A week or so ago I
found myself sitting in the lobby of a hospital with nothing much to
do, waiting for my wife to emerge from a medical examination, so I
started scribbling in my diary, something I do only occasionally.
I used to write lengthy entries in diaries, and I kept them for years, but when our son Asher
died, I threw away all my old diaries. I knew I would never reread
them, and I didn't want to leave cartons full of banalities for
posterity. His death made me feel very unimportant.
The paper in the
diary I'm writing in now is hand-made and thick. I bought it in
Mumbai. I write with a fountain pen, and it's fun to see the way the
ink is absorbed in the paper. I write by hand because I enjoy the act
of forming the letters. I get no physical pleasure from typing and
seeing the letters pop up on my computer screen.
Since Asher died, I
find myself prone to worry about illness and accidents – not to
myself so much as to the people I love. But I wasn't worried about
the results of my wife's examination. We were focused on the
unpleasant preparations and never thought about the possibility that
it might reveal some horrible disease (fortunately it didn't).
Recently two vital
people we knew, both younger than we are, died of cancer. Our age cohort is thinning out.
Once I was an optimist.
* * *
In my diary I
started writing about the flute I bought at an exorbitant price, an
unjustifiable extravagance, perhaps, but I'll try to justify it nonetheless.
How much longer do
I have to play flute until I die? Not that many years. I'm sure I'll
never be as good a player as I'd like to be, but why not give myself
the pleasure of playing on a good instrument while I can still play? Besides, I'm a fairly
rich man, though I find it hard to write those words (my mother
always thought of us as “middle class”). I could afford to buy a professional-level
instrument without affecting our standard of living at all – so I
did it. Anyway, the flute will always be of value, and my heirs can
sell it.
I wasn't really
sure when I went to the music store in Tel Aviv that I would upgrade
my flute, but the moment I played two or three notes on the
instruments the salesman showed me, I could feel the difference
between my decent instrument and the excellent ones I was trying out.
I know the flute is not going to sit in a corner untouched. I've become obsessive about practicing. Every
day I go through a methodical routine to improve my tone and
articulation, and this slow and careful work has carried over to my
saxophone playing. I hear more.
* * *
I have been exposed
to two different approaches to practice. My flute teacher, Raanan
Eylon, is a stickler for detail and aims at control of the
instrument. He has decades of experience and a coherent method for
attaining that control. A couple of years ago I heard a fantastic
young guitarist say, “practice the same thing every day” – a
corroboration of Raanan's approach. If you practice the same thing
every day, you can monitor your progress.
However, the late
Arnie Lawrence, my musical guru, if I ever had one, said, “Don't
practice! Play!” The approach of Raul Jaurenga, a brilliant tango
musician to whom I was exposed this summer, is similar to Arnie's. He
said you should start out by falling in love with your instrument,
spending time every day just exploring the sounds you can make.
The point is to
combine the two approaches. Arnie was a master of his instrument, and
Raul plays the bandoneon with incredible skill. Raanan, with all his
emphasis on sound production, aims at enabling his students to play a
melody communicatively. When I play something badly he says: “I
don't understand.” Technique and feeling must go hand in hand.
Feeling must provide the drive for acquiring technique, and the
acquisition of technique enables the expression of feeling.
* * *
As I was writing
this I got a phone call that makes all this thinking about music feel
terrifically self-indulgent (as if reading about the refugee crisis in Europe or the asylum seekers
here in Israel weren't enough to make flute practice a bit like feeding
brioche to the poor). Two distant relatives of mine have
gotten themselves in a bind, and I've become involved in their
problem even though, objectively (if there is such a thing), they are
not my responsibility.
I am not prepared
to do what a more charitable person would do, which is to take them
into my home, lend them money, and care for them until they can get
onto their feet. I would admire someone who did that, but I have to
admit to myself that I'm not the kind of person I would admire.
I feel guilty and
angry at the people who put me in a situation where I feel guilty.
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