Looking through the magic mirror: a ramble

I remember watching "Romper Room" as a kid on Saturday mornings, and I remember wondering if Miss Jean would ever look through her magic mirror and say my name. There were not enough people named Elaine around to make saying my name worthwhile, I guess. She never said it. Ever. And it was through that experience that I learned that the television screen only goes one way.

If I talked, Miss Jean wouldn't hear me.

Groups of kids (like Cub Scouts and Brownies) would go to be part of an audience for Boomtown (which I watched) or Bozo (which I also watched, not knowing that the guy who played Bozo was the father of one of my eventual high school classmates). I used to look at the audience and see if there were kids I knew in it.

Who knew that a mere fifty years into the future those screens could go both ways, and that you could carry them with you? Who could have imagined that everyone throughout the whole world would have a period where they would have the majority of their daily interactions through a screen because of a virus that came from a bat? That was the stuff of "Twilight Zone," The Outer Limits," or maybe "Star Trek."

I have a history of being an anti-technologist. The first personal computers for home use came out in the early 1980s. I used a Displaywriter for work, so I did not have the fascination that Michael did for having one for his own use. We bought a computer for him, and a baroque flute for me. I needed to grow musically more than I needed to grow technologically. And growing musically for me meant going back to basics.

We had to return the computer because something about it didn't work, so we ended up with an electronic typewriter that had a pretty nifty memory feature, where you could store a few lines of text. Michael used that until we got an Apple //c.

I have still been on my quest to grow musically, and that growth is a slow process. I spend my practice time trying to get from one note to the next in a satisfying and meaningful way. I spend my teaching time asking my students to do the same. When they listen to what I tell them to do and do it, they sound pretty good. I think.

I say, "I think," because I can only hear them through the microphone on their phone, tablet, or computer, a signal (that is often too weak) that is transmitted up to a satelite, and delivered to me through the speakers of my iPad. But all I can really give them is feedback about their intonation and their rhythm. I can see (and hear) if their bows slide on the string, and can ask them to concentrate. I can help the beginners learn to read music, and I can advise more advanced students about playing the correct notes.

Most of all, particularly with beginners, the parental involvement in a student's practice has increased a good deal.

And that's a good thing.

I have thought, from time to time, that in this period of isolation I might consider making a musical video, playing something on violin or viola, or learning to do the split screen thing, and doing both. But after doing all this "through the two-way mirror" teaching, I find myself to be more self critical than ever. And I fear that the main thing that would project across the screen would be that self criticism. Sometimes, when I use the iPad to record a passage I'm working on, I see how my eyes look so critically at my bow. When I do something right, it sounds pretty good, but watching and listening it is not a musical experience. It is a working experience. I don't find joy in sharing the dirty laundry of my working experiences with anyone, particularly people I don't know.

Playing actual concerts for and with actual people is different. It is a chance to get out of myself, and trust that all my preparation will come together in the service of making music with people and for people, who are equally engaged in what is happening in the music during the very moments that it is being played. I am unable to imagine the psychic reactions of a hypothetical audience for an online concert (though I can, strangely, imagine a person reading what I write on this blog, or playing a piece I have written).

I applaud people like Augustin Hadelich who can make meaningful music on the videos they share in isolation. Actually, there are no "people like Augustin Hadelich." He is unique. I imagine that when he practices he uses great powers of scrutiny, and when it comes to playing for people through his videos with his in-house pianist (himself), he gives both parts of himself the luxury of playing in a way that is totally musically driven. Under normal circumstances he is used to maintaining the divide between practicing and playing, because he plays so many concerts. Maybe that is why he is able play so beautifully for the camera even without an audience of breathing and listening humans in the room. Or maybe it is because he is simply a giant: the kind of complete musician we should all aspire to be.

So, my blog-reading friends, I'm going to practice now.