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.