Saturday - January 20, 2007
Weird Dream
So I have to say right up front (my
Sight-Singing & Ear Training students will verify this for you), my piano
chops are not great. I do my best, but I'm no Karen Buckland!
I dreamed that I entered a piano competition here at PC. This is just a bit odd since, if anything, you'd have to consider me a guitar player...or a computer composer....or something....but NOT piano....probably not even synthesizer! Whatever the case...in the competition, I was up against a colleague named Jun Matsuo. She is a good friend of mine and an excellently superb pianist. (I'm currently writing a piano piece for her to take to Thailand for a performance later this year!) So basically, I dreamed I was committing piano competition suicide. Now before you think that this is a depressing dream - or that I am down on myself about not being "good enough" (too much information...?), I know I have talents (many of them, in fact) that I bring to the music department at PC. My piano playing abilities, however, are NOT part of these talents.
So in the dream, I move to the piano to perform. I have the Beethoven Op. 10 #3 up and ready to read....then I start performing....and it's awful. Truly awful. I can't even explain to you how awful it actually was....
Just a bit of background here. I tell a story about a performance of mine at the University of South Carolina Electronic Music Concert a few years ago. I don't actually try to upset people with the music that I write. It just sort of works out that way sometimes. The music I write is genuine; it's not for effect or affect. Honestly! I did a version of Tweak at the USC Computer Music Concert in Feb. 2005, though, that was a bit, shall we say, "controversial". In this version of Tweak, I used a speech for former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter that is rather inflammatory concerning the Iraq War and the lies about WMD that got American into this awful place. At the end of my performance, there was the usual polite applause (warning: there are butts in this link). But one fellow just in the middle of the audience about 10 rows up stood and gave me a rousing BOO. I was shocked, to be honest....just because people tend to applaud without thinking about what they are doing. Anyhow, this guy let me have it. It was like the old lady in the Princess Bride that gives the business to Princess Buttercup. I loved it, though. It wasn't the reaction that I was actually GOING for, but it was a reaction...and an honest one at that! So back to the dream....
As I sat there at the piano in my dream, reaching the 8th or 9th bar of Beethoven's Op. 10 #3 Piano Sonata after about 3 minutes of performance time (seriously, it was horrible!)...our department chair, Dr. Porter Stokes, began to cry. Obviously, he was crying for himself for how horrible my performance was (did I mention that it was truly awful?)....he was crying for me for how horrible my performance was...and he was crying for the others in the room for how horrible my performance was. He's a very nice fellow, though, so some of it was pity, I'm sure. Whatever the case....somehow it ended (such is the nature of dreams, yes? things just stop...they don't end...no time - things happen all at once, in a sense). Ron Davis performed next for some reason...but I never got to hear Jun play in my dream. Instead, Harpo Marx performed (on piano, mind you...don't ask me why). But perhaps it was Peter O'Toole. It's hard to say exactly who it was...but there was a good bit of running around in circles around the piano.
So, as I said, I have my interpretation of this dream....but I'm not sharing it. Make of it what you will.
I dreamed that I entered a piano competition here at PC. This is just a bit odd since, if anything, you'd have to consider me a guitar player...or a computer composer....or something....but NOT piano....probably not even synthesizer! Whatever the case...in the competition, I was up against a colleague named Jun Matsuo. She is a good friend of mine and an excellently superb pianist. (I'm currently writing a piano piece for her to take to Thailand for a performance later this year!) So basically, I dreamed I was committing piano competition suicide. Now before you think that this is a depressing dream - or that I am down on myself about not being "good enough" (too much information...?), I know I have talents (many of them, in fact) that I bring to the music department at PC. My piano playing abilities, however, are NOT part of these talents.
So in the dream, I move to the piano to perform. I have the Beethoven Op. 10 #3 up and ready to read....then I start performing....and it's awful. Truly awful. I can't even explain to you how awful it actually was....
Just a bit of background here. I tell a story about a performance of mine at the University of South Carolina Electronic Music Concert a few years ago. I don't actually try to upset people with the music that I write. It just sort of works out that way sometimes. The music I write is genuine; it's not for effect or affect. Honestly! I did a version of Tweak at the USC Computer Music Concert in Feb. 2005, though, that was a bit, shall we say, "controversial". In this version of Tweak, I used a speech for former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter that is rather inflammatory concerning the Iraq War and the lies about WMD that got American into this awful place. At the end of my performance, there was the usual polite applause (warning: there are butts in this link). But one fellow just in the middle of the audience about 10 rows up stood and gave me a rousing BOO. I was shocked, to be honest....just because people tend to applaud without thinking about what they are doing. Anyhow, this guy let me have it. It was like the old lady in the Princess Bride that gives the business to Princess Buttercup. I loved it, though. It wasn't the reaction that I was actually GOING for, but it was a reaction...and an honest one at that! So back to the dream....
As I sat there at the piano in my dream, reaching the 8th or 9th bar of Beethoven's Op. 10 #3 Piano Sonata after about 3 minutes of performance time (seriously, it was horrible!)...our department chair, Dr. Porter Stokes, began to cry. Obviously, he was crying for himself for how horrible my performance was (did I mention that it was truly awful?)....he was crying for me for how horrible my performance was...and he was crying for the others in the room for how horrible my performance was. He's a very nice fellow, though, so some of it was pity, I'm sure. Whatever the case....somehow it ended (such is the nature of dreams, yes? things just stop...they don't end...no time - things happen all at once, in a sense). Ron Davis performed next for some reason...but I never got to hear Jun play in my dream. Instead, Harpo Marx performed (on piano, mind you...don't ask me why). But perhaps it was Peter O'Toole. It's hard to say exactly who it was...but there was a good bit of running around in circles around the piano.
So, as I said, I have my interpretation of this dream....but I'm not sharing it. Make of it what you will.