long tones are like spot shots

As a graduate student studying flute performance I don’t have a lot of time for, well, anything. Taking three classes, working on my thesis, helping teach four classes, building up a studio, and the never-ending stream of rehearsals, practicing, and audition prep, all combines together to create a busy and hectic lifestyle. But despite all of this, and the constant needs of sleep, food, and gym time, I still manage to find the time to play pool, to work on my game, to watch matches and learn more about the sport.

But why? How do you balance out these two passions that take so much time? What do I get out of pool in the world of music, and how does music help my pool game? Because it is not a parasitic relationship- studying the flute doesn’t not directly impede my pool game and vice versa. There are so many commonalities between the structures of both activities that doing one directly affect the other.

Long tones are like spot shots.

When I’m in my office playing long tones it’s really easy for my mind to wonder, my focus to leave, and my work ethic to lag. Who cares if that Eb doesn’t sound as clear as the D or C below it? Why does it matter? Well it matters because of the level I’m at, if I want to make a living off of music than it is the little things like this that I need to focus on. Miniscule little elements of music that the average listener wouldn’t even regard or notice are the focus of intense hours of repetition in the practice room. I like to start my flute sessions with these long tones, to remind myself of how to play each note on the instrument, where to place the air stream, and how to keep the notes sounding good. Sometimes I wander and don’t want to do that, but then I remind myself of the spont shots that I love to start my pool sessions off with. I place a ball (usually the 9 or 8 ball, or 10 ball—depending one what game I’m focusing on that day) on the spot, put the cue one diamond in on the short rail and two diamonds up on the long rail and shoot the target ball into the corner. I alternate from each side of the table in groups of 5, and don’t stop until I’ve made the shot and put the cue where I wanted it 5/5 times on each side three times. But after shooting this shot so many times what’s the point, there are harder shots for me to focus on. I use the spot shot to remind myself how to stroke, I focus on any hitches in my stroke, I analyze my bridge, I check in on my stance and my shoulders, all of the little things that need to stay the same for every shot I make sure are the same on every spot shot. Just like I want my Eb to sound the same as my C, I want my stroke on that tight cut to be the same as on my bank. I’m new to pool, so maybe that isn’t necessarily what the pros want, but it’s what I want. When I keep my stroke long and even I make shots more consistently and with more ease than when I worry and chop the shot.

Practice is practice and it means intelligent, focused work:

Anyone can sit down, or stand up, in a small room and play the flute for three hours every day. It’s really just a matter of scheduling that time and going to the room. But not everyone uses that time wisely. Rather than running every piece from start to finish, the acute musician will focus on the elements of their sound, technique, and repertoire that they are struggling with. They will run long tones for hours evening out their tone, play every single type of scale at every possible rhythm and articulation, they will do breathing exercises and work out, all before even looking at their repertoire. The savvy musicians understands that it’s not a matter of playing each individual piece of music thousands of time, but rather of playing the scales, long tones, and articulation exercises that are applied to all different pieces of music. If you know scales then you know that section of your piece where the flute is just playing broken thirds of a major scale. It’s the same with pool, pattern play is important (running the rack), but first you need to be able to do a spot shot. You need to have a good stance, an even stroke, and a good eye. Practicing the individual shots that you struggle with and that constantly come up in your game is like practicing scales, it’s a mindset of work on miniscule elements of the game and of the instrument. I would never have played pool like this if I wasn’t first and foremost a musician.

You only live once, time:

It doesn’t matter how focused your practice time is, you need to put in the time itself. Pool and music both require consistent work, daily practice, and lots of it. You can’t skip a day of music and expect to pick up your flute sounding the same as you did before the break. It’s unfortunate. I always hoped that when I got better I could take time off and still come back to the same level as before, but it’s the other way around. The more finesse and sophistication there is to your sound the more you need to work every day to keep it. It’s the same with pool, as I build up my cue control, my speed control, and my pattern play, I find that skipping a few weekdays really pushes me back to square one again. Music is no fickle mistress, and pool is just as demanding. But there are 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, one can schedule the time in if one wants to. Flute practice takes up three hours of my day, pool takes one to two, and everything else fits in that 19-20 hour time period of consciousness. When I finish my masters degree I will have more time for pool, but until then it gets the backburner, as far as time goes at the table.

But the time I spend in the practice room and the time I spend in the pool hall build off of each other: my music focus alters my pool focus, the joy I get from pool has been reflected in the joy I get from the flute, the work ethic, time, focus, and dedication from both parts of me have grown to a feverish pitch and I will continue to work on both pool and music.

Being a musician does not mean I can’t be a pool player, and shooting pool does not detract from my role as a musician. With a little energy and focus I have been able to do both, so far, and we’ll see where it takes me in the future.

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.

How refreshing this optimism is!

A new year!

It’s amazing how different things have been this year compared to last year. I’m at the same school, studying with the same professors, and focusing on the same things: music and pool. But yet things couldn’t be more different, new friends, roommates, and colleagues. Combine that with a new work ethic and renewed focus and passion and this year can’t be any more different from the last. I am disappointed in myself for letting last year decay into the awful musical, personal, and emotional hellhole that it gradually descended into, but I can’t change how things were in the past—al I can do is look forward.

And damn, does looking forward feel good. I still have no idea where I will be next year, although there are some faint outlines of potential living situations coming to at the edge of my vision, but I’m still learning how to revel in this open-ended freedom. Friends and family continue to tell me that things will work out, that if I work hard and just keep doing what I do something will happen, and I’m starting to believe them. So much can happen in just one short year and the only way to let good things happen is to leave a space open in your life for new experiences to fill. In the past this space felt like a void, a black hole that desperately needed to be occupied by something, anything. But I’m realizing now these aren’t negative spaces, they aren’t terrible things to be avoided, but rather they are opportunities, openings for future endeavors. This does not imply freedom and empty time, the space isn’t temporal as this is the busiest year of my life so far. It’s a mindset, a thought process, and a willingness to say ‘yes’ to something new and different.

Who knows where I will wind up when I’m open to going somewhere new.

Boom.

a day in the life

“Expectations are resentments waiting to happen…”

I can’t stop listening to Macklemore. The more music by Ben Haggerty that I find, the more I fall in love with him as a lyricist, artist, and musician. Otherside, Vipassana, Fallin, they are all just great songs that have depth and real meaning. They are especially fitting for the low moods that I sometimes stumble into here at the festival when I start thinking about the amount of money I was scammed out of to come here. It never makes sense to me but when I’m down or mad or upset about something I often just need to listen to some loud/angry rap, or some deep/thought provoking hip hop. Macklemore has come in at the perfect time and I can’t put my headphones down. It’s a great feeling when you hit up a new song that just resonates with you, and that has happened a lot lately.

Stepping outside of my hotel room and away from my headphones and I’m still in Rome. This morning I stopped by Campo dei Fiori for some delicious freshly ripened fruit and decided to take that breakfast over to Castel de Saint Angelo to take in some more of the city while I ate. This was my first lone excursion around for an extended period of time (not out of fear of being alone but simply because there is usually someone bumming around the hotel that wants to join me) and it was excellent. The weather has finally cooled down and today it was cloudy with a nice breeze. Granted it is still 30 degrees Celsius out there, which is pretty hot, it feels nice compared to where it was my first week here. After eating and relaxing in the shade for a while I decided to swing by the Trevi Fountain again so that I could make a wish and throw some money into the fountain. I heard that doing that guarantees that you will be back in Rome at some point in your life, which is something I would love to do. While at Trevi I heard an amazing violinist playing through some repertoire in the streets and I was surprised at the lack of people watching/enjoying his music because it was legitimately quite good. But then I suppose I didn’t stick around for very long either. I felt like walking and I was feeling too claustrophobic to stay immersed in the tourists at the major touristy areas so I found myself moving on quickly away from the violin player.

I love being surrounded by the history, the architecture, and the art in this place. When taking back alleys and different routes I always, without fail, find myself stumbling into a small Piazza or Villa with beautiful depictions of Jesus (you find Jesus everywhere here), picturesque statues, or even bountiful gardens and fountains. It’s overwhelming at times. America turned 233 today and that seems like a long time until you realize that Rome was founded somewhere around 625 BC. Which would make Rome what, 2638 years old? Damn. No wonder it’s overwhelming coming here, where the mold in some of these buildings is probably older then the country that I come from. That mold has some history, but that doesn’t make it any easier to breathe.

I’m glad that I will get the chance to go to Prague and then come back to Rome again before coming home to the states. I feel like leaving Rome and then coming back shortly thereafter will be a good way for me to re-appreciate the city in a fresh new way. Especially since I will be coming back alone. Travelling alone is always a more insightful and revealing experience then traveling with friends, whether they are new or old friends. When I’m alone I get to decide what it is that I’m going to do and I can’t just allow someone else to decide for me. Easy going and relaxed, sometimes I need to be selfish and do what I want to do, which is far easier to do when I’m alone.

Rambling stream of consciousness, pardon the lack of focus in this post. Just some wandering thoughts from this wandering musician.

water

“Looking in the mirror thinking I can’t believe what I’ve become. Swore I was gonna be someone. And growing up everyone always does. We sell our dreams and our potential, to escape through that buzz. Just keep me up, keep me up.”

Yesterday I got the opportunity to visit Tivoli with my festival friends. I was excited to get out of Rome and spend some time in a different area of Italy, one that is a little less tourist-centric and crazy. I was not disappointed. Tivoli was beautiful—the parts of it that I saw were thick with waterfalls, beautiful caves, amazing scenery, and green. So much green trees starkly contrasting with the beautiful blue sky. The power of the waterfalls overwhelmed me throughout the day as I realize that these caves, these hills, these valleys were all a result of the waterfall. The beautiful Sirens Grotto was a result of a devastating flood way back in the day. As I’m sitting there enjoying the view and thinking about life I read the sign and it tells me that, that the flood was a hugely damaging moment in history and it makes me wonder how something so beautiful and good can be the result of something so awful and bad.

 A constant trickle of water from a waterfall, from a faucet, from a stream, has the power—when combined with time—to completely alter the landscape around it. Something so small with the patience and stubbornness to keep existing will change the way the world looks around you. Sometimes this happens and results in beauty, like the grottos and waterfalls at Tivoli, but other times it results in ugliness and decay.

This makes me think about the clichéd concept introduced by Ms. Niemi in my Advanced Placement Language course in high school: man’s inhumanity to man. I often ask myself how people can continue to live and treat others in the ways they do, whether it’s racism, gender bias, homophobia, or simply close-mindedness and a lack of empathy. How can these people not see that those they judge are people too, that just because someone is gay does not make them a lesser being. It happens everywhere, on the global stage of cultural genocide, the national stage of homophobic marriage laws, and on the personal stage of judgment and stereotyped treatment of strangers. And yet why, why does this have to happen?

Because that’s the way it is and that’s the way it always has happened.

That’s always what I hear. “Things like this just happen when you get a group of people together,” or “Yeah, that’ll happen you just have to ignore it,” or whatever weak excuse blaming something external for a personal bias and the unwillingness to take responsibility for your actions.

If we keep telling ourselves that it’s okay to treat each other like this, that it is okay to clique up and bash each other simply because that is what always happens, then it will never stop and we will never change! Don’t tell me that I’m naïve, that I just want everyone to like me, that I don’t understand how people work. I am very aware of how people “work,” one does not bartend for as long as I have without learning about people. One does not sit and watch as much as I have in different settings, comparing the actions of people at the bar, in the pool hall, and at the casino to the people in college, the professors, and the musicians on stage, without drawing connections and learning more about people in general.

The lame excuse of letting things continue to happen because they always have is not good enough for me anymore. We are killing the world with our pollution, we are killing each other with our close-mindedness and lack of empathy, and we are killing our selves by blaming everyone else instead of taking responsibility for our prejudices and preconceptions. We fear that which we don’t understand and in order to avoid that uneasiness at the unknown we simply place everyone into neat little boxes in our minds. It’s a mechanism of self-defense. Nobody wants to admit that it is fear that drives their actions, but I think that is a big part of it. We are afraid of that which we don’t know, we don’t understand something and it makes us angry because it shows us our weakness. Lack of comprehension means that we don’t know everything, and not knowing everything is terrifying for some people because if you admit that you don’t know something you can easily begin to question the things that you think you already know. Descartes started this struggle as he tried to find his one clear and distinct perception. We fear that a slippery slope of doubt and despair will result when we begin to question ourselves, so instead we pretend to know things we don’t for the safety and comfort it brings us.

But it does not need to be that way. We can change the way we approach each other. We can alter our excuses and take responsibility for our actions. We can teach our children to do the same, or our friends, or even our friend’s children. We can be kind to strangers and open to new ideas. We can quit being so self-centered and let others live their own lives. We can learn to work together, even if we don’t like each other. We can put a tiny pebble at the beginning of the river and let the new trickle form a completely different waterfall.

We can slow down our lives and open up our minds. We can find creative solutions to our problems. We can change the world. 

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.

thoughts on antiquity

It’s funny how quickly you can adapt to your surroundings. I’ve only been in Rome for seven days now (I can’t believe the time is going by so fast) and yet I already find myself walking quickly from place to place without looking around. In America we never look up, I don’t anyways, and here in Rome you miss out on eighty percent of the awesome if you are always looking down. The first few days I was a wide-eyed American, taking it all in and shamelessly gaping at the architecture, the beauty of the sculptures and fountains, and walking slowly. But just as the body adapts to exercise, so to does the mind to visual stimulation. That’s why most people who live in beauty, which is almost everyone if they look hard enough, don’t recognize it for what it is. You’ll hear about greener grass, but I think we just don’t look at our own lawns often enough.

I was talking to my roommate about how awesome these buildings are, and how old. The water systems here are the same as they have been ages ago, and they still work! Every fountain isn’t powered by electricity, just by the ingenuity of the creators of the aqueducts. There are water fountains strewn throughout Rome and each has fresh water that is cycled through the water systems here. It’s awesome. But if you think about America and the things we have surrounded ourselves with it has one thing: new, novelty, different. In America we will tear down the historic old building out of disgust and ignorance. Rather than allowing the old things to be revered and kept alive to remind ourselves of our past, we are constantly tearing them down in order to put something new and fresh in our yards. It’s such a shame. That is not to say that all new things are bad, bur rather that some old things are good too! Can’t we sacrifice some of our modern conveniences for the sake of these historic and old buildings? Perhaps we will figure it out eventually.

A lot of the excitement I get from my travels here in Rome stem from the age of these buildings. When I enter the Pantheon I can only look up and wonder how that huge building was constructed. How the hole in the ceiling was constructed without everything falling apart. Wondering at the sculptors that took the effort to add painstaking detail to every surface of the church I wander into, even areas that are hidden from the view of most people. Marveling at how these buildings were constructed in an age of “lesser” technology. It’s a good reminder of what we are capable of doing that does not rely on fossil fuels, oil, gas, and other devices that have polluted our world.

Is it possible to turn our back on what we have created and live as those before us had lived? Not entirely, I’m not saying to forsake everything about modern medicine or forget the countless different things we have learned about the world and how it works. But is it possible to look at the changes we have made in this world and get rid of the ones that are clearly not beneficial to our earth and ourselves? Even if it means that we have to be inconvenienced, that we have to walk a little farther or work a bit harder? I don’t know if it’s possible. Humanity has gotten lazy, or perhaps it is just us Americans, I’m not sure. But these are the things that I’m thinking about while here in Rome.

I’m looking forward to these next few weeks; let’s see what else Rome has to offer to this wandering musician.