getting back on the horse
“I just do the work that is in front of me,” says Jessa Crispin (via Austin Kleon). “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” says Annie Dillard (via Maria Popova).
Do the work that’s in font of you; spend your days as you would spend your life. As a person, I want so badly to live up to these words. As a musician, I know I have to. The music demands it. To do good work bit by daily bit, and then build up the work of days into progress over time, is the definition of practice. Without practice no skill can save you. I believe this. I know this. And still. Still I find it so hard. After months of basically not practicing organ at all, I’m trying to get back to basics. I’m trying to get some work done at the keyboard. I’m trying to practice again.
Practicing music is one of those habits, like exercise, that’s easier to fall out of than it is to get into. Would that it were the other way around, like nail–biting or doomscrolling. As it is, it’s one of those things that’s dastardly easy to manage not to do. It’s not that I’m doing anything instead of practicing: I have plenty of spare time in my summer days. And it’s not at all inconvenient: I have a piano upstairs and a digital keyboard downstairs and an organ at church, just a two-minute bike ride away, that I can play any time of night or day. I have the time and the means. But I’m out of the habit.
Practicing is also… not entirely pleasant? My teacher sometimes calls practice “doing the dirty laundry.” Boring, perhaps, but necessary—don’t do it and you’ll stink. Again, I believe this. I know this. And still. It’s not exactly an encouraging start to know how much of a slog a practice session will be. Organ practice means getting all the fingers and both feet to do the right thing at exactly the right time, all together. This means going v e r y, v e r y slowly and repeating the movements over and over and over and over again until they come naturally from kinetic memory. Maybe some folks find the repetition meditative or relaxing or something. I never have. Some must find joy in it. Lately, I haven’t, as much as I’d like to.
Part of the problem is that I have all this music from the spring semester that I can play so well! Some of these pieces I’ve been working on since last fall or longer, perfecting and tweaking, to get up to performance level. But I can’t keep on repeating the same old stuff. I do want to learn new pieces, which means doing the often unpleasant work.
Everything is new and hard. I’ve been away a long time. But I’m trying.
I don’t like to set no–fail goals, but any kind of playing time is critically important right now. So I’ve put one absolutely essential, necessary, no-failure-allowed item on my calendar. Be on the bench practicing for an hour, at least, every day. No exceptions. This is the only way I know to build back up the habit of regular practice.
Hopefully, I can start to do the work in front of me again, to order my days more as I’d like them to be. It’s rough going here at the start. I’m occasionally still failing to get my no–fail hour in—okay, more than occasionally. And the hours I get are never the most productive they could be. Day by day, though, I’m making progress. Learning. And I’m feeling, faintly, the joy that’s possible in the slow regard and perfect execution of little things. I’m hoping that joy will grow; only time will tell.