Run toward fear!

Recently, I have been doing a lot of music performances, and really enjoying it!

*pause*

That sentence is a big deal for me to write.

You might be thinking: "So what, you're a musician, right? Isn't that what they do?" Well...yes. Generally, that's what musicians do. Perform. And enjoy it. Right? But this whole performing bit hasn't been a natural inclination for me.

Flashback to middle school years: I wanted to sing but was too nervous to sing for my parents, so I tape recorded myself and then gave them to the tape to listen to (but not when I was around!), to see what they thought.

Flashback to high school years: I loved being in Concert Choir and Jazz Choir...and I sang my heart out! But if you asked me to sing a solo....holy cow. I recall attempting my first real solo, a verse of "Somewhere over the rainbow." I was so nervous I could barely get any sound to come out. Like there was a clamp around my throat. I could sing, but you wouldn't really know it from that performance. It was like my voice would just sort of dwindle and disappear.

I feel stuff...duh, everybody feels stuff. For me it surfaces up and turns into music. I wrote lots of music, but mostly kept it to myself. I was very uncomfortable performing for people and kept all of it in a personal bubble. But obviously I want to express myself and want to be heard. Doesn't everyone? What is the purpose? To write it and keep it all to myself? What is music, if it's not to be heard? And why should I fear sharing it? 


Well. This last year I decided I would not turn down any opportunities to perform in public. That's the most effective way I could improve. So I worked with a voice teacher and a piano teacher, sang in seminars, performed songs in other classes, played a full-length show on my own, and even joined a band to play keyboard. Heck, I played for thousands of people at OSUs Battle of the Bands a few weeks ago.

When I started doing these things I was really anxious, and was cranky at myself more than once, wondering why I had made such an excruciatingly uncomfortable goal for myself. I thought how easy it would be to just slide back into my old comfort zone and not have to put myself out there. But I just kept saying Yes. After saying Yes so many times externally, I believe I finally started saying Yes to myself on the inside.

Tuning-the-uke serious face, Bombs Away Cafe May 31st

And I was kind of shocked at how much fun I had at my show and Battle of the Bands! Nerves were nowhere to be seen. This makes me so excited! Mmmff, I wish there was an emoticon for jumping up and down. I feel like I'm in the process of overcoming what had been a huge obstacle in my life. Now it doesn't seem so huge anymore, and I'm excited to see what comes next.

OSUs Battle of the Bands, 2012, playing with Voodoun Moi
I swear I smiled at both shows! There just aren't any pictures of me smiling. lol

In honor of this mental milestone, and also for practical reasons, I bought my own keyboard. This has been my first time purchasing a keyboard and I love it so much already!! I'm in WA right now, and I was pretty bummed to leave it behind.

The Korg SV-1, 73 keys:

Let me tell you, those knobs and buttons are so fun to play with

Isn't it adorable??

...which I will be playing at my next show:

Hope to see you there!
<3

p.s. here is a link to Voodoun Moi's performance June 1st: Voodoun Moi - OSU's BotB 2012

Thank you, Garrison Keillor

This newspaper article is posted outside my piano teacher's office. It brought tears to my eyes.

An extravagant gift of music tells us life is, after all, good

Appeared in print: Sunday, June 7, 2009, page G4, Register-Guard

The driest May in Minnesota since the Dust Bowl. Venerable GM slides into bankruptcy and you shudder for the old Pontiac dealers and the retirees in Michigan. In the middle of the night, an Airbus drops out of the air into the Atlantic Ocean and the veteran traveler shudders to think of it. And the posthumous John Updike appears in the bookstore, a book of short stories (“My Father’s Tears and Other Stories”) and his last poems, written by “my right hand ... faithful old five-fingered beast of burden ...its labors meant

to carve from language beauty, that beauty which lifts free of flesh to find itself in print.”

In the midst of these ominous rumblings, I went to a lovely party Saturday night, which is newsworthy because I stopped going to parties a long time ago because it’s boring to hear people talk about getting old, but then Saturday night there was this party and I went. A big brick manse on a quiet street, 30 people, half of them under 25, on a deck out back, hamburgers, fried chicken, chips, beer, wine, the usual repartee, and a lot of youth going on around us.

A boy and a girl with eager eyes, in the shadows, like badgers at a campsite. Three boys holed up with a video game. A beautiful coltish 16-year-old girl leaning around in a black strapless evening gown, trying out different personas (Dorothy Parker, Nancy Drew, Ava Gardner), who struck me as a reincarnation of Anne Frank. A teenage boy sitting with his nose in a book, making a great show of isolation.

And an intensely quiet blond girl, a math whiz, who, with no reluctance, sat down at the piano when I asked her if she played piano, squared her shoulders and played the exquisite Chopin Prelude No. 2 in A minor, the notes of the slow movement like raindrops on birch leaves, smoke drifting by, an anguished old man pacing in the grass, and played it so beautifully it transformed the entire evening.

Transformation is no easy trick: it’s what art promises and usually doesn’t deliver. But she did. It was a difficult piece, and what she showed us was the intense poetry underneath her calm Lutheran exterior. She borrowed Chopin’s passion and made it her own, an astonishment, and then she stood up awkwardly and we all clapped and whooped. It was so much more than what we deserved to hear, which is true of art, a lavish gift of the heart that shames pretense by its outrageous generosity.

I went back to the crowd on the deck and had a piece of rhubarb pie with ice cream, feeling buoyed up by the performance, and still feel buoyant days later. The plane falls, the company slides, the good man is gone, the lawn turns brown, but with Chopin you come back to basics: Do I regret this life? Is it, despite all our brave words, a cheat and a waste? Does it make any slight difference to the universe that we are present?

What depresses me about the old-age monologue is the air of regret — Poor Me, I Am Unaccountably Sixty-Five, My Brain Is Leaking, My Legs Are Gone, Where Has It Gone, The Beauty And The Dream? — and what makes me love cities, despite the uproar, are the constant reminders of the generosity of life, the readers on the subway, the cheeses in the deli, the pictures in the gallery, the musicians in the park. 

Playing the Prelude No. 2 in A minor is not a step on a career path. There is only one Emmanuel Ax, and he has the Chopin chair for now, and there are plenty of dead pianists around on CDs. I suppose that you could argue for a correlation between mastery of the Prelude No. 2 and scholastic achievement leading to opportunities in computer programming, but meanwhile, it simply is an extravagant gift from the heart of a girl to the hearts of whoever is standing nearby. Life is good, no matter the disappointments — O God the disappointments. Just square your shoulders and give them your utter best. As the late great Marilyn Monroe said, “I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.”

Life is insurmountable, but we mount up every morning and ride forward. Thanks for being wonderful, dear heart.

Garrison Keillor is an author and host of public radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And here are a few pictures I took with my phone camera. Unfortunately my other camera is in need of repairs :(

Pretty iris

Maybe it's because it's surrounded by concrete, but look how bright this tulip is!

The balance

Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.

   prints by OakleyArtHouse on etsy

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.”
― Steve Maraboli

Show May 31st!

And here is the facebook event invite: Katie D show May 31st

Hungry for color!

Last night as I lay in bed, I realized that I was starving for color. I can't stop thinking about them...neons, lime, yellow, corals, Kelly green, bright blues, salmon, and all those bold, bright things! I need them. Each one is like a little yelp of joy. I feel an excitement that's leading to change.
Change is good.
I totally parted my hair on the opposite side this morning. Living on the edge, my friends.

But seriously, back to color. Picture post coming soon!

My piano teacher is wise

I almost feel like I should stop the blog entry there with the title. Enough said.

But ok, I'll expand. The reason I am writing this blog entry is because of a particular piano lesson I had awhile back with my wonderful piano teacher at WOU. We were analyzing one of my tendencies: I sometimes lock my wrists while playing, in order to attack the piano. It's a result of hyperfocus...or "thinky-thinky" as my teacher describes it. I'm so much in my head, not wanting to make a mistake, that I ignore the rest of my body. And my poor hands and wrists have suffered in the past as a result. (My first college year comrades will remember the wrist brace I had to wear. :P)

As we unraveled the whys, I found myself saying something like, "But I want so badly to do it right, and I want to control everything!" (As I gestured my hands wildly in the air over the keyboard.) I was a little surprised to hear myself say that, but not really, because it was true.

We laughed at the sudden and obvious absurdity of it. My very insightful teacher commented that Of course we do! We want to control everything...but isn't that the paradox of life? But the more we let go, the more control we actually have.
(reflective pause)
And with piano especially, the more freedom of expression we have.

Oh ho!

It's funny 'cause I KNOW this, but somehow it always seems so surprisingly enlightening.

Just for fun, I used the Jaymar toy piano for part of lessons today. :) It's just too adorable to leave in the other room by itself. Thanks for letting me borrow it, Christa!
A second thing I have been pondering: my own piano students. Here comes my honesty. :) I have 9 students at the moment, and the other day I wondered why do I have so many...and maybe I took on too much...and do I have enough time?...and there was even a time in my late teens when I recall saying aloud, "But I don't want to teach piano." Haha! I chuckle at my 18-year-old self.

The truth is that I very much enjoy teaching and I have fantastic students! I feel lucky to be in a teaching position, and I love seeing the little successes that come every day.

I remember my own piano teacher when I was the age of my younger students...Maureen Beezhold, an extremely influential person of my youth! Sometimes I hear myself saying things that she said to me, to help me learn. It makes me feel warm inside.

Ah, the circle of life...

Album cover shoot

Vintage Jaymar toy piano

Thank you Becerra Photography of Corvallis for capturing what I had envisioned for the album cover. And thank you to Christa for letting me borrow her Jaymar toy piano, which is exactly like the one I used to have when I was very little:

Me and my sister, Kristie, circa 1982/83

The album is scheduled to be complete by summer! So far there are 17 songs picked out to be on the discography.

I will be performing music from the album starting end of May (stay tuned). The cover and title of album have been chosen, but will not be revealed as of yet... Here are some samples from the shoot:

Becerra Photo Shoot

And thanks to Jessica for showing up and making me smile!