The Key That Opens Many Doors

Here's my New Yorker resume:

I was born in Long Island Jewish Hospital in 1974. I grew up in Queens, and spent every Sunday of my early childhood in Greenwich Village at my grandparents' apartment. When I was 18 years old, I moved into the Hunter College dorm at 25th street and 1st avenue in Manhattan. I lived in the same dorm room for five years. After that, I moved in with some friends who were living in an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. When the landlord raised our rent, we moved to Astoria, Queens. It was from there that I moved to Los Angeles. 

I lived in New York for a total of 26 years. I've lived in Los Angeles since 2000, but even if I spend the next quarter of a century right here in L.A., I'll always have "New Yorker" as part of my identity. Growing up there--like growing up anywhere--leaves marks on you. It's just that there's a sort of universal definition of "New Yorker." There's not a universal definition for being a native Cincinnatian, so even though being from Cincinnati might be part of someone's identity, what that means may not be obvious to the rest of the world.

But everybody knows that being a New Yorker means being tough and streetwise. It means having an accent wherein one pronounces the word coffee "kawwfee." It means being loud and outgoing. It means being the type of person who does not suffer fools gladly, or, in the local parlance, "ya don't take crap from nobody." When folks from all over the world find out you're from New York, they make a number of assumptions about you. These may or may not be true, but a New Yorker can take pleasure in either fulfilling people's expectations or subverting them.

Another interesting part of the New Yorker effect is this: many non-native New Yorkers have lived there at some point in their lives. These people often look back on their time in New York as one of the most enjoyable times of their lives, and they will instantly start reminiscing about old hang-outs or quintessential New York moments. I can make a friend really fast with a person who loved eating Ess-A Bagels when they lived near Peter Cooper Village. ("Really? Me too! I used to stand on that long line--remember that ridiculous line?--on Sunday mornings and get a bagel with butter and eat it in the park!")

I've met two people in the last couple of weeks who lived in the same part of Brooklyn as I did, and both times it automatically built a rapport. Today, I had kawfee, I mean coffee, with an old high school friend who said that a property manager showed her the "good apartment" once she found out my friend used to live in Bay Ridge. Job interviewers will go off on joyful tangents when they see your educational background includes a stint in the Big Apple. Here in L.A., die-hard east coasters will assume that New Yorkers are somehow more "real" than our Angelino peers. (I've met plenty of "real" Angelinos, by the way.) Folks are dying to know if you really believe that New York pizza kicks every other pizza's ass.

The New Yorker effect is a wonderful thing. It's like the key that opens many doors. For my friend, the mere mention of Brooklyn was literally the key that opened the door to the "good apartment." Knowing New York is an advantage in business. It's a brilliant ice-breaker at parties. But more than that, it's common ground. People who are from there, and those who have lived there even for a little while, hold New York in their hearts. Knowing that your heart includes New York, and my heart includes New York means that our hearts have something in common. Isn't that the definition of a friend?

Look Up

When you're riding the 6 train at 2 o'clock in the morning, it's probably a good idea to keep your head down. I'll call this head-down position "defensive stance." The years I spent riding buses and trains has bred in me a tendency to walk and sit in public with my head angled downward. And if I'm sitting in a public place, say at a coffee shop or on a bench somewhere, my "defensive stance" includes sticking my head in a book or reading something on my Blackberry. But this has got to stop.

It turns out that when you're walking and looking at your shoes, or when you drink that latte and constantly check for new texts, you're missing out on something: everything. 

At first I developed my "defensive stance" for safety. When I started riding the train a lot, I was a petite teenager, so keeping my head down discouraged unwanted conversations, especially late at night. When I moved to California, I rode the bus for almost five years and kept up my defensive stance. Once I started driving, I didn't really need the stance anymore. But old habits are hard to break, so I kept on ducking, avoiding the world's gaze, just hanging out inside my own head. And once my personal life started to go south, I seemed to need something to occupy me anytime I was alone. My Blackberry became very important because there was always something to read, always something to do. But now my defensive stance wasn't about my outward safety, it was about avoiding my own thoughts, avoiding the problems that were staring me in the face.

I finally did face those problems. It was difficult to do, and what followed was the most challenging ten-month period of my life. There have been many moments in that time when I've been tempted to stick my head back in a book and live at, say, Hogwarts, rather than in my real life. In other words, my head stayed down for a while. But I have this therapist who's amazing, and she suggested I do something very simple: she told me to look up.

She calls it "mindfulness," an awareness of the things happening around me right now. I was skeptical that it would make any difference in my life. I mean, how could changing the angle of my head or sitting bookless at Starbucks possibly help me heal? But the plain truth is that it has. How? Well, two ways that I can see. 

First, by getting my head out of books and off of my Blackberry, I am more likely to address how I truly feel about my life. I am less likely to avoid unpleasant emotions, something I had been doing for years. Second, by picking my head up and looking at a bird, a chair, a picture on a wall, I can get out of my head. I don't think I need to tell you that you can think yourself right down a spiral into hell. You can think yourself into a bad attitude. You can dwell and wallow and make yourself miserable. But if you're mindful, if you pay attention to the simple things around you, you can avoid the pitfalls of brain babble.

Looking up has done wonderful things for me. When I find myself slipping down into the pit, I stop and look around me. When I'm tempted to duck the world, I challenge myself to notice 10 things. Do you know something? The world is a pretty fascinating place. Birds are cute, and they sing and eat french fries off the ground. Women's dresses are really colorful this season. Rain clouds sometimes move quickly. Toddlers whine when they're overtired. Fresh bagels are fun to bite into (and are also superdelicious). Supermarkets are cool inside on a hot day. Trees are ridiculously beautiful, especially in springtime.

When I'm walking, when I'm sitting, when I'm waiting in line at the store, I am starting to learn to abandon my defensive stance. Instead, the voice in my head reminds me to look up. It turns out that life can be pretty cool and interesting, and even when it isn't, I don't have to spend every waking moment thinking at seventy-five miles an hour. I can just watch that adorable little bird eat a french fry that's twice his size. Who knew that could make such a big difference?

 

I feel like I just woke up.

~Hero

Reminders

When we're tired at work and at the end of our patience/rope/sanity, sometimes it's difficult to remember why we got involved in our profession in the first place. But sometimes, we get reminders that renew us, and help us go back to that place where we can recall why the hell we started doing this in the first place. For a doctor, it might be saving a life, for a stockbroker, it might be a big fat check. As a teacher, I get probably more validation than say, someone in an office job. My students thank me all the time. They accomplish things; they graduate. So that part of it is mostly pretty cool, but at the end of the semester, one may begin to wonder why one got into music, instead of say, math. The Math Department doesn't have a concert every night for the last month of the semester. The professors in the Math Department don't have to listen to performances for hours on end as final exams. The folks in the Math Department aren't expected to get up on stage at the end of the semester and do math problems in front of their colleagues and students. But in Music, we do all these things. We attend concerts--not just our own, but each other's. We listen to juries and final performances. We all perform in the Faculty Recital. I did four performances in that recital. Not to mention that in the last week--which is finals week, by the way--I was in the Composer's Club fundraiser on Monday night, the Opera Club performed Tuesday (I am the faculty moderator for the club), I came to Wes' concert on Wednesday, and I performed in the Composer's Club concert on Thursday. Why the hell did I go into music in the first place?!?

How wonderful then, for me to have two reminders yesterday, just when I was feeling my lowest and most burnt out. It was about 2 in the afternoon. I had just sat for four hours of final performances, and I was dragging myself down to my office. I got barely three hours of sleep the night before so I was yawning and sleepy and wondering when I was going to get to sleep late again. It didn't look good. I opened the main office door (it's a suite of offices I share with five other people) and heard a beautiful sound: Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

Now, I don't have to tell some of you, but Beethoven's 7th is one of the three pieces of music I credit with making me a musician.* My colleague was playing B7 in her office because, after listening to some of her piano students mangle great works of art, she needed to "remember what real music sounded like." She offered to turn it down if it was bothering me, but I said, "turn it up," instead. We sat there in our offices, shuffling around our stupid paperwork, listening all the while. During the second movement (my favorite part of the symphony), I walked to the doorway of her office, and we exchanged a few words about how amazing the music was. I barely remember what we said, I just leaned on the door jamb, staring at nothing, remembering that music is indeed a beautiful thing. A decade and a half ago, this same piece helped me make the decision to study music seriously, and here it was reminding me that even though I was burnt out and sick of it all, that music was (and is) still a magical thing that I am lucky to do every day.

And if that weren't enough, my friend Jon took me out to see John Brion last night at the Largo. Jon, T, and I had an amazing Japanese dinner beforehand at a place where you grill your own food (including a birthday s'more at the end!!), then we had drinks at the Roger Room, and then we went to Largo. John Brion is an unbelievable musician. He's just made out of music, that's all I can think to say about him. He plays everything on stage, makes samples and loops and effectively plays in a band consisting entirely of...himself. He'll play a drum loop that plays continuously while he goes over to the piano and adds a piano loop over that. Then there are synthesizers that sound like flutes and space age keyboards and guitars, and he just layers the hell out of everything. And some of it is planned out (he has original songs), but sometimes he'll riff on something pre-existent. When he asked for requests, people yelled out everything from his songs to "Freebird" to "It's Rainin' Men" (T asked for that one and JB said he didn't think anyone had ever asked for it before). I requested Beethoven's Seventh, of course! The layered music often has beautiful, crazy harmonies that would have Chopin and Liszt jumping for joy. He's a hell of a pianist, and his timing as a drummer (and in general) is impeccable.

There were many incredible moments--the "Stairway to Heaven" finale was breathtaking (he started it on vibes!)--but something happened to me during one of the first songs he played. As I mentioned, I was tired yesterday, so even though I was having fun, I was struggling to stay with it when the curtain went up. He started this one loop. It was the last four measures of a song, and he kept adding to it. Piano, string sounds, the theremin-like keyboard, guitar. It was a wash of sound over a simple progression that kept looping back upon itself. And somewhere in the thick plaid of sound that he created, I was suddenly, fiercely happy to be alive, to be there, and to be a musician.

He ended the evening with an encore. He asked for requests and someone yelled out "Frere Jacques." We laughed, but then he played it on the piano. Basically it was variations on the theme, played simply at first, but with growing complexity throughout. One version had this creeping, descending bassline that moved through harmonies that would have made Bach cringe, but sounded rich and beautiful to twenty-first century ears. The variations lasted a couple of minutes, but he managed to touch on at least 150 years of music history. It was Debussy for a bit, then Liszt, then Chopin, John Adams for a second, Steve Reich for a moment. I wanted it to last forever, but what made it great was that it didn't. It is made all the more special because it was live and ephemeral and it will never happen like that again.

So I remember now why I did this...just in time for summer school! It's okay, though. I'm grateful to have a job. And I'm extremely and forever grateful that it's a job where I get to experience and share music every day.

~Hero

*the other two pieces are Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and the Soundtrack to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.