Infatuation vs. Lasting Love

For whatever reason, a whole bunch of my academic mojo was late coming back from BC this semester. A really deep part of me has been yearning for this time last year, when I was just deciding to become a musicology major and everything was bright and new and exciting, and I would spend every single spare moment reading about Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven, or listening to new pieces of repertoire I'd never heard before, or reading about writing techniques or musicological research methodology.

When musicology was my infatuation, it was easy to be in love with it.

Some infatuations fade and die away, like a summer fling that was never meant to last. You look back on it with fond memories, knowing that while it was pleasant, it isn't something that ultimately changed or defined you.

This is not that way.

Some infatuations grow beyond themselves into love. Lasting love; the kind that weathers storms and bad days and sickness and tragedy and all that stuff of life. A sense of this person or thing that has created and shaped you, and, though not holding all of your identity, somehow, somewhere, became inextricable from who you are.

Love is complicated. It requires give and take, and making room for imperfections, and rough patches, and pain...all those day-in, day-out, long-term things. Eventually (so I'm told), it falls into a routine, and feels more like companionship, with a distant memory of what was once fiery passion.

That's kind of where I'm at with musicology right now. I'm in the routine, the slightly mundane, the companionship. Musicology has settled from something new and exciting...into part of my identity. It's a defining factor as much so as "Rena, 21, Canadian, female." Most everyone that knows me knows that I'm studying music history; it's an assumed part of my identity. That has pros and cons. Every now and then it gets boring, or I feel stuck in a rut, or like I'm not really meant for this. Was this really where I wanted my life to be or go? Is this really something I want to be defined by and mediated through, to some extent? When you're getting past infatuation and into love, it's not always easy. It's really hard.

Like those days when I feel like I'll never learn all the necessary information. Or when I'd really, really rather play the piano than go to German class so I can learn to read German research. Or when I'm so tired of core classes (the classes I have to take before research seminars) that I could scream. Or the days when I really wish I had some other musicology majors around, cause every now and then being the ONLY historical musicology major in an entire music school gets a little isolating.

Except then - and this is where the lasting part comes in - I have a memory of some point of my early infatuation, or I create a new memory, or I see something that's always been there, only in a new light. Or I see something altogether new...

And I fall in love all over again.

Challenge

Dear Chromatic Solfege:

We live in a prison which doubles as a music school.
And eventually, you're going to become my b****.
Deal with it.

Love,

Rena

Shedding

Winter has come, unseasonably late, to Nova Scotia. This means, through the combination of my eczema, the cold, and the increase of indoor heating, that my skin is dry, peeling, and shedding.

It's uncomfortable, but in a way, I'm glad for it, because as this new semester starts, it reminds me of all the other things that need to be shed.

One such thing is my tenancy to get caught up in things like marks, image, and appearing talented. I sometimes work against myself, shunning awesome opportunities or challenges because I'm scared of looking foolish, making a mistake, or getting a bad mark. I psych myself out at singing auditions and piano exams and consequently perform nowhere near my standard level of ability. Or I simply don't audition for fear of looking foolish. Turning to music scholarship, I go with the paper topic in my comfort zone (opera, oratorio, and masses, little music analysis, and, for God's sake, no Wagner!)

This shall be, I've decided, the semester of shedding my ego. Music is hard, hard work which requires consistent growth - and that doesn't leave room for ego. It leaves room for mistakes and some humbling moments - and, after that, it leaves room for learning and growth and real musicianship. My craft and my scholarship are good - but there's so much room for both to be better. That's not going to happen if I stay in the nice, safe box I've carved out for myself. 

So I'm auditioning for NSYC, I'm playing my piano exam next week with as much heart and soul as I can muster, and I'm going to bid Haydn scholarship adieu for this semester while I jump into Wagner studies.

We'll see what becomes of it.  

She would have us dance and sing

While I was in BC, Joan, the choir director at my parish and a really close family friend, passed away after a long fight with cancer.

I first met Joan when I was 14. I walked into church after a several-month hiatus, and Joan came half-running over to tell me how happy she was that I was back. We started chatting about converting (I wasn't Catholic yet). A week later, I showed up at choir practice, then I started RCIA, and the next thing I knew, I was seeing Joan two or three nights a week, and she became a really, really big part of my life. 

I can never really think of words which express Joan. What I most remember about her was how she loved people. While I've always been a reasonably good kid, I had some very over-dramatic and highly ungraceful moments throughout adolescence. Sometimes I was cranky, sometimes I was rude, sometimes (lots of the time) I thought I knew everything, and sometimes I was just a brat. While Joan would - gently - suggest from time to time that I shift a thought or a behaviour, never once did I wonder if she stopped loving me. She simply accepted my flaws, and loved me in spite of them. I think she pretty much loved everyone that way -  as they were, without conditions, all of the time. 

Joan was an inspired teacher. She could take the most challenging theological concept, and turn it into a story or an action or a prayer, and everyone in the room (which included children aged 5-12, and both teenaged and adult teachers) would take something meaningful away from it. I learned innumerable lessons from Joan, and the fullness of her influence is still revealing itself to me. I hope there's some of her joy in my smile, some of her peace in my prayers, some of her love in my hugs.

I have so many memories. I remember the whispered jokes we used to share over some of the drier homilies at mass throughout the years. I remember watching her sing a psalm once, and being moved to tears by how much of God's compassion she was able to portray in her singing. Or how she always knew to put out extra kleenex for me at funeral masses, even if I didn't know the deceased. Or how once, when her husband was giving me a guitar lesson and tried to explain to me how a given concept was mathematical, she stopped him and said "Jack, Jack, Jack. You don't tell Rena that something is mathematical. You tell her it's the next logical musical progression. Then she'll get it." I remember her baking and her hugs and her prayers.      

Joan loved Canticle of the Sun, a song which praises nature as something which connects humanity to all the different attributes of God. Really, really loved it. To the point that a bunch of the choir members stopped calling it Canticle of the Sun and just called it "Joan's song." As soon as summer approached, without fail, she would walk into choir practice, beaming, and proclaiming "I get to sing my song!" 

The last verse of the song states "Praise to our death, which makes our life real, the knowledge of loss that helps us to feel, the gift of yourself, your presence revealed to lead us home." It's beautiful, and it's true, and it felt right to sing it at her funeral as a goodbye. But as I sat at her funeral (with tears streaming down my face, and no extra kleenex this time), something else hit me.

The world feels a little darker, and a lot emptier without Joan in it. Of course we who knew her are mourning and grieving. It doesn't seem fair...and yet, if Joan could speak to us, I feel like she'd tell us to rejoice with her, because she's home with her Father. 

A three-song set called Today This Spring by composer Libby Larsen makes me think of Joan. One line reads as "she would have us dance and sing to celebrate the day." And through those moments, together with family and friends and a few strangers, in celebration of Joan's life, and in mourning for her death, I couldn't help but feel that while she wouldn't want us to deny our grief, she would, at the same time, want us to dance and sing in celebration as she goes to the Father.

So, welcome home, Joan. I miss you, and I'd give just about anything for another one of your amazing hugs and beautiful smiles. My mind and heart are all too aware that it hurts to be in this world without you. But the deeper, stiller, quiet part of me - that part of me that benefited from all your great teaching! - rejoices with you.

And I love you forever.

Listen

I'm at my family's home in BC for the holidays, and today I was looking through the journal I kept through 2010. 

My journals are random collections of miscellaneous tidbits. Sometimes there are actual entries, sometimes there's fictional prose, sometimes there's poetry, sometimes there's random pretty pictures that I liked. And sometimes there's to-do lists. I read through one tonight, and something on it struck me in a new way:

"Listen to scores and determine your questions about them." 

I definitely did not have the ability to hear orchestral scores, on the page, in my mind when I wrote that in my journal; what I would have meant is "listen to a recording of a piece while looking at the score, and determine questions."

But, really, as a music scholar, I actually do need to listen to the score, and what the score itself implies (assuming the score in question is as authentic as possible) as opposed to what the recording does. That's where it gets interesting and where the real questions come in! What, as far as we know, was the original compositional intent? Why do different conductors and performers have different opinions and interpretations? Where and how do the two differ, if they do? What could all these different ideas collectively say about the piece?   

This probably seems quite basic, but it's fascinating to me! 

Yes!

Exams are done, and I'm about to curl up on my couch with hot chocolate, the Christmas fudge I baked this morning, and some good historical fiction. Tomorrow, I go home to BC for the break, which means parents, friends, a kitchen that doesn't reek of vomit thanks to my roommates' putrid dishes (I'm sorry guys, I love you all, but it's true!), my mum's cooking, my memory-foam mattress, access to a keyboard without a fifteen minute walk in the cold, Christmas lights, and many, many other wonderful things. Suffice it to say I am happy.

Also, marks are back, and my Ivy League ambitions are looking much more plausible than I thought! Happy, happy dance!

Oh, the things I dig up when editing!

While doing final editing of my last English essay ever (YAY!), which my professor kindly let me write using Chicago style (I can competently cite in MLA, but I strongly dislike it), I discovered this:

 Q. Oh, English-language gurus, is it ever proper to put a question mark and an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence in formal writing? This author is giving me a fit with some of her overkill emphases, and now there is this sentence that has both marks at the end. My everlasting gratitude for letting me know what I should tell this person.

A. In formal writing, we allow both marks only in the event that the author was being physically assaulted while writing. Otherwise, no.

The original quotation as well as further amusement can be found here.