EXTRA CRITICUM

Making Art: Half the Battle is Knowing When to Stop

Why is it so difficult for us to stop when we've started a project that's not working?

I thought about this this morning as I got up to brush my teeth. That face looking back at me from my medicine cabinet mirror was different than the one I'd imagined I might see when at the start of my soshedist project (soshedist = social distancing) I had decided to "grow a beard" for the second time in my life. The last time I stopped shaving I was teaching for 6 weeks at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. I have pictures of myself during that time. Here's one:

And yet, whenever I decide to "grow a beard" it's not this that I see in my mind's eye. 

Nope. It's more like this:

One Thing Coronavirus Taught Me About Myself

For most of my adult life, I've been a composer who was afraid to play the piano in front of anyone.  I can trace this mostly to my lack of discipline as a child who, confronted with the choice between practicing my Mozart and just making up my own improvised pieces, always ended up choosing the latter. I'm forever grateful to my first piano teacher, Ruth Steinkraus Cohen, who upon discovering my lack of discipline did not react with anger but instead asked if I might like to learn "how to write down some of those pieces."

Still, my lack of piano technique has meant that I've been extraordinarily shy about playing for others, especially strangers.

So how could it have come to pass that just the other day after logging into an online gathering of the group, POPS the Club, I found myself saying "sure" to my friend Amy's request that I get the meeting started by playing something on the piano for the 20 students and teachers gathered via Zoom?

All Alone I am Buoyed by You Who Still Dream Big

During this period of soshedist, my emotions have been unpredictable and surprising. I'll hear Governor Cuomo (a politician I used to sort of loathe but have lately warmed to)... I'll hear him speak about Italian-American Sunday dinners with the family, spaghetti and meatballs being passed around a big table and suddenly I'm weeping like a baby. I wake up frequently each night, not always aware of my dreams but certain of the anxiety that has stirred me.

And I feel so lucky to have online classes and individual lessons to teach. So many of my students  inspire me with their unwavering certainty that this too shall pass and a faith in the eternal allure of music and theatre. We may be taking time in our Zoom meetings to acknowledge and process our fear and anxiety but I am buoyed by the underlying assumption that human beings have always and will always need stories to make sense of our lives. And it feels like such a privilege to be working with folks who trust me to help them clarify their goals and plans for achieving those goals. 

And then there's my INBox. Flooded with innovative scrappy theatre troupes or music ensembles making the most of the limits of our soshedist reality. 

In the end, it's all driven by a commitment to one thing, to not accept an end or even a pause to the essential conversation that flows between artists with something to say about this world and an audience hungry to hear it.

Join me in giving us all a hearty round of applause. And if you're aware of any cool online art (of any kind), please post a link here in the comments section. I'm one of those hungry to hear more. 

P.S. If you've heard about my morning music emails and want in, just shoot me an email.