Ending on a sweet and sour note

The last week of Banff ended in a bittersweet manner.  By week three, the novelty of room service and posh food wears off, and people become grumpy and dissatisfied, or at least, the people I was with were.  In a way, it was somewhat funny-I came back to Banff because I had wanted to study with Roger (when I decided to come to Banff, I hadn't decided whether or not to go back to NEC, so I wasn't sure if I'd ever study with him again.) and I had wanted to work with John Adams.  Both of those events occurred within the first week, so in a way, the rest of the program was a bit of a letdown.  By the time Roger left, we began to see the political manuevers that had taken place, favoring one person in the viola class, and giving him three "special" assignments.  We also all realized that Barry is kinda crazy, and that most of the remaining concerts favored people that had a political connection to him, which is rather unfortunate.  In essence, the basic unfairness of the final assignments really affected the group as a whole, especially those who were less familiar with the political workings of Banff.  The more specific part of the story is that Barry basically picked one person (who was no better in skillset than the rest of us) and put him in a special masterclass, the faculty/student chamber group, and an extra chamber group of the Britten Phantasy Quartet.  The catch in all this is that 6 violists were doing nothing all week-they had no assignments, were in no ensembles, and thus this was totally unfair.  The choices were made in an unfair manner, and really pissed off most of my friends, because this one violist went to McGill (and that group was already a pain in the ass to deal with) and was going to Glenn Gould, and knew Barry.  This person should definitely have had one of the three above opportunities, but to give him everything was unfair to the people who already knew the Britten, or who were really into Baroque performance practice (me!) since he played for Sigiswald Kuijken.  I guess the question we have to pose is, when situations present themselves that are very political, how can we keep motivated in our own self worth?
     For many of my friends, they just stopped caring and starting being pissed off most of the time.  I was definitely upset by the outcome, because it just wasn't fair to the group, and also didn't represent the skills of the whole 10 of us by any means.  I wrote a very blatant evaluation saying that it was outrageous and that I wouldn't be returning next year. (True statement).  But more importantly, I wrote that it was detrimental to the group dynamic, because it affected the way we all got along, and made us feel less worthy in the eyes of the festival.  We already had a challenging time getting along with this one person, since the McGill clique was very exclusive, and not particular social with the rest of the camp, and that only made it worse.  The truth is that there are political situations in most festivals, schools, and even jobs.  I've certainly encountered unpleasant political situations at Eastman, which pleasantly prepared me for this, but many of peers were shocked and upset by the whole thing.  The only thing you can do, in the end, is to believe in yourself, and give freely of your music and your love.  Only then can you truly succeed.  If you're in music to be competitive, and to beat other people, I don't know that you'll ever be happy.  There are few "fair" ways of evaluating performers, and few ways to truly decide who is the best.  Knowing that our art is objective by nature, we must be prepared for occasional injustices, while also knowing that we too may be favored by such a failed system of adjudication and evaluation.  I'm sure that many talented people don't get into NEC every year, and because I had connections, I was guaranteed a returning spot.  Maybe someone else was negatively affected by my advantages, and I have to know that everything is equal in the end.  One negative consequence may lead to a great success later down the line, and vice versa.  Perceived failures can also make us work harder, and rekindle our desire to express the music within us, rather than focus on ourselves and our achievements.  That's at least what I hope.

Listening to: Radiohead!  it's been a while.

Amazing

I have so many things that I want to write about, now that I have functional internet, but for the time being, let me say that I am no longer in Banff anymore, and that it was a balmy 95 degrees when I stepped off the plane into Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon.  (After having gone to bed for an hour and a half, waking up, and having it be 45 degrees).  It was a pretty trippy Saturday, especially without the sleep, and since Friday night was pretty insane, just since people become so nice when it's the last day of a festival, and in the spirit of Banff, everyone had some lovely beers.  Many lovely beers.  I was also especially proud of myself for finally gathering the courage to talk to this person, whom I knew had just started their masters at NEC, and whom I had tried to talk to the whole time I was there, but since he was part of the McGill clique, I never succeeded.  I finally achieved a basic conversation win, by 2 AM, once everyone had had at least 2-3 drinks, and he was nice, even though he had sort of been a jerk for the whole festival.  It was pretty silly, actually, since he is living with one of my friends next year.  Silliness.  Anyway, more on Banff and the closure of the festival, but let's focus on the most current events.
     I went to see the bands She & Him, the Bird and the Bee, and the Swell Season last night, at the Hollywood Bowl, and it was awesome.  All three groups are boy-girl pairs, with backup musicians, and the female representation was Fierce.  (Here's the newest She/Him music video.)  It turns out that Zooey Deschanel can really sing!  She can truly belt it, and that was so awesome to witness.  Inara George of the Bird and the Bee was also good, if a little subdued, but I absolutely adore her covers of Hall and Oates songs.  The Swell Season was solid (They're the couple from the Movie "Once") if not a bit male dominated, in terms of presence, song writing, and vocal harmonies.  Glen Hansard took most of the lead vocals, and did most of the talking, although he has a wonderful voice and a very charismatic presence.  I just wish that Marketa would've been a bit more active, it was almost like she was watching him and observing his performance as much as we were.  But it was lovely to see women in music in such a powerful and significant role in each group.

 I've arrived in my new festival, The Montecito festival, in Santa Barbara, and let me tell you, it is no Banff.  No room service, no fancy food, no nightly bar trips.  But maybe that's for the best.  On that note, let me leave you with this video from Broken Social Scene-political, but a great song from their newest album.



listening to: She & Him

A wild and crazy evening of existential proportions

So on Friday, I went to bed at 8 AM.  Let me correct that, and say that I went to bed on Saturday at 8 AM, rather than Friday night.  Why?  Well, I'm not entirely sure, exactly, but it ended up being a fascinating night of discussion, and me acting as the mom in my group of friends, and keeping them from doing things epically stupid.  (Although dumb things did happen.)  Let me retell the evening's events:
10-12 PM: Did a small recording for some Weezer project involving Rivers Cuomo's bedroom recordings from the early 90's, which then are being accompanied by overly dramatic strings.  It was a pretty silly project, and we were only recording snippets of music, and the songs weren't necessarily all that great, but I did it just so I could say that I did it.  I also requested that my name be listed in the booklet as Kayleigh "kmizzle" Miller, viola, so if that ends up happening, it will totally be worth it, as we weren't paid in beer or money.
12:30-2:30: went to the bar on campus, and had a few pitchers with the violas.  I probably had three glasses of beer, and I decided I was done, but the rest of my entourage kept going for it, which meant that they got pretty loopy, and I very quickly established that my new roll was as mother, to make sure that no one regretted the evening.  We witnessed a tragically drunk person fall flat on his back in the bar, and a crew of the sound engineering folks picked him up and took care of him.
2:30-3:30: Had a discussion, in a circle on the floor, about the convergence of good and evil, and what that could mean.  Basically, my friend Brian has been reading this Philip K. Dick sci-fi novel in which good and evil and intertwined within the same force/being, which is only revealed in the end of the story, and he was still reeling with the information.  This gets expanded upon later in the morning, but for now, everyone talks about their religious beliefs, and whether evil is a separate force, and whether Christianity allows such crazy talk.  Our numbers began to decline, as people got drunker and needed to remedy themselves in the water closet, so by 3:30, it was just me and my violist friend (and Bostonian) Brian.  So we got to talking to all those unnecessarily deep things like:
What is perception?  What is reality?  What is knowable, if anything?  Is there a good force in the world, and if not, then what keeps us alive, and happy?  It ended up being an hour and a half conversation that went in circles and didn't necessarily accomplish anything (the consequence of philosophy study) but it was fascinating to realize that in the end, we only know what we think, and everything else is based on our situational perception.  As in colorblindness, hearing loss, or any other sensory distortion, what traditional society defines as "normal" is anything but.  Yet, experience and memory are entirely based in our perceptions and misperceptions of situations, so in essence, there is no absolute truth, or action in any given situation.  This sort of dialogue could go on for days, but let's just stop there and say that reality is complicated.  By 5, we decided we might as well stay up for sunrise, which was around 5:40, and was slightly less than dramatic, but was tender unfolding of darkness into a mystical blue glow into light.  It made us think of one of the kindertotenlieder songs in which the author says that his child, his light has gone out in the night, and if not for the sun's rise, he could not survive the night's clasp.
6-7: In a fit of stupidity (told you it would happen) my friend kicked his flip flop over the railing of the 6th floor balcony, and onto the 5th floor balcony, which are rooms that belong to individual residents.  Now, at 6 in the morning, you can't exactly just wake someone up and say "Hey, I'm an epic idiot.  Can I go on your balcony?" Brian (and I) proceeded to make a variety of fishing pole style devices which were created to knock the shoe off of the porch.  We found a length of rope, and few planks, and proceeded to fool around with this for an hour, until the shoe landed on the concrete in front of the building.  Meanwhile, we saw faculty go for morning runs, elk, people photographing the elk, people photographing the elk look strangely at us, and a few maintenance people gave us a look of disapproval and curiosity.  In the end, Brian succeeded, and I fell asleep in the corner near the heater.  By the time we got the shoe, it was almost breakfast time, and we decided to make it until 7:30, when we would enjoy an warm and delicious hot breakfast, which was indeed one of the tastiest meals I'd had in a while.  There were poached eggs, sauteed mushrooms, hashbrowns, and mediocre croissants, but overall, it was the perfect ending to a very long evening contemplating existence and corporeal beings.

listening to: radiohead

words of the week: Sartorial and Corporeal, both which were used in a masterclass.

Expecto snotum! ( a new spell to disarm congestion)

After a 12 hour trip from Banff, Canada, I came home congested, famished, and disgruntled. The minute the plane landed, I felt the sinking feeling of hopelessness and loneliness that has peppered my time in Rochester. The airport was desolate, a monochromatic landscape of gray- closed restaurants, bathrooms under construction, and cleaning people on duty. We waited for a taxi for ages, the cool wind reminding us of places we've been and people we've seen. As we rode in the backseat of the cab, we passed dilapidated houses with metal fences surrounding them, and the occasional teenager on the prowl. Goodbye mountains, goodbye trees, goodbye earth. I have returned to the concrete industrial jungle of despair and darkness, but I must breathe in the hope that I have experienced. While my windows look on the broken asphalt of desolate parking lots, I imagine a beautiful view of trees and elk, or geese and grass. These are the things I must do now. The glittering darkness threatens me, and the city sucks the happiness from me, like Harry Potter's dementors. But I can be strong, and remember what I've seen, what I know is waiting for me, if not tomorrow, then the next day or the next. I will not fall prey to the darkness that so quickly threatens me, and I will triumph.