june 9, 2017 | 12:12am, 9m | shelf life
a day defined by a moment when i let go of another student. very young. i introduced the idea during a text exchange, which i regret, mostly because the parent called me out on it later when we talked on the phone. i’d suggested the idea, however, for about a year (in person). but today, for a million reasons, the idea stuck. i have, in truth, at least four students i’d like to release. part of me feels too old to run around town in the subway, showing up on doorsteps. i also find that the students whom i teach in the home simply progress much more slowly than those who i teach in school settings. my turnover happens in home lessons. i should make a log sometimes of all the students i’ve taught and then not-taught. it feels like such an event when someone disappears from the studio, and yet if i really put my mind to it, i’ve lost handfuls of students over the course of several years here. home students might have a shelf life. well, the next installment of the cage pieces (Music for Piano 21-36, 37-52) arrived. they look a million times more difficult than 4-19, and transcribing them feels majorly taxing too. after tonight’s practice (of all my current deadline-rep), followed by a transcription of one of the new cage arrivals, my brain felt like mush. it took a good fifteen minutes for me to figure out 11 minus 3 plus 6. even right now i won’t attempt to re-find the answer. my approach with this onesie will rely on immersion. perhaps if f has to see it every day for a month, he’ll cease to threaten to destroy it. my mind devoured by politics and the seething, unabashed corruption in washington. somewhere along the line, people learned that they can act corruptly and even say they acted corruptly, and nothing will happen. sort of like what would happen if we all suddenly agreed that money, like actual cash, doesn’t actually equal anything . even if i know i’ve done the right thing, and even if i think i did it properly, someone need only just tell me i hurt their feelings and everything else drops away.
