It's me, it's me, it's absolutely ME

Worth It

I am focused. I'm concentrating, really trying to put in to practice everything that people tell me I need to do to play the Franck well. I'm thinking ahead, morphing my fingers in to the exact right curvature for a certain note or phrase. I'm trying to remember the whole point of going in to music and bring my musicality to the piece. I'm doing my darndest to do everything Ribeiro asks me to do while maintaining the things I worked so hard on. And I'm really trying not to focus on the fact that I had nearly seven hours of consistent heartburn today from what I can only assume was the grapefruit I ate on an empty stomach last night. (What??)

I finish the first movement, and Ribeiro's response is, "Well, your intonation is much better today. Have you been working on it?"

I'm shocked that he would even ask, and instead of screaming "THAT'S ALL I FUCKING WORK ON!!" I think I stagger out something like, "Uh... YEAH..."

It turns out that this is a great lesson, and the best part is that I now have guarantees that moments like this will bode very well for me in the future. The moments where I feel like I grow an inch (starting from the staggering mental height of about two inches) are the turning points. They're the points I live for. Where I can get my teacher to turn away from his computer screen or whatever paper's he's holding to absorb himself in the music. Whenever I can pry a tiny shred of approval from his demanding persona... that's my reward.

I like these days... when I remember that getting a masters degree is really worth it.

Previous | Next