An exercise in tenacity

I suppose there is no point in setting a goal for yourself if you don't really go for it and do everything that you can think of to get yourself there. I read the pianist Lang Lang's autobiography earlier this year, and the determination that he exhibited to get himself into the best conservatory in China, albeit forced by his obsessive and domineering father, included practicing into the wee hours of the night with no heat, living in poverty to pay for piano lessons, and being separated from his beloved mother from early childhood to live in Beijing near better teachers. I found it hard to fathom wanting anything that badly in life. Some consider me a pretty hard worker, but my work ethic is nothing compared to his story and the story of so many other determined musicians out there.

With less than two weeks left until my competition, I am struggling with staying motivated and inspired. It comes and goes, varying with factors as arbitrary as my mood, the weather, the condition of my nails, and what I ate for breakfast. For the time being, I'm making my own efforts to do prepare my best, which includes slow practice, mental practice, small sections, running the pieces in their entirety, videorecording and critiquing myself, and scheduling extra lessons with my teacher, who was kind enough to see me all the way until next week. This week, I'm giving a few informal performances to friends who are willing to sit through 12 minutes of guitar music and hopefully make me a little nervous so I know what to expect when the pressure is on.

Undoubtedly one of the harder things about this competition is that the preliminary round is in front of a jury of about 5 judges in a normal classroom where you can see their faces and expressions and hear them writing stuff while you play. This can be really nerve-racking for me. Ironically, I'd much rather play for an audience of 1000 people where you are alone on a stage, there is physical space to separate you from the audience, the world can disappear, and the crowd at least appreciates your effort even if you make mistakes. With competitions, there is very little grace in that regard and it is harder to focus on simply expressing yourself through the music because you know that their only job is to critique you and determine whether you deserve to get to the next round.

So today I did a funny exercise. I turned the iMovie camera on, and staged my entrance into the room 7 or 8 times. I imagined how I would feel right before walking into the room and tried to make myself a little nervous. This actually worked as I felt a little more tense and noticed my heart beating slightly faster. I walked to my chair, sat down, got settled, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I started the first piece and stopped after about 10 seconds. With an instrument as naked as the guitar, any tension caused by nervousness in your hands can really alter the sound of your playing. Tensed right hand fingertips will lead to a harsher, thinner sound and less accuracy in plucking the correct strings at the right time. Tension in the left hand can make you buzz, slide off a string by accident, make your stretches less flexible, or cause you to completely forget where you are going. These are things that have all happened to me before, and the goal of this exercise was to help train my body to deal with it better. Though I felt silly imagining the judges sitting in my living room and giving a fake hello and smile to them, by the last time I went through with the exercise, I felt a good rhythm and played the first 10 seconds with much more ease than I did the first time. My dog found this whole shenanigan to be very curious, lifting her head and perking up her ears whenever I would walk out of the room, and going back to her nap on the couch whenever I started playing.

I will probably never run a marathon during my lifetime, nor do I have the desire to do so, but this certainly feels like a marathon- and right now I feel like walking. Which is perfectly fine, right? Maybe for just one mile?