Last Year Email

I had originally wrote this to my piano teacher to keep him posted of what was going on at ASU school of music. 

SO crazy to think that was a year ago. I honestly believe that the second after graduation, time moves from glacial-pace to "out-of-control-was-that-really-a-year-ago-already" pace...

All I can say is WOW. I am blown away at the difference a year has made. 

In mid-January, I felt that the school needed to 'break' me; that I needed to conform.  I have accepted the reality of emerging from music school as a shadow of my former self. 

I can only marvel at one thing:  I worked so hard to get here and it was turning out to mean nothing to me. There isn't a lot of life here, joy, wonder, dignity, or anything of true substance.  I am  in the prime of my education, wanting so desperately to learn and soak up as much as I can.  But instead feeling like a dry sponge in the desert.

Moral relativism has extended to the realm of music. Most of the time during music education technology lab we spend minutes watching, listening, and examining various youtube videos and deciding just what is musical about it. Last week we watched a video of the sounds of powertools (chainsaw, drill, cement block falling from a ledge) edited together to make a song. Then we discussed why it's music or why not. Of course, I could not stand the braying of the sheep in the class bleating in one, monotonous post-modernist tone, I spoke up and called it 'musical novelty.' I stopped short of likening it to a novelty--such as the prize you receive when you play the claw machine at the bowling alley--I mean, I kind of want to make some friends here.

As for piano lessons:  it's very hard learn from someone who is only 7 years older than you--working on a doctorate and has spent his life doing nothing but competitions.  At this stage, apparently, one develops groundbreaking methods and forces students to comply and be lab rats.  

My understanding is, nobody does the 4:2 method, or writes anything anymore.  You should hear the methods they push on us, I just nod my head, ignore, and continue to read, drill, play slowly, write, isolate, use chord identification...etc.

I've been getting amazing grades conducting.  I'm really excited about conducting.  Our professor for conducting is a really engaging, old-fashioned, and patient man by the name of Wayne Bailey.  He is honestly the only professor I've seen here who has some sense.  

I have been taking things week by week, and even moment by moment--like the hymn. So I just kept putting one foot in front of the other,  waking up and driving to Tempe, pushing a pencil back and forth on paper, and moving my hands over the keyboard.  And here I am now:  February 10th. I cannot guess what will happen next. I am thankful for the SBC music ministry as wednesday night rehearsals and sunday mornings are the only things I look forward to during these monotonous weeks.