june 20 11:58pm | 5 m | extra head

today my practice really kicked the shit out of me, what can i say. not enough sleep? well, maybe so, but also not a great excuse. sold out tonight at the joyce. the world of dance seems foreign to my classical music sensibilities—that a theatre could sell out for pretty much 10 days in a row. and even tonight, a tuesday! i remain humbled by this collaboration, in that i feel, when performing cage’s music alongside cunningham’s choreography, close to a world of creativity for which i can only hope to do a fraction of justice. and at the same time, it just feels good, presenting this music. thought its difficulties abound, the freedoms it also allows feels altogether luxurious and freeing, particularly after a day where having to put notes and rhythms in the exact right spot in the exact right time presented such psychological agony. at one point i took a little walk in the sun. but really, during one of many breaks, i thought about the principle of most concert music—the idea that a composer commits something to paper, and then a performer recreates it later; well, it just sort of strikes me as absurd, from time to time. like, why? why recreate this blueprint for someone else to play, and then why should someone else? the piano itself often strikes me as absurd. this unruly, strange, utterly unnatural object. we treat it like some kind of organic, holy thing. we poetically speak of tone and touch. but really, we have this massive machine on our hands, an accumulation of centuries of technology, and that i should drive that car sometimes feels a bit unbelievable. i remember once playing bach with friends and, after my piece, asking my fellow pianists if they, too, often feel a sense of ‘disbelief’ when playing bach’s music. they looked at me as if i’d grown an extra head.