Inching along and still needing a lot of rest.

I looked at another Bach piece, the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue that I studied with Sophie and that is marked with her edits. Mature and world-class musicians introduce their own changes and Sophie gave me hers. I am looking at these penciled-in places and they are not always clear – what did she mean by this? I am asking.

So I thought I would get an idea if I actually listened to the lessons we had on this piece. So I went into a closet in the garage and picked up a box of audio tapes – it weighed at least 30 lbs. I brought this dusty thing into the house and put it on a counter in the spare bathroom. I decided that I would separate the tapes into categories. As it happens, I was not always careful to label everything. I will start doing that as I go through them and I may still be doing this when I kick. After all, the tapes span years. Listening to them takes the same amount of time. I may, when I get to walking again, switch off every other day from listening to NPR on my iPod and listen to Sophie choking the life out of my efforts. (She could be brutal and yet I miss her so very much. Jay once asked me why I endured it and I kept saying – it’s the music. There was no one like her – it was like a dancer studying with a tyrannical Pavlova.)

I found my Aiwa Walkman – it is a radio, a cassette recorder, and a cassette player. They aren’t making these any more. It was wonderful in its day. Do any of the modern electronics do everything this Aiwa does? I spent some time trying to remember how to use it -- also the markings are black on black (s...). I used it for years, and was appalled that I had to refresh my memory to the extent that I did. Anyway, I changed the batteries and put a tape in and nothing – so I changed ear phones – and nothing. So I decided that maybe some of the tapes were indeed blank. I finally got sound out of a lesson tape that had on it the Chopin Ab Impromptu and Schumann’s Aufschwung (Soaring). Sophie was taking me apart, as usual. So the Walkman is working and now I will laboriously try to find the tapes that have the Bach.

The problem with going through the tapes is that in a lesson lasting perhaps 90 minutes, Sophie and I would cover a lot of ground and on any given tape there might be 5 or 6 pieces begun or reviewed or revisited. What would be ideal is that I would have all the lessons on a given piece in a nice sequence, but that is not possible. Also, I would prefer to listen to an advanced lesson when we were refining a piece, rather than an early one at an awkward stage. So we are talking a monumental amount of time just locating what I want. Sigh.

I feel like a mole – I get out of the house when I go to the store with Ed. That is usually early in the day and when I get home, I have no energy left to do anything else. Today was an indoor day.

I have another box of tapes with sessions with my therapist, a wonderful woman, now semi-retired, still living in New York. We are in touch. I may listen to some of those (if I am strong enough.) She’s a cat person.

In that same closet are hand-written journals spanning a time frame of about 10 years. I used to carry a notebook with me. I’d write waiting in line somewhere, in a reception room before an appointment, on the subway. The journal was like a friend. I always had “someone” to talk to and I was never lonely. I don’t think I want to revisit these years for reasons of my own. I want to burn these journals. Nadine says no, no, don’t do it. But I think I will. I also have electronic journals in Word, when I switched from paper. I no longer write in the journals – blogging has used up that urge. Once in a great while, when I am thinking of really private matters, I will write a page in the journal. Sort of if I want to scream about something – but few of those moments arise any more. I told my internist when we first met that I grind my teeth. He asked why I do that. And I answered “So I won’t have to kill people.” Ed said he thinks I’m adorable.

Okay, that’s enough.

xx, Teal