{"id":171,"date":"2011-02-27T20:11:27","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T01:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/?p=171"},"modified":"2011-02-27T20:11:27","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T01:11:27","slug":"piece-of-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/?p=171","title":{"rendered":"Piece of Metal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"From time to time I find myself flipping back and forth between the front-page headlines of the New York Times to the Arts section, struck by the fact that these two categories can even be in the same paper.\u00a0 I am prone to feel a pang of guilt. \u201cShouldn\u2019t I be doing something?\u00a0 I mean REALLY doing something?\u201d I\u2019m not a diplomat, I\u2019m not an ambassador, I cannot look for cures for diseases.\u00a0 It is easy to feel helpless and useless when big-world things are happening.\u00a0 And what am I doing?\u00a0 I\u2019m going to a rehearsal, or I have a concert.\u00a0 All I do is play the horn!<\/p>\n

Sometime during the first year of my master\u2019s degree at Juilliard (and my first year in New York), for whatever reason, I was feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders.\u00a0 At some point in one of my lessons with Jerome Ashby (former Associate Principal of the New York Philharmonic who has sadly departed this world all too soon), I reached a point of frustration and said something to the effect of \u201cI don\u2019t know why I\u2019m blowing into this piece of metal!\u201d\u00a0 He leaned back and paused for a while, and then in his laid-back, gentle way said something to the effect of \u201cI think you know it\u2019s more than that.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember how the conversation proceeded, but I do know that pretty soon, we went back to working on Till Eulenspiegel or Ein Heldenleben or Tchaik 5 or whatever I had on my plate for that lesson.<\/p>\n

More recently, living in Philadelphia, where the orchestra is in contract negotiations and the mood is a bit dark regarding possible outcomes, there is a slightly different feeling of helplessness.\u00a0 When our fellow musicians in Detroit are facing complete ruin, and it seems that classical music is losing its importance and relevance in society, and that no one would care if these wonderful organizations ceased to exist or became unrecognizable artistically, it is very easy to wonder \u201cwhat\u2019s the point?\u201d if you are someone who has worked very hard your entire life offer the absolute best of yourself and your talent.\u00a0 Does anyone care?<\/p>\n

I expressed this feeling to a very wise woman recently and she paused, and then proceeded to share with me a saying of Julian of Norwich, and medieval woman mystic –\u00a0“All will be well.” \u00a0– a response that is not so different from what Mr. Ashby said in the face of my frustration and sense of pointlessness.\u00a0 About a week later, I ran across her again, along with a man who had recently heard a concert I had played (and was only a small part of).\u00a0 We were all three standing together and the man proceeded to tell me how moved he was by the concert, and to please tell my husband too (who played in the same concert) how much he enjoyed it.\u00a0 My wise friend just listened and smiled, and after the man left she said, \u201cSee?\u00a0 You just have to do what you do!\u201d<\/p>\n

So, what I learn over and over again is that, actually, the Arts section is very appropriately placed in the New York Times.\u00a0 In fact, the more violent the headlines, or the more dire the economic situation here at home, or the more uncertain the future, the more important the Arts section seems in a certain way.\u00a0 It deals with the questions, \u201cWhat is important to us?\u00a0 How do we respond creatively to our world?\u00a0 How do we tap into the wisdom of previous generations?\u00a0 How do we go forward from here?\u201d\u00a0 Apart from the love and care we give to our families and friends and whoever else is given to us to love and care for, what more important thing can there be than to \u201cdo what we do\u201d?\u00a0 This means different things to different people, but for a musician it is simply picking up our instruments day after day and participating in life in our own way.\u00a0 Whether you are performing on a big stage, or a smaller stage, or teaching children, or playing in a nursing home, or participating by being an audience member, it is relevant, and important, and beautiful.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that changes won\u2019t happen in our professional lives or that we may at some point decide to participate in life a different way.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that, for now, with various kinds of turmoil and uncertainty around us, (and at the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna) I believe we can find a sense of\u00a0 \u201chelpfulness\u201d in the world instead of helplessness. \u00a0I can get out my horn this week, rehearse, play, teach, and not feel as if it isn’t enough or that it doesn’t matter. \u00a0It is enough. \u00a0It matters.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s face it, we musicians are not dealing with life and death.\u00a0 There is no one on the operating table.\u00a0 We cannot take ourselves quite so seriously.\u00a0 But we ARE dealing in life!\u00a0 And we can be generous with that and take heart and be aware that the smallest of rituals can have unknown and unanticipated effects. \u00a0I was very surprised when a neighbor (a particularly nice one, it must be said) told me \u201cyou know, I think all of our neighbors open up their windows to hear your scales!\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure I believe her, but anyway, she was very nice to say it, and for today I\u2019m choosing to believe it \u2013 until someone knocks on my door and says, \u201cwill you please keep that racket down?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the words of the Brits: \u00a0Keep calm and carry on!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From time to time I find myself flipping back and forth between the front-page headlines of the New York Times to the Arts section, struck by the fact that these two categories can even be in the same paper.\u00a0 I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}