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using spontaneous playlisting to see the do-over signs · Dits & Dahs

• Sue: Sunday, June fourteenth, ten ten. Seems like an optimal time to chat. So as I record this, it is Flag Day, which I just learned this morning, is two years younger than the celebration today of the US Army. So congratulations and celebrations to all who observe this particular day. And what comes to mind is the fact that as a musician I like to celebrate such things and sometimes first thing in the morning fire up my favorite streaming service and put in my best headphones and let loose with whatever musical inspiration comes to mind. So on today, Flag Day, and the US Army's two hundred and fifty first birthday, I chose to pick up a bit of John Phillip Sousa, US Field Artillery March. And in the way it goes with my mind, I then check out other versions and then that leads to something else and we're often running with a spontaneous DJing session of my own, as I'm sure you all do. And I use those sort of spontaneous playlisting sessions as a little temperature gauge on my mood or my intellectual awareness and physically how it makes me feel because as a musician I also use my body as an instrumentalist to communicate the beat, the time, the tempo that's being expressed through that recording. And, you know, all things considered that it's gonna be interrupted by internet and all of that. It's for the most part a fairly steady connection in my life now. So as I'm listening to this, I use a ⁓ tap meter on my phone to respond and You know, and the thing about music is is at some point the musicians gonna start tapping, whether it's their foot or their fingers or their body or their swaying, you know, they're just expressing themselves in that way. And as human beings, we all are going to be prone to not be dead on accurate in the way that a machine will be with beats. This is why we learn to play with a metronel. This is why we learn to play with other devices now in the modern world that don't forgive like a metronome does if it's not exactly on a flat surface. So we have all of this capacity as humans to screw it up, which we do, and you have to plan that into how you approach your life. As a musician, it's helpful if you gain some comfort comfort level of improvising to understand that if you perform live, whether it be to you going out on a YouTube stream live or whether you're out in a crowd, on stage, w wherever. When you play live and you make a mistake, there's no going back to clean it up. And now your brain has to come into focus on a level of awareness that says, Okay, am I gonna repeat this phrase and do I have to pay more attention? Yes. If not, let it go, because you can't lose your focus on what you're currently playing, otherwise you're gonna have a train wreck. And that's not fun. And then it's all about your recovery from that train wreck if and when that happens. Will it be something that's only Heard by the musicians with whom you're performing on stage with? Is it heard by the audience? Does it matter to you if anybody hears it? Should it? No, it shouldn't. But we do hang on to those kind of perfectionist energies as musicians, wanting to give people a live jukebox of what they might be familiar with so that it resonates with them in a comfortable place. And in the course of my lifetime. I've been on the periphery of being in the audience of when somebody on stage I'm connected to through employment, for example, usually. And when you're in attendance at those performance, first of all, it's a huge privilege that somebody's paying your way to go along. 'Cause they're not cheap tickets. They never have been. And the op and the situation in this particular morning was the fact that I also brought to bear through my playlisting the celebration of the New York Knicks win. So I brought up some Leonard Bernstein and I have a very peripheral connection with him only because my first publishing job, which came out at my came out from my internship at WNET Channel thirteen, which if any of you know me from more recent times, I have not only been an intern there in the music services department, but I was an employee in the WNET group as it's now known, Music Services Department. So there's a connection there and in the meantime I get my first professional music publishing job through this internship and I'm at the publisher that has recently taken on the catalogue of Leonard Bernstein. And so there are these complimentary tickets that come not only as a result of him being a conductor, But of a composer of his own work. And so therefore the promotion teams of these publishing houses and record labels and all of those that are fig figured in artistically to this music icon's life are in attendance at these performances. And one such one happened to be at the very end of his life. And one of the reasons why I encourage people to listen to recordings that were recorded when the orchestra or performing group is playing live is that I talk about how palpable the energy is felt throughout the entirety of the participants and the listeners, including that. And it is something that when you listen to the recording as someone who had some small personage in the audience, right? 'Cause there's probably in live, this concert probably had a couple thousand people in person, and it was the in the day when such events were often recorded live and broadcast on national television like NET, for example, a public media broadcaster. But they were still in its infancy in terms of there was no internet, for example. You know, there was no immediacy of being able to just crank something out live as it happened and have the whole globe potentially to view it. So this though was a opportunity to record the audio of the performance. And release a record, 'cause we'd almost had about a hundred years of that commerce going on. So we knew how to do those do these kind of live recordings. And and to that end, I'm listening to it this morning, reflecting on it. In a couple of ways. And one of which my personal one is the fact that the reason why it's great to listen to recorded live performances is that if you have listened to them, you sense this energy that somehow gets recorded. And you feel it. You might not fully understand the context that I share, but you feel it. There's an energy that's shared. And it's why it's so helpful if you're kind of feeling dragged out or down low to put some bit of music on that you feel uplifted somehow when you listen to it. I this is old hack stuff, right? We all know to do this. I'm not telling you anything new, but if you have a particular group that has had their recorded live performances commercially available, it might be something to check into, even if you've not been in attendance any at any of their live. Performances yourself and see what you feel because you have this familiarity of what this group or this performing group sounds like to you already. It's familiar territory. Writing out your signature. It might deviate every once in a while, but for the most part you get what you have to do to make your signature happen. So it's like that with music. And I do view it as signatures because everybody's identity in performing music is unique. And it's one of the reasons why I think that I enjoy listening to to bird and to train and hits in my kind of generation and ⁓ my love of jazz and bebop. And post Bebop. Anywho, off on that playlist tangent, go explore. But in the process of my life as a musician and of having been in the audience of such auspicious recordings, now looking back on it with the reverence that I share for the history of that that what that performance means to me and to all of those who attended, you know, it turns out this was one of the last recorded performances of his conducting. And I think most of us that had some professional association with him at the time had some understanding that that well might be the case. But it's nothing that you ever vocalize, is it? That's that person's choice. Yes, no, to continue doing what they love to do. Until the end, right? And the reality of that when you come in to listen to this recording for me is the importance of, you know, listening to your higher self. And just let it flow. And just know that no thoughts are your own. And enjoy the ride, because you're the cosmic sponge that has the choice to make. Are you gonna embrace this that thought that's come through you and make something with it? And what are you gonna make of it? It was it a negative thought that now you're gonna make it into something beautiful? Do that. But it's also very important to learn to play and recover from your mistake. And recently I've talked about the energy that comes into our lives on occasion that confuses us and disrupts us from the thought that we were having that said, just lost my train of thought because you heard a sound, because the light flashed, because you just blanked, right? You looked, you changed your view and all of a sudden, you know, your mind blanked. And to understand that there are times when that is not something that you caused. with your physio or your mental or your psychiatric head caused to happen. That is an external energy projected on you just to do that. Because you were just about to capitulate something that as far as the universe goes was gonna be highly important as to your bigger, better growth of you. The one you love. And to be able to go back re-roll that moment on the tape and replay it. Yeah, I'm that old. Okay. Just people come with me on this one. And to be able to remember what that was and then finalize the thought. It's like it's a completion of a manifestation is what it is. These are the things that you need to have come to fruition in order for your life to proceed as you want it to proceed. Don't let anybody distract you from that. And as a musician you learn I can share my experience of being an improvising musician, someone who, you know, is a moderate amount of experience playing out in public on a various levels of amateur and professionals and I mean, living in the New York metropolitan area, sometimes if you get good enough as a musician, you have the privilege of playing amongst the musicians that are working full time at Lincoln Center, for example. You know, which I consider to be the pinnacle of a great amount. of world class musicians come in to play and get paid for. Of which I'm not. But occasion they like to play, you know, neighborhood union gigs or community orchestra gigs or something like that, just to keep the chops up off season, let's say. And you get the opportunity as a young musician to perform at a much higher level. This is why it's so helpful to be in and around your development as a person with, you know, people of all generations and experiences, because you get to kind of vibe in those auras of those souls in such a way to say, ⁓ that fits or, ⁓ no, I gotta do some more work to get there. You know, it's all good stuff, right? So now you get to a place where you play live and you bobble. You can literally put the blame on anything you wish. You know, could be the cold air in the room all of a sudden made your reeds stop vibrating properly. You know, you can do all you can to as a human to kinda mitigate those kind of physical potentials and then Still you make mistakes. Well, what are you gonna do now? You can't stop and tell the band to stop and ⁓ can we play that again? I mean it depends on the train wreck, I have to admit. If the tra if the locomotive just goes off the cliff, meaning the whole group decided to have a train wreck about this event, then yes, that is probably the moment when the conductor or the person in charge of the musical group has to say, Okay, folks, we're gonna do a do over. But mm 99% of the time as a musician, you're in a situation, if you bobble, it's gone. You gotta keep moving forward because you have to maintain your focus. However, you have to be able to do a forensic view of that bobble to better understand how to prepare for the future when that happens again. Because now you understand it's not an if it's gonna happen, it's when it's gonna happen. What are you prepared in your life to recover that thought? And that's what I'm talking about here. And that level awareness might be aided by starting by raising what you know you can do, which is to listen to a recorded piece of music that you enjoy listening to. In the case of me wanting to raise my vibration, for lack of a better term, to just to lift me up, I go to this particular recording of a live performance because the music alone and its composition is the lift. And I think the easiest classical parallel I can give you is Ravel's Bolero. It is a ninety and a half minute sonic crescendo of orchestration. ⁓ with this parallel recording that I was listening to this re morning, I was also reflecting on the opportunity of this reflection being someone that was there reflecting on that moment. But to be in the headspace of an artist, a creator, whether they are performer of others' music or the creator of music that has been performed and recorded to have the opportunity not only to listen to that re performance thirty years on and evaluate how they vibe with it, which is also important, but to have the opportunity to r do another performance of that music and have that recorded as another legacy. And the other recording that I listed listened to this morning on this playlisting spontaneously Which now the conductor, Bernstein, is also the conductor of music that he composed that he's revisiting, and he revisited it as he loved to do in a musical setting was the original, and then he made it a symphonic or operatic setting. And then the treatment by which he expressed his own music with this new view also changed the way that he interpreted the musical phrasing. Which it's logical when you think about it. You know, you're gonna be in alignment with this is ⁓ I'm approaching my own music that has survived and grown in popularity with the public with this setting, and I'm gonna also alter how it is performed because I can. Because I'm the conductor, right? Everybody's gotta follow me. Or to their best of the ability follow. And it speaks to overall the life that you can have being in your happy place, no matter how you choose to embrace music in your life. 'Cause that's all I know. And I'm celebrating the events of my life that have contributed to my ev my very existence here, which is that I am a American citizen whose family has lived here in the United States since what was before the United States is ⁓ North American co ⁓ colony is around sixteen twenty one to be exact. And it turns out, based on what I've learned about my family lineage, is that I am living in the state to which they initially immigrated, not in the same part of the state. And I'm grateful to have that lineage here. Whatever it means, I don't know. So for those that have come along on this mundane musical rant this morning, it's all about the summary of everything is just to say that of course to have grace and patience with yourself. But if you're curious about how you can raise your awareness when things happen that you need to rectify, because it wasn't the way that you visualize things were gonna go. That ability r recover and improvise is about raising your awareness somehow, way, shape, or form. And it might simply mean that it's time for you to look within and dote on yourself a little bit by yourself. Because, you know, whether you're in a relationship or not, you still have to stand on your own. And that will help you sit in a more relaxed place because now you've raised your awareness to a level that's sort of on tickover. You're used to being a little bit more aware now because you're aware of the fact that you're gonna lose your train of thought or you're gonna be interrupted. And there may be a larger reason for that and getting back on track. That's the most important thing. And then how you process that with everybody else is your business, obviously, but in some cases it's just a matter of understanding what you know to be true of your destiny. Everybody has a destiny, so why should anybody think that it's okay to poo poo it or tell them that's not their destiny? It's about staying true to yourself and shining. That's all. And the way to do that is to make sure that you're keeping yourself relatively positive with the s actions that you do in your life. As small a scale as it needs to be, just to tune you up a bit. That said, I have ⁓ mundately yammered on for enough, and it's ⁓ time to go. Go away. Have a nice day somewhere else, and just know I'm grateful that you stayed for this amount of time. Thanks for listening.