music

You have to separate real musicians from fakes. What everybody knows about real musicians (or artists) is:

• they always make their art regardless of circumstances
• they spend all of their day making music
• they are passionate, dramatic and chaotic
• they never tend to things like houswork, laundry or finances

Okay, I lost. But wait! In spite of what everybody knows, the lifes of real, official artists often look quite different. I don’t know about musicians, because they rarely write blogs, but writers seem to have problems finding time to write, too. Even without a day job. Even people like Neil Gaiman, C.J. Cherryh, or Caitlín Kiernan.
I love artist’s blogs, because you can see other people have difficulties too, when they try to do their taxes and write their novel the same day. And writing isn’t even loud. You can write on planes (not comfortably, maybe), but try it with singing.

So I read “The Artist’s Way” and was really relieved that other artist are able to do their own laundry as well. That a longing for peace and tidiness doesn’t mean you’re a square, but that a little quiet time at home may be beneficial to the making of art.

And what happened? My mother told me of some acquaintances and said,

“They are quite unorganized. That’s because they’re artists.”

Me: “But Mommy, I’m an artist too, and I don’t have problems with my appointments.”

Short silence, while I feel like my son when I’m saying “Of course you’re a fire fighter!”

Then she said, “But you’re a down-to-earth person.”

Am I?

Isn’t it nice to have it all explained so clearly?

I think every musician once in a while comes to a point, where he’s not certain of his right to be called a musician. Even „real“ musicians like Amanda of the Dresden Dolls. I have been hoping for my official artist’s badge since being a teenager. – No success.

Maybe I should frame my M.A. in music education … But that’s the same M.A. a friend of mine has, who told me recently „…but I’m not a real musician, not like you.“

Is that the musician’s badge? And how long does it last? When I’m not performing, practicing little, and haven’t written music for half a year? Am I a musician not being very creative or am I a fake?

I asked my husband, how to see the difference, and he said that I’m a musician if I’m making music and a composer if I’m composing. Yeah! How long do the two-and-a-half songs I’ve written so far last? I started too late, but there’s nothing, I can do about this.

If I had one or two own CDs, this would be a little elongated maternity leave. But if you’re starting songwriting right in the middle of your son’s toddler years and then stop for half a year, because you want to improve your piano skills first, so that your songs don’t sound like Bjork’s song for voice and piano on „Medulla“, it’s quite pathetic. I’d say, I’ll only post, when I’ve written something new, but maybe that’s to long a time …

(Addendum: After writing this – a few days ago – I actually started writing a new song! Am really excited.)

When I started this 15-minutes-a-day-thing it simultaneously felt like defeat and like a new beginning.
Why defeat? Because “everybody knows” that playing only 15 minutes a day helps nothing. You know, real musicians practice for hours everyday (until they know how to play and then they can stop practicing and play only shows five days a week). So I can’t be a real musician. Okay, I’m only faking it.

But then my real adult mind knows that I have to start somewhere (again) and even 5 minutes will be better than zero minutes. And if you have a real life with child, partner, house, garden, work and friends you often don’t have these essential 2 to 4 hours for music. And when you start doing it for 15 minutes more often than not you end up sitting at the piano as long as you possibly can. And if you don’t you’ve just done the equivalent of a musical warm-up for 15 minutes.

So, I’ll better be going … I’ll be at the piano …

So, after viewing a couple of blogs (and finding most of them astonishingly dull), I decided firstly to switch to English (which most people understand in some way) and secondly to either post a little more often or cancel the blog.

I even considered renaming the blog, since the diaper part of my life has been reduced to one per day (or to be precise – by night) and the music part is not flourishing madly – but I’m hoping for spring.
Have been a wildly optimistic person for all my life regardless of circumstances.

So I’m mothering and making music and doing housework and a million zillion things a day like a lot of women. You’d think that having your preschooler finally in kindergarten would make live easier on the music front, but for now we’re living in constant upheaval. But then, there’s nothing special about this. The whole family is thriving on drama. ‘Though recently we started trying to calm things down. (And we’re almost as successful as this wording.)

So instead of making big, big plans for a big CD of my own, I opted for the babystep of playing the piano every day for at least fifteen minutes (FlyLady-style). Sounds marvelous, doesn’t it? You can almost feel a big musical project taking shape. The reason for this plan was the realization that it’s a little unfair to tell your students to practice without playing yourself, and the maybe more important reason was my realization that my piano-playing just isn’t good enough to make my own songs.
And when I succeeded in playing five times a week, suddenly my playing grew much stronger. I gained a feeling for the piano I never had before. Because my practice was not to be mere playing while thinking about something else, but practicing the same things I always thought boring and practice them mindfully.

I’m feeling quite strange. I, me, sitting at the piano, playing scales and chords and all that “boring” stuff and all the while enjoying myself tremdendously. Who would’ve thought?