January 28, 2012

  • Fistful of Noise

    Well that was excruciating.

    A few days ago, finding myself with no classes on Fridays and deciding that I hadn't played nearly enough piano lately, I decided Friday would be a good day to play piano all day.

    I meant all day. My first idea was to start at midnight and go until midnight. Happily, the practice rooms had little signs on the door saying not to play after midnight, and I was spared that horror.

    Eventually, I settled on twelve hours, because it was a nice number with lots of factors, and also because it was a nice fractional part of a day.

    Dear Rachel's first reaction: "Why would you do that?" Me: "To see if I can." Rachel: "Oh, well if that's your motive, I guess you have to do that, but if it's to improve, that's not optimal."

    Dear Kevin's first reaction: "Why twelve? That seems sort of arbitrary." Me: "I started off with 24, but then I cut it down, and twelve was what was left."

    And then, Rachel again: "That's a long time." Kevin: "Twelve is a lot of hours."

    In fact, I knew it was a long time. I knew it was about an order of magnitude larger than my attention span. It had to be, because if it wasn't, then what would that prove? A proverb about cutting off something to spite the something-something floated through my mind.

    I had it all planned out. I'd wake up at 8:00, start at 8:30, and break for brunch, DSAC meeting, and dinner. It was all planned out. I gathered that even if I didn't make twelve, if I made eight or so, I could consider it a success.

    I was twenty minutes behind schedule from the very beginning. I've never quite learned that waking up ten minutes before I need to be somewhere just doesn't quite work. I started twenty minutes later than I intended. Since DSAC meeting is a fixed time, I had brunch at the planned time at 12:30, twenty minutes shy of four hours in.

    The afternoon dragged on and on. I'd intended to make up the twenty minutes after dinner, but then I found both practice rooms occupied. I never made up those twenty minutes I lost at the very beginning, but stubborning through the rest of it counts as success, I think.

    Yesterday, I checked out six great big tomes from the library so as to have enough material to drudge through for twelve hours. I learned a very sweet and very pretty piece that I found in the Faure book, and I've picked a nice Nocturne to learn. I think I never want to see a piano again for a few days, or maybe a few weeks.

    It's nice to know I can occasionally do something for a very long time given a sufficiently stupid reason, I guess.