Now that I am back to giving individual piano lessons, I hear myself saying something to students, so much so that it has become as a mantra: "Think your way to it". This is interesting, as it is exactly the opposite of what I (also) preach constantly, in terms of genuine expression. Unless it isn't. Or to connect both sides of the equation, a thorough grasp of something is necessary before you can see beyond your thoughts in order to access it more deeply, and for it to become "second nature". So we practice, with deliberate intent and specific goals, and (most importantly) slowly. Practicing slowly is something that most every piano student hears, repeatedly, and most every piano teacher stresses. For me these days, however, "think your way to it" often replaces the admonition to slow down, both to students, and to myself. Not to slow down for the sake of being slow, but for the sake of being in control. And as much as you want to play something the way you feel it should sound (or, correctly, want it to), what you feel won't take you there. At least not until you are fully in control of both the mental and physical the processes of pulling it off. Put another way, for it to become a part of you, or for you to become one with it, you need to internalize it deeply, rather than simply being something that you are able to recall. Chick Corea would make a distinction between students memorizing something and knowing it; explaining that memorizing involves maintaining something in your head that you can later access, but "knowing" is a deeper place, with no conscious thinking required. When you truly know something, you have moved beyond thinking it. It has become as a part of you. When you know, you know. And it's not what you think.   ;)  

 

The gig life is pretty much all I've known. I was looking though some storage boxes the other day and found some Christmas money envelopes/cards from one of my paper routes when I was 13 (Apparently, according to these, I was a good paperboy). I never thought about it this way until now, but (not counting snow shoveling and lawn mowing) paper routes were my first "gig" work. Every Friday I would go door to door to collect the weekly newspaper fee from the customers, then head over to the house where I picked up the papers each day to reconcile their cut. The cash that remained in my pocket was mine. Though I'm not sure I was supposed to, I kept 2 paper routes simultaneously (a South Jersey and a Philly paper). And, conveniently, they reconciled on different days of the week, so I would usually always have cash in my pocket. And that's all I knew: money would dribble in, money would dribble out. Speaking of cash in my pocket, I believe I'd already played my first paid music gig by the time I received the money envelopes in the photo above. Overall, though, it's probably fair to say that the paper routes were my primary source of income until I received my driver's license at 17. Then it was off to the races .... metaphorically, I mean. The gigging life, precarious as it can be, has worked for me. It fits who I am. It allows me to be me. And as I grow old(er), I grow more and more grateful for that.