I'm glad there is - II

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker.

As much as I love the music this team has written, I think I appreciate their lyrics even more. These guys are storytellers of the first order, from the very early stuff right up to the most recent solo projects. Do yourself a favor - sit down with one of the Steely Dan albums and read the lyrics as the song plays. Sometimes bizarre, occasionally disturbing, almost always sarcastic, and often sublime; it is to be transported into another world.

Incompleteness, new challenges, and Quality

It's amazing to me the way things move, shift, morph, and skew while always staying fundamentally the same. An odd bank shot in billiards, an unexpected bounce off the backboard in basketball, a pop fly that turns into a run; things change while the game goes on. I've felt - always, I think - that my life was a life in a constant state of incompleteness. Constantly moving towards something, I know not what, but in a state of motion nonetheless. Sometimes it feels so normal to me that I wonder how others exist any other way.

For example: there was a point in my life where I knew, beyond any doubt, that my path was connected to Music. How that has actually played out, though, the literal path that I have followed, was of no conscious design. Piano, singing, 'cello, electric bass , back to singing, back to bass (but acoustic this time), adding some singing back in to the bass work, and back to piano - there's only one common thread, and that is Change. I see now in retrospect that I have always sought to place new challenges in front of myself. There is a part of my nature that craves a new goal to achieve, and tends to want to accomplish that in the shortest possible time. Not a short-cut, but more of a fast track to the next thing, or next level. The good aspect of this is a (relatively) broad range of knowledge and experience. The downside is never having a sense of arrival, of achieving a peak of some sort. The peak is a goal, and the sides of the mountain are the challenge. And the sides of the mountain wouldn't exist were it not for the peak! The Journey is everything. Which leads to the concept of Quality.

Re-reading Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been a great diversion over the past few days. It was probably 25 years ago that I first read it, and I'm discovering that little of it stuck, but that makes the rediscovery all that much more enjoyable. The scenes where the narrator is (literally) rediscovering his past in the context of the University teaching scene are especially resonant. If there is a constant within my aforementioned constant of Change, it is the search for Quality in whatever it is I'm doing. The beauty of piano technology is that there is an artistic level to the work itself, and also to the result made manifest, i.e. the performance on the instrument. Performing Quality work, so that the artist may perform Quality work in turn. Very cool stuff.

There is an opportunity which seems to be presenting itself to me beyond Tanglewood which will involve some hard thinking and choices, but also seems to be leading me down that familiar road I've traveled so often. Exciting times!

Expertise and new CDs

Home from the dayjob, and on my own for a few hours as V is visiting her daughter in the city. Been reading a lot the past couple of days on the subject of expertise on the Piano Technicians Guild tech board. The "10000 Hour" rule has been mentioned, and commented on both positively and not-so-much. The idea (not sure where it originates, but I ran across it first in a book called This Is Your Brain On Music, by Daniel Levitin, and most recently in The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett) is that it takes roughly 10000 hours of practice to be come a world-class expert at anything. Part-time technicians tend to take umbrage at this idea, naturally, since very few of them have, or will have, that kind of time under their belt, so consequently according to the rule, they will never achieve the level of Expert. This is, of course Not Necessarily True, but still. Personally, I tend to buy into the idea, but in the framework of retrospect only; this is not something for which one can plan. In otherwords, if someone sets out to do anything for 10000 hours, and is still counting those hours after, say, 5000, then it's very likely that person is more concerned about the fact of the accomplishment than about the Craft they are pursuing, and will miss the point. Conversely, if someone is pursuing a Craft seriously and honorably, they will lose interest in counting the hours they spend on it very quickly, because it really doesn't matter.

Looking back, there are two areas in which I can honestly say I have passed the 10K mark: playing the bass and teaching. This is based on loose figures, admittedly, but 20 years of practicing and playing the bass, plus 15 years of teaching gets me as close as need be. According to the 'rule', I should be an expert in both these areas, and, in retrospect I know it to be true. However, it's not a guarantee of quality, or of anything else, for that matter. Simply a point along a line. Now in the piano technician field, I have far less than 10000 hours, but - I have this piece of paper which says I'm a Registered Piano Technician, meaning I have passed a rigorous set of exams and achieved a certain level of competence. So - am I an expert? Hardly. Does it matter? Not at all, because, again, it's just another point on another line. As long as my intention is to continue to grow and develop my knowledge and skill, Expertise will happen. And I'll know it in retrospect.

Managed to budget for new CDs this week for the first time in awhile, and came up with three real winners which I'm having a lot of fun digesting:

Rickie Lee Jones - The Magazine (1984)
Chris Potter 10 - Song For Anyone (2007)
Jim Hall & Bill Frisell - Hemispheres (2008)

The first two were recommendations from a friend (thanks Chris!), and the third, well, knowing what I know about the two artists, it was pretty much an auto-buy. Loving all three so far. They couldn't be more different from each other; I've always loved contrast, and these are giving me plenty, both between them and within each. Very cool.