As I keep up my maddening work pace this week, I thought I’d share some interesting articles and posts that I’ve enjoyed over the past few days:

- Via Chris Foley’s Collaborative Piano Blog: Chris shares a hilarious video of the singer/comedienne Anna Russell’s take on how to be an opera singer

- As an educator and as a strong believer and advocate for early childhood education, I have always maintained a strong interest in the field of cognitive psychology. This article on Elizabeth Spelke’s fascinating research at Harvard was interesting to me for several reasons. Although babies can develop visual differentiations between races and skin colors by the age of three months, language (that is, sound) and what we hear plays a greater factor in a child’s long-term development.

- Wil Wheaton’s blog is always a very funny, open, and refreshingly honest account of his approach to creativity and life. He recently wrote a post that discusses his thoughts about his creative career and shares some resources for aspiring writers.

- As those of you who follow this blog know, I took some time off this past weekend to do some internal spring cleaning. Going offline and taking some time for myself was wonderful and something that I very much needed to do. Tying in with my interest in education, both Chris Brogan and Chris Pirillo recently dealt with the issue of information overload, and how best to manage and handle our time in our current wired society. What I enjoyed the most about both posts was the idea that in the end (as I realized for myself last week) the solution lies not necessarily with better machines or filtering software, but with our own human selves, and our ability to decide and choose how we each define and take responsibility for our lives.

- Chris Brogan on saying no
- Chris Pirillo: How do you deal with information overload?

After a month of indecision, Spring seems to have finally decided to officially arrive here this week. It is as though something has visibly shifted in the city’s atmosphere, and the natural festiveness of the culture has once again permeated the air.

Meanwhile, this is what I spent this past week doing:



Between the piles of scores that I have to go through, work on, and learn for upcoming concerts, and various administrative and computer related tasks I have to do for different events this summer, I haven’t had any time to enjoy the marvelous seasonal change that is always my favorite time of year. I would much rather be like this little one, and simply rejoice in the sun and warmth outside:



This weekend I plan on doing some spring cleaning, not necessarily of the house (which, actually, does need to get done…), but of myself. I’m taking some time to do the simple things that bring me such pleasure - going to the museum to soak in beautiful art, taking a leisurely walk, reading a book at a cafe, watching a movie, and cooking and trying out new recipes. As someone who tends to be on the workaholic side, I’ve been trying to learn how to take the time that I need for myself. Nourishment of the soul is important in order to sustain continual emotional and mental concentration, and I hope the little quiet time this weekend will help to enrich and renew my inner self.


“The true poem is not that which the public reads. There is always a poem not printed on paper… in the poet’s life. It is what he has become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince’s gallery.” - Henry David Thoreau

The above is one of my favorite quotes. I first came across it as a teenager at a time when I was immersed with thoughts about my future and what it meant to pursue a life in music. I recently had some interesting conversations with some friends about the nature of creativity and the definition of an artistic life, and as I thought about how to discuss this idea on this blog, this quote came floating to me from the memories in the back of my mind.

I do not come from a family of professional musicians. They are all music lovers and my mother is an amateur pianist, but my family members are all educators, scholars, researchers, and activists. One of my uncles, a mathematician, was one of my closest relatives during my childhood. My brother and I wrote handwritten letters to him every week, and would receive one back from him as well. These letters are some of my most prized possessions, and the joy I felt in reading them is one of the strongest memories I have from my childhood. Although I was only seven years old, his letters to me were filled with his thoughts on life, his work, his research, and his philosophical musings about the nature of the universe and its connection to everything around us including the arts, sciences, and humanities.

When I was about ten, he finally completed one of his great life opuses by solving a celebrated mathematical problem. Taking a break from his work, he came to visit and shared with us how he came to the solution. He was kind enough to show me his published theory (which, of course, I couldn’t even remotely fathom) but he took the time to explain to me as though I could understand. He had been working on the solution to this problem for 15 years. This fact alone boggled my 10 year old mind - why that was even longer than my age! I asked him how he could think and work on one problem, one idea, for so long. He then told me about a trip he had taken to France in which he visited the beautiful gardens and home of Monet in Giverny. Inspired by the natural setting and beauty, he decided to walk back to the city he was staying in rather than take the train back as he had planned to. He ended up walking for over five hours to get back to his hotel. I was astonished. “Why didn’t you just take the train back?” I asked. He calmly replied, “Because I wanted to think.” What I took from his anecdote was that time - whether it be 5 hours or 15 years or even an entire lifetime - becomes irrelevant when one endeavors to reach for an original insight.

Since then, my uncle has continued his research into another theory, another chapter and challenge in his life’s work. My formative years were colored by conversations and the sharing of ideas with people who I believe, like my uncle, lead an artistic life in their respective professions. There may be many layers of interpretation to Thoreau’s quotation, but I have always interpreted it to mean that an artist’s best work and the true meaning of his life is always yet to be discovered; that is, the essence and definition of what it means to be an artist lies within the very act of questioning, searching, and seeking. There is always a possibility that we may never discover what we hope to find. We may reach the end knowing that what we have learned along the way is not even remotely close to satisfying, and we may spend a lifetime pursuing an idea or belief that ultimately has no resolution - but this in no way means that the search itself was futile. An artistic life celebrates and values the courage needed to ask the question that allows us to continue searching and growing - not for “any prince’s gallery”, but because the question itself reveals the infinite dimensions of our relationship to the world around us.

I recently came across two classical concert musicians who are using their education and skill to express through comedy, much like Victor Borge did in the past.

For more videos of their humor, you can visit their website which has more videos as well as information about their background, their show, and upcoming performances which include a tour with violinist Gidon Kremer in the fall.

This particular video seemed to be an appropriate way to start off the week - enjoy!



I Will Survive

April is National Poetry Month, and as I have mentioned before, I was always horrible at writing poetry. This has always led me to have a profound respect and admiration for those who are able to create works in this most enigmatic and elusive art form.

There are many poets I enjoy, and numerous poems I have held dear to my heart and committed to memory. In honor of this month’s celebration of the world’s poetry past, present, and future, I have chosen to reprint two of my current favorite poems from two very different artists - the hauntingly beautiful and melancholic Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, and the disarmingly bracing and urbane American poet, Frank O’Hara.

Solemn over Fertile Country

Solemn over fertile country passes
The white cloud, ineffectual, fugitive,
Which from among the fields for one black instant
Raises a lukewarm breath.

Flying high in my soul the slow idea
Blackens my mind, but already I am turning
- Like the field’s self to itself - to the daylight
Of imperfect life.

- Fernando Pessoa

—–

Why I Am Not A Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

- Frank O’Hara

As you may have ascertained by now, I am a person that tends to take life, work, my personal life and relationships quite seriously, and lean towards an intensively reflective type of existence. But I am also a person that has a hopeless, lifelong addiction to laughing. I love the sound of laughter more than anything else in this world. Unfortunately, I was not gifted with the fine talent of humor, and am incapable of even telling or remembering a joke. Because I know this, I have always tried to surround myself with people who do have this marvelous ability and talent, who have the gift of allowing me to be able to laugh about the absurdities of life and also, perhaps more importantly, to laugh at myself.

This weekend, I immersed myself in conversations with hysterically funny people, reading hilarious blogs and tweets, and spent some time watching movies and shows that make me laugh out loud. I am fortunate to be surrounded in my everyday life by friends and family who possess either witty sarcasm, or physical skills that allow them to produce killer impressions, or interesting quirks that result in a wonderfully charming eccentricity. As I slowly venture into the online social realm, I have also encountered numerous warm and clever souls who, whether they realize it or not, enrich my life daily with their perceptive commentary and droll observations.

Laughing non-stop over the past few days has rejuvenated and re-energized me like nothing else can. It has filled me with immeasurable joy and gratitude. I am very lucky to be surrounded by people both in the real world and online who give me the gift of laughter, because they give me something that I would not have without them - and for that, I thank them.