I often think how blessed I am to live a life permeated with music and to make my living doing what I love. There’s no alarm clock set the night before a business day to catch a bus or subway to an official work site, except when I travel by Amtrak each Monday from Fresno to my El Cerrito piano studio.
Once aboard the 711 bound for Oakland, I sit at a table with two other travelers who are in the economics and engineering fields. The three of us slowly but surely bonded together after chance meetings and impromptu conversations on the train platform. I was just thinking, if I were back in New York City where I was born and raised, a one way subway trip to mid Manhattan might produce a long-lasting friendship after a profoundly intimate conversation between strangers. That’s how I remembered the Big Apple.
I used to take the IRT train from West 225th Street in the Bronx to the heart of Times Square where my high school was located. Imagine landing a few blocks from where the ball is dropped every year, with Broadway lit, glittering marquees guiding you from block to block. It was quite an experience but not as illuminating at 7:30 a.m. with the lights dimmed, about a half hour before classes began at the New York City High School of Performing Arts known as FAME . (My days at “P.A.” are worth a zillion blogs that I will create in time)
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So now it’s Sunday and I’m psychologically packing my bag for the Bay area trip. By the end of the day, I will have practiced the Chopin Black Key Etude, a Schubert Impromptu in Gb Major, “Butterfly,” a lyric piece by Grieg, a set of Bach Inventions and then I’ll continue poring over Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 no. 9
If time permits, I might sandwich in a You Tube posting and become a slave to the camcorder and computer for a couple of hours. This singular, nerve grinding activity is tentatively planned, depending on neighborhood noise levels, and the flight plan in the infinite space above my Fresno townhouse.
When 8 p.m. rolls around, I’ll tuck my lesson plans into my small luggage carrier, plus all the music I’m working on, not forgetting the colorful stickers my beginners anticipate and the Wright Way Note Finder that charmingly cranks notes up and down the staff. The kids love it!
And I, too, love my students, and this perpetual musical journey that takes off the moment I awake and is recorded in time, space, mp3, video and prose. Just now I’m getting used to the world of cyber, its fancy technology and innovation. I would never have dreamed of this transformed, computerized universe as I trekked from the Marble Hill Projects in the Bronx to the subway station overlooking the Hudson. In those days, there were no cell phones, iPods, or iPads.
I’m open to new things. It makes life interesting.
