living backwards II

After further reflection on the issues discussed in my last blog entry, I am feeling much better. But I realized that I have forgotten why I am studying music in the first place. So I am going back to the roots. I am making a point of setting aside time just to listen to music, all kinds of music, from everywhere, tens of genres, hundreds of composers. The library is my new residence.

It's sad because I didn't even realize how much is down here in the library basement. Ironically enough it was Dr. Zelle who showed me how to find my way around. The same one whose simple statement so deeply troubled me has now also introduced the cure.

Did you know we have photocopies of (to name a few) Beethoven's and Bach's and Mozart's original scores? Whole symphonies written out in their own hand. The passions, the sounds, written out there in front of you by the mind in which they were born.

I am remembering why I love this. It is like medicine for the soul.

living backwards

It was a typical morning in piano class with one of the most eccentric professors you will ever meet. That is to say, I thought it was a typical morning until he said something very profound between the bits of his usual, vaguely philosophical musings. He stopped us as we practiced our B minor scales, stepped up to the board and simply said,

"Until you love yourself, you will never master music."

And it was then that I realized that I am living backwards. Here I am, eighteen years old, capable of understanding/explaining/doing things that most people don't even know the name of, studying music at a good school with professors that like me, and yet, I am constantly feeling sadly inadequate. No matter how good I get at something, there is always something else I could learn or improve. I feel that I won't be satisfied with myself, and definitely won't be able to love myself, until I reach a certain level of ability. I ignore the fact that the level I strive for is constantly changing and becoming more difficult to attain, and thus the end result is that I constantly hate myself.

I want to reach "that level" of mastery so that I can love myself. But I have forgotten -- or perhaps, never been aware at all -- that in order to reach that level, I must love myself first. I've had this attitude of self-hatred for a long time, I admit. I just don't approve of myself as-is. But up until now, my self-depreciation was a source of motivation for me to achieve higher and improve more. When I think back upon myself as a musician ... ah! It really is incredible how much has happened just in these past few years. I went from being only a casually interested singer to being the only soprano in my entire school district to make the All-State choir. I went from not knowing what a tritone or a triplet was -- and that was just two years ago! -- to being a girl who walks around solfeging whole-tone scales in her head and analyzing Bach chorales in her sleep.

And yet it all happened because I hated myself, and I was willing to work hard to stop hating myself. I thought it was a constructive hatred. Only now am I realizing that inside, I am falling apart.

This morning in church, Pastor Hong reminded me of something that I think I need to remind myself constantly from now on:

"'You don't have to prove anything,' says God. 'You are My child, and so you are already all you ever need to be.'"

I wanted to cry when he said this. It's not like I hadn't heard it before. But it was something of which I really, really needed to be reminded. In my head, I am convinced. But for my heart, I will need time to heal.

meditations

regardez-moi, monsieur plus beau
that i might look in your exquisite eyes.
a perfect day is nothing more than
to think on you and smile within
and sing my french soul's quiet song:
je vous regarde avec un amour comme une montagne.