I'm beginning to feel like a race car driver. You spend so much of your time zooming forward that you regard pit stops with disdain - and guilt when it takes anything more than 10-seconds. It gets scary when you think that both musicians and F1 racers get at least part of their success from corporate sponsors, and, curiously enough, the Malaysian oil company Petronas is a prime sponsor of both.
Problem of course is that the F1 racer gets more than a dozen support staff, and have the advantage of filling up an F1 car at the rate of 12 liters per second. As a musician, all you can do is learn to survive with less sleep in lieu of practice - but, and this is an important but, never compromising on sleep on concert day. That, and bananas. Potassium is our friend.
I've really tested limits this semester... 16-hour days have been common for the past year, and all-nighters are no stranger to a night owl, but 32 hours without sleep - there's something to that. And while I used to think that it was the great cosmic joke that all those hours, days, months and years can meet irony with one solitary moment on the stage, the work really does add up in the end, so long as there are more satisfying stage moments than there are others. If not, then you're in the wrong profession, and even then you have to really have given it your all - not only in musical energy, but staying the long haul, going all the 109 miles around the track. Stamina. It's not exactly our friend, but you'll have to marry it anyway.
This video was interesting in viewing the long haul biologically, though I don't subscribe to some of the details:
And while we're on the subject of net gems, try out this website, and take a listen to the first movement of the Martinu viola sonata while you're there. Preparing that for February - a little crazy having to just imagine all the downbeats in the piano, especially with the changing time signatures.
Finally, keeping in line with the theme of this blog, I meander:
Word of the week: "proctor". American for "invigilate".
Word of last week: "turmeric", which Malaysians will all call "kunyit".
Word of next week: "sleep", fairly foreign to graduate students, which is why its practice is done in earnest in holidays.
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1 comment:
in a similar predicament as well of late
would say that sleep is more important unless you're getting more than you fair worth of returns from the obvious distractions to health ;)
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