October 3, 2010

Admittedly, it took a long time for me to get back to my blog – the last time I wrote here was a mere four months ago. I guess there are few reasons for this delay. First, it took me a while to become clearer about what belongs in this public blog, which is more associated with my musical career, versus in a diary or an autobiographic book which are more connected to one’s personal life. The initial ideal of unifying all writings into one truthful literal form seems now immature, unpractical and undesirable. It could be an immense experience to strive for complete truthfulness and honesty in a public blog, but I realize that this is not my intention or desire.

Being honest means that every time the thought crosses your mind to not say or not write something, you make a conscious effort and attempt to do so, to express your ever unfolding truth, unless you find a concrete reason to hold back and not share your evolving feelings or thoughts. I love these moments, and they occur every day, when I’m talking with someone, and suddenly I want to say something but immediately hesitate. Then I think to myself “sure, I can say this, why not” and I do so. However, in different social environments we choose to be more open and in others more closed. With certain people we are naturally more revealing and with others less. With a true friend, it is wonderful how we can opt for honesty whenever we think “should I say this or not”? That honesty leads to human growth. It strengthens the friendship and helps us to better know ourselves.

Another reason for my illustrious procrastination with regards to writing this blog is my clinging to the present. I always feel that writing something terns it from being the present into being the past. In a brutal way of saying it, writing an experience kills it. It becomes something else – a memory. Everything I write is always in one form or another a diary, since I think that life is interesting enough as it is and I don’t have the need to invent fictional events or characters, but wish to focus on understanding what is already there and really happening. But once I describe my experience in writing, the act itself of writing feels like a confession that now that experience had become a memory; and a memory is always of something that had passed. Instead of experiencing the moment itself, by writing it I make it into a thing of the past. And while the present can be so joyful - its pure bliss tainted only by the fear of its nearing end, when it also will become a past - the memory of the past is always intertwined with some sadness because of the simple fact that it had passed.

We are historians of our lives, theoreticians of our compositions. I keep telling my students that the way we work on music is like looking at a single frame of a film before running the film again. The ability to isolate a single musical element and master it independently before putting it back into the context of the whole piece leads to virtuosity. More so, the ability to observe a single moment in life in depth leads to greater personal happiness and peacefulness. In the future, the present will become the past. Then it will be time to remember it and learn.