Cleaned house last week and excavated this. My piano teacher in high school had me keep practice journals in blue spiral-bound notebooks; this one only had two entries in it.
I’ve carved out a music retreat of sorts for the next two weeks, and the resonance of thoughts rendered in sixteen-year-old handwriting could be either depressing or reassuring. I’m going with reassuring.
7 Feb 95
I’ve reached a point in time where I’m tired for no apparent reason. It’s not so much fatigue as lack of enthusiasm, but it frightens me. My ability to learn, my creativity, and my productivity all depend on enthusiasm. Somehow I need to find a way to get wholly interested in everything again. No one can do that for me.
In piano it’s a big wall of frustration that’s draining my enthusiasm. I’m at that phase where I’ve been studying things awhile but not much has advanced in terms of my composing ability. It’s compounded by a feeling of inadequacy, because I know I’ve been letting myself and others down lately. So there’s nothing and no one to blame but myself.
Enough negative stuff. That’s why I practiced long and hard on the Rachmaninoff today, tracing the melodic lines and getting a feel of the storyline as well as working through some hitches. It’s improved, but it’s a far cry from how I’d like it to be. Q: at this point, where technique and chord-reading are still a problem, should I start “hearing the perfect performance”—that is, working backwards from perfection?