My German Adventure

On Friday afternoon I flew out of Korea, told the immigration office that I was never to return, handed in my Alien Registration Card, and began the 30 hour travel journey away. Included in that time was a 13 hour and 50 minute flight, my longest so far, and hopefully the last flight of that length that I will ever take.

Cut ahead to Saturday afternoon and you will find me in Stuttgart alive and well, with my luggage happily arriving at the same time, and my lovely boyfriend waiting at the gate for me. Stuttgart could not have started better. I spent two days getting to know my new city with my boyfriend, enjoying the fact that we now live on the same continent, going out for coffee, eating dinner together, and wondering aloud about the dramatic political protest and heavy handed Polizei presence throughout.

But alas, all good things must come to an end. With the arrival of Sunday evening I had to allow for the departure of Valentin. Waving goodbye from a train, although significantly easier than from separate sides of the security line at an airport, was still a harsh reminder of what is truly happening in my life right now. I have just moved to a new continent, to a new country and city in which I know no one. Even Valentin lives in a different country, three hours away by bus. I really am starting an entirely new life here.

Let me be the first to say that I love it here. I don't think this feeling is the manifestation of round one of culture shock: the honeymoon period. I think that I am aware of the difficulties, stress, and differences between this home, my last home, and my true home back in the states, and how this will profoundly impact me in the months to come. But I can say with honesty that this type of city, this type of country, this type of lifestyle? This is what I've been craving. Even for a city considered to be not nearly as beautiful as the other options in Germany, Stuttgart is lovely. Even with the weather bordering on foggy clouds, rain and sleet, and snow in the night, Stuttgart is welcoming.

I have no concerns about my family visiting here. I know they will love it. I can't wait for my friends to come see me, I know that we will have much to do. Centrally located between Germany, France, Switzerland, and even Italy to the south, Stuttgart is in the ideal location to jump around from country to country.

My first interview went well and I hope that this time next month I will be chronicling about my first few days of work. I'm meeting some people for coffee tomorrow morning who share similar interests and job titles, so maybe they will come to be friends. But I'm most excited about my bouldering technique course that begins on Thursday. Although it's quite expensive I've decided to commit to a 10 week women's only bouldering class. 5-6 women, 90 minutes a week, and one personal trainer. I can't wait to learn more about how to do the movements that are necessary for climbing. I can't wait to immerse myself in an athletic, adventurous, and encouraging world. I can't wait to push myself physically in a way that's reflective of how I am pushing myself emotionally and socially with this move.

There are so many things I'm realising that I want to do with my life. This happens to everyone, I'm sure. But there's something about moving to a new country that really helps you start over. Or so I'm told. All I know is that I'm feeling more optimistic than ever.

So begins my German adventure.

Being: When Becoming is too much work

In less than a month I will be moving to Stuttgart. I will once again be packing up my things and heading out on a one-way ticket to a new country. However, unlike when I came to Korea 12 months ago, this time I will not be arriving to an organized orientation, established job, and furnished apartment. This time I will be landing without pomp and circumstance. I will be venturing through the airport alone, taking public transit alone, finding my storage site, checking in to my hostel, and finding a cell phone store alone. I will be on my own as I focus on who I want to become, on where I want to live in the city, and on finding a job.

But right now I'm thrilled. I'm getting excited in a way that I didn't really get when I came to Korea. I'm considering Germany as more of a solid place to land, not a temporary pit stop on the way to something else. Sure I'm having troubles visualizing myself being there forever, but I absolutely see myself trying to get established and locked down in the area. I'm researching and enrolling in intensive German courses, ones that last from 08:00-12:45 Monday through Fridays. I am planning which schools to visit and drop resumes off at first. I am going to commit to a health insurance plan before arriving. I have all the citizenship paperwork figured out. I'm doing everything I can possibly think of, anything that can be done from abroad, in order to feel as comfortable as possible when I arrive. I'm doing this all knowing that you can't prepare for everything, it's going to be hard and awkward and lonely, I understand that I might not even find a job. Maybe I'll have to run home with my tail between my legs, find some temporary work, and then head back to Switzerland in June.

Who knows.

But today that's the enticing part of this whole moment. Nobody knows what will happen. I don't know what will happen. I can try to predict, prepare for, and internalize how to respond to the things that happen, but preparation can only go so far.

So today I will simply let myself sink into the butterflies, ease into the energy and excitement of the moment. Today I will let myself be happy and bubbling with the possiblities of what might be, what can be, what will.

Today I will be satisfied with being. That's enough.

What an EPIK Opportunity!

Busan, here I come!

It’s official: by this time next month I will be living in Busan, South Korea, teaching English to a bunch of Korean students, and having the time of my life! This is such an amazing opportunity and I am very excited to be taking this step forward. In a world that is so closely connected thanks to the Internet and other technologies, it is extremely important that we take the time to really understand and appreciate other cultures and ways of life. This year abroad in Korea is going to help me do just that. I hope to gain a new understanding of different educational systems and learning styles while simultaneously immersing myself if a completely foreign way of life.

I am excited about the students, the culture, and the location. I can’t wait to meet other teachers like myself, make new friends, and grow as a person. I am thrilled to be able to see new sites, live on the ocean, and to eat a wildly different type of food for a year.

At the same time I am nervous: I have never been so far away from my family, I have never taught English as a second language in such an in depth and important way. I am worried that I will struggle with the new alphabet, language, and way of life.

But if we never step out of our comfort zone we will never grow! So I will take these fears and trepidations and use the energy they develop for good: I will prepare as best I can, spend as much time with my family and friends as possible, and be ready to leap into the unknown!

If you are interested, I have recently published a new website devoted to my career, teaching philosophy, studio, and a blog devoted specifically to music, musical careers, and musical opportunities available to musicians today. You might notice that the blog post “Black Note Syndrome” has been taken down from this site and moved to that one. If you want to see more posts similar to that, make sure to check up on my new site (krystlejane.weebly.com) under the page “Pedagogy Corner.”

Thanks from the wandering musician,

KrystleJane  

High Desert Shoot Out

“And they say don’t forget where you come from, don’t die holding onto your words. Cuz you know that you’ve got the whole world to change, but understand who you’ve gotta change first.”

So this last weekend I spent all of my time in Rawlins Wyoming shooting pool and hanging out with friends. As you may know my time in Saratoga last year at an extremely similar tournament was a turning point for me in terms of the role that billiards plays in my life, and Rawlins was a continuation of that. Shooting in the Sportsman bracket I was able to play some good, and some very bad, pool—with poor timing for each of these moments. That is, when playing the young man (who I give props to for participating in the adult tournament as well as the youth tournament this year), I was breaking and running and shooting extremely well. I needn’t have done that, I could have just coasted through there and been fine. But then when moving on to the next match against an older woman (older than me, not old as in elderly) I was making stupid errors and missing important shots—i.e. the eight ball… but in a race to three, down 0-2 I managed to pull my head out of my proverbial ass and start shooting, winning up to hill-hill. But, alas, I lost the match due to a poorly controlled cue ball scratching when my opponent only had two balls left on the table. Saddest of days.

Or maybe not. Pool is such a mental game that it is very common for you to get trapped inside of your own head, become to cerebral and nervous, and miss out on simple shots that you can usually do in your sleep. I once heard a pro say that pool is easy, all you have to do is make your shot. There are no hard shots, there are just shots to make. When you have the mentality, and the experience to back it up, that each shot is something you’ve made in the past and is easy enough, then you will start winning games, matches, and tournaments.

I experienced a similar mentality on Sunday morning when I was entered in the “Hard Luck 9 Ball” tournament for those players that had lost out of their original tourneys. This handicapped tournament (race to 4, 6, and 8 for the sportsman, classics, and experts, respectively) was much more to my liking. Barbox 9 ball is much easier than big table 9 ball, for me personally, and it’s something that I thoroughly enjoy playing. I got a fortunate draw for this tournament, set to play an expert who decided not to show up I got a bye for my first round. The second round I shot against a classic player in a match that I am by no means proud of. I should have ran those four games easily, but instead I made stupid errors and barely scratched by with a match score of 4-4 (the classic player needed to run 6 games). I was playing on tables outside of the main tourney area in the Eagles that were much slower, less reliable as far as table roll and rail responsiveness went, and that had a bright glare from the car outside the main door reflecting the sunlight into our eyes. Needless to say, that wasn’t a great match.

Immediately after that match though I had to go up against Shane, an expert player from the Fort Collins area. I lost this match 7-1 because, quite honestly, I am awful at the 9 ball “push” shot, which I avoided to my detriment, giving up ball in hand in two games on racks that were easy run-outs. That being said, when I walked up to the table with my three cues (one breaker, one shooter, and one jump cue) some of the guys were giving me shit about having a jump cue, so I told them it was just a present and that I just carry it around for funzies. Not quite the truth. I used that jump cue successively two or three times in that match, getting myself out of predicaments that were the result of poor cue control. My break was one point, I dropped two or three balls on every break, popping the cue ball up in the air on contact with the rack and dropping it down directly in the middle of the table. This is a break that I’ve learned from watching Shane van Boening shoot countless matches on youtube, and it’s something I’m quite proud of. That being said I had so many unfortunate rolls on the break that despite stopping the cue where it needs to be in the middle, often a wing ball would roll up right next to it and block my next shot on the one. Angst. So obviously I lost that match, taking 5-8^th place and leaving a mere $60 richer.

While in Rawlins I got to spend more time with my buddy Jim Calderon and all the other players I met in Saratoga last year. I was surprised at how many of them remembered me, many approached me within the first hour of being at the tournament to ask how I was doing and see what bracket I was shooting in. You meet so many awesome people in these pool tournaments and this year I had the awesome opportunity to meet Rodney “The Rocket” Morris. But, being the painfully shy person that I am, I didn’t spend too much time with him and Raj Hundal, instead I just focused on pool the whole weekend—which was, in fact, the only reason why I was there. Kimberly and Marc Griffiths from Str8 Shots were in attendance to run the youth tournament on Sunday, and they kindly treated Jim and me to a dinner on Saturday night. I love talking with these two as they are just as passionate about pool and as hopeful and dedicated to the future of the sport as I am. They are supportive of all levels, especially the youth and collegiate levels, of the game and are working hard to advance billiards into something more respectable and visible to the public eye, and I fully support all of their endeavors.

Billiards has gone from a passing fancy that I participated in at my home bar when drinking with my family and friends, to something serious that I am dedicated to on a serious level. Like music, where I spend three hours a day practicing my flute and piccolo on a variety of repertoire and technical passages, I can easily get to a table and play pool for hours on end. I lack a comprehensive knowledge of the game as far as cue control, English, and pattern play go, and in terms of this I seriously miss having a coach that I could meet consistently to work through these portions of my game. Unlike music where I have been studying with teachers for the past six years, pool is something that I just picked up on the way through my life. I have a good, long stroke and a great break (or so I am told) which means that I have a great foundation to go off of, but until I get a bit more cerebral about my cue control and position play I am afraid I will always be stuck at the level I am currently at. Which means that now is the time to start researching, reading, and studying DVD’s about the sport, and applying my intellectual rigor and fortitude to the game that I love.

Being a musician has taught me dedication, passion, and focus; being a billiards player has effected my personality, sense of humor, and physical abilities at the table; and being a bartender has transformed my self into an easy-going, talkative, and expressive individual. Combining all of these things together into who I am, Krystle Jane, means that I have the places to go, people to see, and the world to change.

Can't Hold Us

“Here we go back, this is the moment, tonight is the night, we’ll fight ‘till it’s over. So we’ll put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us, like the ceiling can’t hold us!”

So I finally figured out what I’m going to be doing with myself after this festival. I decided to join my friend Ilana as she goes to Prague for a few days before returning to Rome for five days before hopping on my flight home. This seems to be a good compromise for what I had originally wanted to do with this extra time and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s really fortunate that the money conversion in Prague, the dollar to crown ratio, is in my favor for once. The euro costs more than a dollar right now, so everything in Rome is super more expensive than it would be in America—without even considering the fact that I’m trapped in the tourist quarter where things would be marked up in price anyways.

I’ve been having a lot of fun here these last two days, I went to the Collosseum yesterday and then to the Palatine and Roman Forum today, so naturally I took all of the pictures. Which is actually a bit strange for me. Usually I don’t take pictures of everything, I’m more of a live and let be, enjoy things for the moment and try to build memories type of person. However, that means that I usually don’t have any proof of the good times that I am having. Proof is a bad word, no picture memories? I’m not sure. For whatever reason I decided that this trip I need to take more pictures. So I’ve been taking pictures of everything that I think looks cool. I don’t take a lot of time with it because I don’t want to be that guy holding my friends back every five minutes, plus I just don’t really have the patience for it anyways. But if you are my friend on facebook you will have seen the overwhelmingly vast amount of pictures that I have uploaded in the last weeks.

Pretty badass, I think.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go to Tivoli, which is an hour and a half bus ride from here. Rick Steve says that to fully enjoy that experience you need to spend at least two and a half hours there. Add in the hour and a half bus ride back and we’ll be gone almost all day. Which is unfortunate for the festival, as they scheduled rehearsal at 15:00. I’ll be enjoying my cultural experience at that time, so I probably won’t show up to rehearsal. Not that they need me anyways. ;)

Rome is really starting to tantalize me. Sitting on the roof of my hotel drinking wine with my new friends is really the only way to spend my time, I feel, and I am going to be really loathe to leave here. I didn’t manage to find my pool hall today though, so maybe I will change my mind later on as I start going through real withdrawals there. It feels good playing my flute everyday, but not as good as it feels playing pool everyday. What does that say about my future? Who knows, but right now I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing and see where it takes me. I never thought I’d be going to Prague for a vacation adventure, so this wandering musician is keeping true to her name.

Ciao.

Looking ahead

Everybody that I have told about my upcoming trip to Rome has asked me if I’m nervous, excited, or worried about travelling alone. They are all excited for me; they have all said that they will be thinking about me and that I should be careful while I’m gone. And all I’ve been able to say is that I’m super excited about it, that it’s going to be the adventure of a lifetime, and that of course I will be careful. I’ve got a good head on my shoulders, I’ll be fine meeting new people, and everything else that I can think to say to make them feel better. All the while I’m standing there thinking about how I should feel more excited, or how my nerves should be eating at me. Maybe I should be more stressed out, or maybe I should be more worried about travelling alone. But honestly it still doesn’t feel real. This trip of mine. I’ve known about it since October and it’s always been one of those trips in the future, at the back of my mind, sort of things that always has a surreal quality. But now it’s becoming reality, I really am hopping on a plane on Friday and flying across the world. And it’s starting to sink in. And damn am I getting excited!

I’ve been assigned to play the second flute part for Haydn’s London Trio for two flutes and bassoon, a piece that will be played five or six times while I’m there. The repertoire that the symphony will be playing includes Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony, Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun, two different Beethoven symphonies, and a handful of other pieces. There are dozens of different opera scenes and arias that we will be playing, including portions of La Traviata, Bizet’s Carmen, and Mozart’s Magic Flute. Although I won’t be playing for all of these performances, I was signed on as a section flute—which essentially means that I will be rotated in to different parts throughout the festival—I will be there for all of the performances. I’m excited about all the cultural expeditions that will be happening, and damn straight I’m going to go to all of them. Regardless of how late I was out the night before I will be up at 7 to go check out all that Rome has to offer. Even if it’s not considered the “cool” thing to do, many of my colleagues will be from Italy why would they want to bother going on these trips if that’s where they are from? Well I’m American, from a small town in Minnesota, and I will be immersing myself in every element of Roman culture that I possibly can while I’m gone.

I keep joking about how maybe I’ll find a job and stay out there. Maybe I’ll find a professional opportunity, a paid gig, that I can’t turn down and I’ll become an expatriate. I’ve been considering applying for a Fulbright to study abroad in England after I finish my masters here in America to get a performers certificate from a European school. Although I feel burnt out now, tired of school, looking for a change, something new and exciting to do beyond music. I have a feeling that if I were to go abroad for my next level of schooling that cultural change alone my reignite my passion for music. But that seems like a big gamble. This is where the Rome Festival comes in, if I fall in love with the attitude abroad, with the musicians and maestro(a)’s, and the culture maybe I will stick it out there for a few more years to see where life takes me.

Who knows, that seems to be the theme of this blog (and my life) lately. I’m starting my 23^rd year of life with my biggest adventure yet, who knows what will happen in the next few years? And who wants to. Really. I’m just going to keep living my life and seeing where it takes me. It’s been working out pretty well so far.  

Adventure Time in Saratoga, WY

Pool has always been a pretty large part of my life: I grew up playing in bars while my mom worked and while my family just hung out downtown (small towns allow small children into their small bars). I distinctly remember playing pool with my first crush, barely able to see over the table, and the joy I had in winning the “game,” (Although let’s be honest, it was not a legitimate game of pool, throwing the balls around and hitting at them with bar sticks). In high school I participated in leagues, we lied about my age so that I could play in different bars around town on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights (15 to 18 isn’t that big of a difference, right?) and I played in countless different bar tournaments. I bought my first intermediate flute with money from pool tournaments and I played pool every night from as soon as the bus dropped me off at the bar until I went to bed. Pool permeated my life in a way that didn’t negatively affect my school, music, or sports. I somehow managed to do it all while playing ridiculous amounts of pool around town.

Unfortunately my undergraduate degree brought on insane amounts of practice with the flute: rehearsals, concerts, and classes. Studying both music and philosophy I rarely had the time to go to the gym and eat food, much less go to a bar to throw down some money and play some pool. So for years I took a pool hiatus 9 months out of the year.

It was awful.

But then I moved to Laramie to pursue a graduate degree in flute performance. It was here that I saw a sign for a pool tournament on campus, a tournament I enthusiastically signed up. Things weren’t going well between my then-boyfriend and me and I needed to do something that reminded me of who I was. This tournament was it. I later learned that it was a regional qualifier, the very same tournament that brought me to the ACUI regionals in Salt Lake City where I finished undefeated as the number one seed for nationals. Pool made a sudden, unexpected comeback into my life and I have shamelessly embraced it. Now I play in weekly tournaments here in Laramie, sometimes traveling down to Fort Collins for the tougher competition and the better tables. I have been watching professional matches on YouTube in between practicing the flute at school and at night while I wind down from the day with a glass of wine. So it’s not surprising that I have been jumping at the opportunity to travel to see the pro’s play and to test myself against better competition.

My first trip of this sort happened on March 23^rd when I drove down to the Denver pool hall Felt to see Nick Varner and Thorsten Hohmann play, with the intentions of playing in the 8-ball barbox tournament. Unfortunately due to the weather I showed up too late for the tournament to work out, but watching Nick and Thorsten play and hearing what they had to say about pool got me even more excited about the sport. There’s just something about watching a live match over a YouTube match that is just super exciting.

Which brings us to this last weekend. Oddly enough the University of Wyoming had Good Friday off for an Easter break, which turned out to be a convenient day off for me as a pool fan! I had known about the sixth annual Platte Valley Open pool tournament in Saratoga for a while, but I decided at the last minute that I wanted to shoot in the tournament. The final draw was hearing that Shane Van Boening was going to be there, because Shane is the pool player of my dreams right now. I have watched almost every one of his matches on YouTube and am always on the lookout for new matches of his online—whether nine ball, ten ball, barbox or large table, straight pool, anything. So hearing that he was going to be shooting pool at a place that was mere hours from my apartment was enough to get me to hop in my car and drive. I decided to try my hand at the Classic division and somehow managed to get in. With a $100 entrance fee, a $120 motel room fee, $30 for gas, and money for food and drinks, I was definitely stretching my financial situation for this tournament. And it was so worth it.

Although I lost my first match to Richard Case, a man that I would later become friends with, my first day in Saratoga was amazing. I was there with my buddies Scott Maloney and Delilah Ye Feng, and was in the midst of cheering on Scott when I heard that Shane Van Boening and Rodney Morris were in the finals of a mini-day tournament at the local bar, Duke’s. I shamelessly bailed on Scott to go watch the match. Shane and Rodney were playing a strange hybrid of 8-ball and 9-ball that EJ had devised solely for this tournament and that I had never seen before. So, unsurprisingly, I stood by a fellow pool player and struck about a conversation about the ball colors and the numbers. You see, for this Saratoga game (that’s what they dubbed this unique hybrid) the numbers 1-6, 7-12, and 13 were used, omitting the 14 and 15 balls—and the numbers did not match up to the typical ball numbers. 1 in normal pool is yellow, 1 in this game was green, and etc. So I asked the fellow next to me which was which and we started chatting (I think the ball colors matched up with snooker ball colors, but I’m still not sure).

After the match was over I kept chatting with the same pool player until an acquaintance of mine from Laramie wandered over and challenged me to a game. I didn’t want to be rude to my new friend, Jim Calderon, and just go play with this other guy, but he waved me ahead so I played a game. I won the match after playing much better then I had in my match earlier that night. Typical. I always shoot better in the hours after a tournament. It was then that Jim seemed to take an interest in my playing and he and I started shooting against each other.

Over the course of the next few days I learned more about my game from Jim then I have from any one other player. Because you see I never had a coach or anything like that. Nobody decided to teach me pool; I simply picked it up and worked it out. I’m always complimented on my stroke, which is long and even, and lately as I have been entering the pool world I’ve had a few people ask who taught me. But I can’t really say, so I say I taught myself. That’s why playing with Jim was a fresh new experience for me—he gave me good advice about my bridge hand, he questioned my shot choices, forced me to think about my leave, had me re-do shots that I missed until I got it, and just in general helped me out a lot with game. But not in an obnoxious way; instead we just played pool, sometimes I won, sometimes he won, and he corrected any problems that came up.

You might ask yourself why I, a young 22 year old girl, would drive to the middle of nowhere to watch pool, play pool, watch more pool, and then play pool until 3 a.m. and then 6 a.m. the next day. And honestly, all I can say is that you aren’t a pool player if you have to ask that question.

Despite only winning one match in my division, and honestly shooting pretty awful pool on my part, I am so glad that I went out to Saratoga. On Saturday I started playing pool at 10:30, took a brief break around noon to get a new tip on my cue, started up again at 1, and played until 4 when I then went and watched matches until midnight. After midnight I went straight back to the bar and proceeded to play with Jim until 6 in the morning. The only thing sending me to bed was the knowledge that I had to wake up at 10 a.m. to check out of my sketchy motel; otherwise I would have kept playing all night long. I watched Shane Van Boening and Rodney Morris battle once each day of my elongated weekend, I watched Raj Hundal, Stevie Moore and countless others play. I played for so many hours that I honestly couldn’t even tally them up. And I got to meet tons of people who were passionate about pool as well.

Many of these people were people like Jim, players in the Master’s division who seemed surprised at my passion for pool and my insatiable appetite for the sport. I learned their names (promptly forgetting most of them, unfortunately, I have a terrible memory for names), watched them shoot, and talked to them afterwards. I watched matches with them and talked about how when I watch a pro match I like to hypothetically run the table in my mind—picking a pattern of balls (1-3-5-4-2-6-7-8 for example) imagining what my cue control would be—and then I would compare that to what the player did. One player in particular would ask me at each table what I would do, or in the middle of a table how I would fix a problem ball or etc., and I was always proud when Shane or Rodney would do exactly what I said I would do. Hypothetically of course, I can see the shots, but I am working on the cue control to make them happen. But honestly, just being able to predicate the shots of a champion like Shane Van Boening really makes me feel good about my future in the sport.

I am excited to play in future tournaments, I am excited about the prospect of practicing and bettering my game, and I am excited about where I could be in the next few years. The power of youth is infectious and this is the first time I have noticed it: at 22 years old, I can do anything I want with my life, I have a long time to live it, and the open ended nature of it that I have bemoaned in the past finally feels liberating and exciting. I can honestly say that I hope to make something of my pool playing while also working on my music. Maybe someday I can gig at pool halls with a jazz combo and play in tournaments on the side.

That would be a good life. 

Success

 I have been invited to the Rome Festival this summer as a section flute! Despite the fact that this means I will not be getting any solos and that I will be rotated on parts (a.k.a. I will not be playing on every piece) I could not be happier. This means that I will have more spare time to travel, work with chamber ensembles, hang out with fellow musicians/dancers/designers and just enjoy life! Now all there is to do is learn some Italian and keep on practicing!

I will get to combine my passion for music, history, and architecture with my very poorly developed passion for travel. I have wanted to go abroad for years now, and I'm glad I finally realized that I might have to combine my career with my vacations because here I am planning a trip to Italy in June. The chance to meet so many new people, to finally begin a real career in orchestral music while also working on expanding my skills into different musical fields, and just thoroughly enjoy myself (being selfish enough to only think about myself for a month or two) are just driving me crazy right now. 

Rome!!

Now is the time for me to focus on the mundane, but extremely important, elements of finances. Contributions to me for this festival are tax deductible and I can use all the help I can get, if anyone is interested leave me a note in the comments and I will get you more information. Perhaps I will set up a benefit concert, pick up a few more jobs, or just try to eat as little as possible for the next year in preparation for the costs of the trip. Regardless of how, I will be going to Italy this summer.

It still feels surreal. Excitement. 

When in Rome

Well today I finally recorded my audition CD for the Rome Festival this summer. If all goes well they will give me money and I will fly to Italy this summer. While there I would perform in multiple symphony concerts, be a part of a fully staged opera and ballet, and I would have the chance to perform in master-classes and in chamber ensembles with other members of the festival. Ages vary from pre-pubescent to octogenarians and members come from all over the globe.

Did I mention it’s in Italy? Yeah. So I’m definitely crossing my fingers on that one.

Which brings me to a thought: is it a good thing to keep ones expectations low, in order to not be let down? As I’m preparing my audition CD and thinking about the festival I can’t help but get excited (I mean, I’ve been wanting to travel abroad for years now, and this is finally the time and place for it). But then I also think that maybe I should keep this application to myself, not talk about the possibility of being accepted, and just in general pretend that nothing exciting is happening. If I do that and don’t get accepted then it won’t be as big of a deal…right?

Well, no. I don’t think that’s the case. I definitely used to—I remember applying for graduate schools, auditioning for competitions, and just in general doing exciting and new things, and downplaying them so severely in my mind that (I was convinced) I wouldn’t be bothered if things didn’t turn out well for me. But really… who was I kidding? Besides myself obviously. I applied for graduate schools and would tell anyone that it wasn’t a big deal, that I’m just applying for these schools and that it really doesn’t matter to me. It’s as if the very thought that that other person would know that I was invested, excited, and terrified by something, well, terrified me. Why did we feel the need to cheapen our goals and ourselves by pretending they don’t matter? I know, I know, there are plenty of people out there that are arrogant, egotistical, self-serving, and attention whores, but that doesn’t mean that others have to be quiet, self-effacing, and overly modest about what’s going on in our own lives.

It’s an attempt to not be hurt by bad news, rejection, failure…we pretend it doesn’t matter because it matters so much that not succeeding will cause pain. Humanity doesn’t do well with pain (unless you’re a masochist I suppose). I remember when I did not get accepted to my top choice music school last year. I got the letter, kept a stiff upper lip for about an hour or so and then broke down sobbing hysterically. I felt like I had failed life, not just been not accepted to a school. Pretending that it didn’t matter or wasn’t important beforehand had not prepared me for that blow. In fact it made me even less capable of handling it because everyone around me was confused—when you tell your friends and family that something doesn’t matter to you and subsequently freak out and have an emotional breakdown when that thing doesn’t go the way you had planned, they don’t quite understand how to respond.

I’m not saying that everyone should run around wearing their emotions on their sleeves, incessantly blabbing about what they have going on in their lives to the point of exhausting and boring their friends and family to tears. What I am saying is that if something is exciting and important and meaningful to you… let someone know. If something is important to you it should be important to your friends and family. If it’s not, then something is wrong and you have other (more important) things to be worrying about.

I’m excited for my opportunity to spend the summer in Rome. I hope that once I get there I will have time on weekends to travel to all sorts of different countries. I plan to make the most of the experience, meet new people, make new friends, and maybe even find or make a job for myself as a musician abroad. I will never get these opportunities if I don’t try, and I will never get the support of my friends and family if I constantly downplay these opportunities and pretend they don’t matter.