Category Archives: Hope

Community

Today was a hard day for me.  On the one hand, I met up with an old friend for the first time in over a decade, and met her husband and 6 month old.  I’ll talk about that more in the future.

On the other hand, I spent a lot of time worried about my friend who was in the car accident.  It was a hard day for everybody who knew her.

My college was a small one, so we all knew each other.  She wasn’t one of my best friends, but I knew and liked her, and I ran into her again in March of this year and we had dinner together and talked quite a bit, about her current life, her fiancé, her wedding, and all other kinds of things.  I’m just reeling from the shock, though I know others are more personally affected and have more right to be upset.  My heart goes out to them as well.

If you want to see what happened, here’s a link to a news report about the accident.  I had a really hard time dealing with driving on the interstate today.  I kept thinking about that picture and fighting with tears.

I am completely blown away by people’s responses on facebook today.  However, sitting here obsessively stalking facebook for news is probably not helpful.

I am struck by the fact that I do indeed belong to a community of wonderful and thoughtful people who live all over the world.  I hate the circumstances that bring this realization.  Today, I am so glad I went to a small conservatory.  Today, I am happy to be still paying my student loans.  I am so proud of my friends.

I think we are all shocked.  This sort of thing could happen to anyone at any time.  We are all lucky every day when nothing horrible happens.  But we humans are so resilient that we continue to be shocked when awful things happen.

I just hope that the human body can be as resilient.

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Please pray for Alicia Doudna and Andrew Kratzat and their friends and family. 

Happy Memorial Day

It’s going to be a hot day today…

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I daresay summer is officially here.

We are heading to a friend’s bbq this afternoon.  I’ve made a pie and a pasta salad.  We musicians always try to outdo each other with the food.

Chris wants a dog.  I have a bad feeling that at some point in my life I will be a dog owner.  I never anticipated that.  Maybe I’ll counter that if he gets a dog I get a daughter?  (cue awkward pause).

(pause continues)

 

 

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I’d better go check on the pasta salad, see how that’s coming along.

Tornadoes

Today we are under another tornado watch.  These storms are just ridiculous.  I don’t know if it’s global warming, or simply the Midwest being a crazy place to live, but the past few months have been just awful.  First it was the New Year’s Eve tornado in Sunset Hills, then the Good Friday tornadoes, the tornadoes in Alabama, then the destruction of Joplin, Missouri.  And there are more today. 

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Here’s an article on what you can do for the people of Joplin.

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You can text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross Disaster Relief.  Or you can go directly to the website hereIf you can afford to donate and haven’t, please do.  I see lots of folks on facebook who say they are praying and that sort of thing.  Give money.  Or go volunteer, if you have the skills.  Do something tangible.  Don’t just update your facebook status.

Here’s an article summarizing the awfulness.

Okay, back to me 😉

I need to go to the Ballet School this afternoon for teaching.  I plan to leave early to get there (hopefully) before the storm hits.  It’s been a great day so far.  This morning we met with a possible officiant for our wedding (we are looking at one other person) and the meeting was really enjoyable.  After that I ran in the park.  I have made Wednesdays my official speed day so today I alternated sprinting with walking until I made it all the way around the park.  It was a very impromptu workout but I think, very effective (at least, I was sweating all over, hyperventilating, and felt somewhat nauseous.  If that’s not a good workout, I don’t know what is.) 

Tonight I look forward to relaxing at home and perhaps catching up on a couple of television programs (the Borgias and maybe the Office.)  Long term I am looking forward to my sister Leslie coming to visit at the end of August, and hopefully my other sister Carrie as well!!

Edited to add:

So I should have called ahead before heading to the ballet school, but I didn’t fathom they would close…right when I got off the exit.  So then it was a race back home whilst the sirens were going off.  Lots of worry and fingernail biting ensued, but I made it home without incident or death.  Then I holed up inside watching the weather, and heard some CRAZY hail outside.

I haven’t gone outside to inspect my car yet…my friend Jen says hers has some hail damage, and I’m just avoiding it.  From across the street it looks ok…

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These are what we found in the immediate vicinity.  Nothing like this photo I stole from Jen:

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from www.stltoday.com

Grand Adventure

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” –J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

And so my grand adventure of life continues.  The events of the weekend (here and here) are in the past. And (not to be so terribly clichéd but clichés ARE there for a reason) all we can do is look forward to the next challenge, to the next adventure.

A friend said yesterday, well, yes, of course you can’t plan everything, but why not assume you WILL be here in St Louis and make your wedding plans accordingly.  And then, if something changes, well, then you’ll just come back to get married.  Wise word, indeed!  (Using indeed because I am feeling wizard-y and Gandalf-y).

Right now the idea of wedding planning makes me exhausted, and yes, I am quite angry at this city of St Louis and all that goes into it, but there’s no reason not to start planning {again}.  Maybe not this week as there are so many things I haven’t done in the past week or two that I must do, but shortly after that.

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” –Alexander Graham Bell

There will always be doors.  We have worked too hard and have too much going for us to have the doors shut.  But we must be careful of glass doors.  Birds often fly into those.

Friends are relatives you make for yourself.  ~Eustache Deschamps

Many people live near their parents and family.  I do not.  Those of us who live away from our families bond together.  We celebrate holidays together.  And we become each other’s families.  It doesn’t mean we love our blood relatives less, because love is not something finite.  My parents moved away from their homes to start their own lives and I always knew I would do the same.

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Springtime

This weekend the SLSO is playing Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 2.  I’ll be attending.  I wish I were playing.

I don’t remember the first time I heard Mahler 2, but I do remember the first time I played it.  It was at Brevard Music Center, summer of ‘96.  We played the symphony for the final summer concert.  I tend to get emotional when playing.  I believe I cried throughout much of the last movement.  I was hooked.

Let me clarify.  I, like most musicians, am an emotion junkie.  I love music for that reason.  The ups, the downs, these are all great.  I love a great big musical climax (no giggles).  This is why I love Mahler.  Mahler is filled with emotions.  Most of those emotions are dark…but after the sadness, why!, the brightness, the happiness, is tenfold.  Without the downs, we can’t appreciate the ups.  This is true for life, this is true for music.

I have learned over the years that I experience emotions more strongly than some people.  I have learned to block them to an extent, because otherwise I just might turn into a blubbering mass.  But I still love reading books that make me cry, watching movies that make me cry, and listening to music that makes me cry. 

The next time (to my recollection) that Mahler 2 made an appearance in my life was spring of my junior year of college.  My school orchestra was performing the piece in Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra.  Not long before this, the Cleveland Orchestra performed Mahler 2.  Or did they play it at Blossom?  You know, my recollections are blurry.  I remember it was spring, because spring in Cleveland is a magical time after six to seven months of snow—the blooming, the warmth, the storms, the time spent outside.  I lived in a 4th floor walk-up with a fantastic balcony. 

I wasn’t originally placed in the Mahler orchestra though.  I was placed as concertmaster of the concurrent opera orchestra, for Dido and Aeneas.  This was supposed to be an honor, said our orchestral director.  Well, thank you, but I really wanted to play Mahler 2.  I made my case.  I stood my ground.  I stood tall, as I used to do so easily in those days…and he relented.  Yes.  I would be allowed to play in both.  Last chair second violin of course, but also concertmaster of the opera.  Luckily it was a short opera (1 hour).

My friend was principal oboe, if I recall.  And again, who knows, my recollections could be wrong, but this is my story.  This is my blog! I attended the Severance Hall performance with the Cleveland Orchestra.  The conductor forgot the 4th movement.  He conducted a giant downbeat…for the giant last movement, and the orchestra started..the soft opening of the 4th movement.  He shushed them and brought them to a halt.  IN the concert.  He started again.  The orchestra sounded the same both times. 

I was sitting with my roommate and good friend.  This was before we had a bit of a falling out, as was prone to happen to me in those days.  I suppose my fault, in retrospect, though at the time I didn’t think so.  It was probably always my fault.  I was hard on roommates in many ways.

I had an ongoing joke with the concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra at that time (who would ultimately be my teacher).  He had seen me leave concerts at intermission many times.  I would usher, see the first half, but often felt I had too much work to do to stay for the whole thing.  In Mahler 2, there is a long pause after the first movement.  He looked at me in the fourth or fifth row, and surreptitiously motioned with his bow that I should leave.  I was flabbergasted that he even noticed I was there! 

But back to my concert.  I don’t remember much.  I just remember we had a fantastic time playing Mahler 2 in Severance Hall.  It was my first performance there.  I so wanted to be a member of the Cleveland Orchestra and play there every week.  Spring in Cleveland made everyone feel alive!  I was so confident, so full of hope, so self-assured that everything would go my way and that I could do as I pleased.  So young.

I think the next time I played Mahler 2 was with the Youngstown Symphony.  That was an awful gig that I played for a couple of years.  The conductor took an intermission after the first movement rather than the five minute break Mahler asked for.  The concerts always lasted until 10:00 there.  This was no exception.

Next was with the Canton Symphony, and then with the Akron Symphony.  I have played Mahler 2 so many times!  But still, that performance in Severance Hall was most magical.  And my first one as well, at Brevard.  One constant is that there is a place in the last movement that I always cry. 

Will I cry listening to it this weekend as well?  I have been pushing the envelope recently emotion-wise, as this is an incredibly stressful time in my life (for Chris and I), and I’ve been blasting the soundtrack to Return of the King in my car when I drive…just to feel the ups and downs, and to avoid the news. 

I’m going to say yes, yes, I will cry.  I hope no one near me ruins the moment for me by slowing opening a candy or choking on their own spittle.  I want to feel the darkness of the symphony, and I want to feel the light.  I will feel angry that I am an observer rather than a participant as well, and I will embrace that. 

It’s springtime here in St. Louis after a long winter, and spring is a magical time.

Deep thoughts

I ran over 93 miles this month, can you believe it?  (Probably).  Which met my goal, so that’s awesome.  Today was more of a run/walk/sprint type of thing as running for too long was hurting the back of my ankles.  Oh, note to readers:  if you own running tights with a zipper on the back of the leg, it’s possible after running in them for a long time that zipper will have left a painful mark/scab on the back of your ankle.  And then if you forget and wear them again a few days later, it will continue to hurt.

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Now I’m sitting around drinking some coffee before I get a haircut and then teach.  With the coffee comes some speculation…

Every time I meet with Mike (my trainer) he asks me what my plans for weekend are.  Even if it’s Tuesday and the weekend is seemingly a bit far away.  I know it’s because he is simply making conversation, but sometimes I feel like I need to have an interesting answer or else he’ll be disappointed in me.  (Yes, I shouldn’t care.  And it’s not as if he has that many interesting weekend plans either.)  However, this weekend I do have exciting plans.  Chris and the rest of the symphony started rehearsing for the upcoming Lord of the Rings (Fellowship of the Ring) movie performance, which I am going to see this weekend.  (If you are a regular reader, you already know this.) 

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Before the movie there is going to be a display of some “artifacts” from the movie in the lobby.  It should be quite the evening! 

I think this is part of the future of orchestras.  As a classical musician I am always concerned with showing other people how great the music I love is.  One of the biggest venues people have to hear orchestral music is through movie soundtracks, and (in my opinion) the best movies have great, orchestral soundtracks.  Some movies use classical music which has already been written(think of Also Sprach Zarathustra in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Barber’s Adagio in just about everything) and other movies (more likely) require new music.  Anybody who wants to poo-poo on this style of music needs to remember that even well known classical composers such as Shostakovich and Phillip Glass wrote for the movies.  And I would think that Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven would have been movie composers as well, if they were asked and if it put food on the table.  Besides which, just like music can be for entertainment, so are the movies, and sometimes movies are even considered art as well.

My point (I guess) is that firstly, movie music can be played in a concert hall, and secondly, that the “common man” can appreciate classical music if he appreciates the movies.  I read today (sadly) that the Syracuse Symphony’s season has been canceled.  My heart goes out to the members of that orchestra. 

My heart goes out further to the negative people who wrote in the comments who, like far too many people in the world today, can’t see a future full of hope and brightness, full of music and laughter, and perhaps, full of love and peace.  Instead they see the world as a place where only a few can, or SHOULD succeed and the rest are left to wither and…what breaks my heart…how can anybody be okay with this?  I saw a billboard last year that said “had enough of hope and change?”  I believe it was encouraging people to vote against the democrats…and I thought…wow.  How can anybody ever have enough of hope?  Hope is part of what makes us different from the animals.  Hope is what keeps us going.  Hope is why we pass on knowledge to the children.  Hope is why we strive to make the world a better place each day.

ANYWAY.  I know I went off on a little bit of a tangent there, but I wanted to get that off my chest.   I have been increasingly frustrated with the news of the world lately, but HOPE keeps me moving forward and continuing to do what I can in my life.  And that means teaching violin, running, attending concerts, playing weddings, enjoying time with friends…and that is what I will continue to do.

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I wanted to end on a lighter note Winking smile  I love despair.com.