mundane fuel of social media, seem like sins to report in the face of a crumbling nation and world at risk. so we commiserate. lives and rights stripped daily and a president who, like a screaming child in a restaurant, requires us all give him all our attention all the time. a student today played beautifully though. she came to me earlier in the year paralyzed with disinterest. i introduced some slightly new age music into the mix and her commitment blossomed. her playing today left me speechless. i almost wept. like me, she deflected and argued with the compliments, but i persisted in telling her how incredibly she’d played. finally she surrendered and said with a smile, “really? good. because i worked really hard.” later, her parents came in and, with her sister, they all watched something on the mother’s cell phone as i continued to teach. her playing suffered. eventually i said timidly that the noise distracted from our work, and then felt guilty for a good hour afterward.

june 2, 2017 | 12:06am 1m | american apparel

today the sun shone and a grown woman touched me intimately. i played amy beach and cpe bach and both surprised me. mostly the bach, though. every measure seemed like a gift to open. i didn’t know what to expect. then i taught and grumbled from embarrassment and shame. i used to wear a shirt with an american flag on it. for weeks i’ve seen it in my drawer and passed it over. i can’t fathom wearing it. 

june 1, 2017 |12:30am 6m | nuts

returned from california last night. san francisco. sea ranch. delayed only three hours as opposed to the five on the way out. i spoke with aaron today who asked what had happened to the blog; why no writing. i told him an array of excuses—a possible book coming up, wanting to collect materials, wanting to write exclusively for it. stuff like that. but then confessed that i tend only to write here when inspired and, well…

so i thought maybe i’d start again. chance-determining the minutes between 1 and 10 within which i can write. try to eliminate or avoid my ‘to be’ verbs. maybe do it just before bed? 

tomorrow an early ultrasound on my abdomen. second or third or fourth or fifth month of my nuts hurting, with no clear answer as to why. the doctor has recommended, of all things, hot baths. astonishingly, it hasn’t done the trick. so tomorrow at 8:30, an ultrasound. 

i like california. adam referred to me out there as a field mouse. ‘you do city-mouse,’ he said, ‘but really you’re a field mouse.’ i have to agree. in fact, my nuts didn’t hurt at sea ranch, by the ocean. the moon. the constellations. the whiskey and wine and beer and sweet incense of marijuana, a strong sensory anchor that sinks me me back to my childhood. vermont. in san francisco they hurt, my nuts. in new york city they do, too. now. but not there. not at sea ranch.

you have to start somewhere. #joycetheater #ladanceproject #june

you have to start somewhere. #joycetheater #ladanceproject #june

audience participation for earle brown’s “forgotten piece”

Select one of the four audio tracks below. Press play within 3 seconds of the start of the piece, which I will conduct from the piano with four beats. [Some phones may begin the track automatically.] Turn volume up to its max. When the track/piece ends, please mute your phone and switch to ‘airplane mode.’

PIANO 1

PIANO 2

PIANO 3

PIANO 4