On a particularly hot day in Los Angeles, the air is stuffy in our small apartment, the dog restless from being cooped up with me all day as I sit on my red stool practicing the day away. I keep the windows closed to keep her from barking and the neighbors from hearing the tedium of my daily routine. Every so often I open them while I rehearse a score mentally or file my nails, enjoying the breeze and the sounds of the neighborhood. And sometimes when I just don't care, I open them and let my practicing flow out the window to whoever passes by and let the dog bark if she feels like it.
At around 2 o'clock every day, it gets too hot to stay at my seat near the window even with the fan on, so in several trips I move all my things into our tiny bedroom, shut all the doors, and turn on the AC unit. A new wave of concentration develops, only to turn into a wave of lethargy, the temptation of lying down too great to bear. I grab my score and study it lying on my back on the bed, inevitably falling asleep. Awaking with a start after about twenty minutes, I return to my seat and get back to work. I've practiced nearly five hours total and my fingers are fatigued and sore, the callouses peeling off on my left hand and the nails on my right hand starting to chip.
At 6:30pm, I've not accomplished anything close to what I had hoped for at the beginning of the day. I'm starting to doubt myself and wonder if I'm in over my head. I take a break and shift my energy into making dinner, taking care to make it taste exactly so, as if preparing something satisfying for my stomach will somehow make up for what I have not been able to create for my ears to hear.
After a long dinner break, I put in a recording of Segovia and lie down on the floor with the windows open once again, enjoying the cool breeze of the summer evening. A sound that I haven't heard for awhile overwhelms my ears: the round, sweet sound of the guitar as I once fell in love with it. I've been so wrapped up in my details that my insides nearly hurt from craving this sound for such a long time.
Lying there on the floor, with the breeze flowing in from outside and the soft sound of Segovia's guitar washing over me, I remember again why I started all this in the first place. I remind myself not to stop loving this process, despite the occasional day in which the labor of love is merely just labor.
1 comment:
Connie!...thank you for sharing. So beautifully written - it is an encouragement in some strange way to read about your thoughts - as mundane as it may seem, on some level there is something epic going on at the same time - and something magnificent and beautiful - a picture of the fight of the spirit over one's flesh.
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