On Thursday morning I woke up after five hours of sleep, a persistent pattern these days.
When I got to work, my first task was to lead a discussion on the role of special interest groups and lobbyists in American politics. Usually we can turn unpleasant topics into good discussions, but something about the inertia of the political system kept us from getting excited to start the day.
The next class is usually a little more energetic, especially because there's this young kid from Colombia who's really psyched about the World Cup. He'd hurt his arm the day before, though, so he was very quiet during class.
The third one involved a discussion about reducing crime and the morality of capital punishment. A light day, indeed.
After that I taught a two hour private class with two older Brazilian women who are on more of the beginner side of the learning spectrum. They're lovely, but the fourth class of the day moves very slowly.
By the time I get home I am usually in dire need of a nap and some food, since I only have five minute breaks between 9 am and 3 pm. Even so, it's six straight hours of work, so although expenses remain simple by western developed standards, I don't have to worry so much about money. I'm like most people when it comes to money: I don't worship it, but I don't like wasting energy worrying about it, which, as I've learned in the past six months, can really take a lot out of you.
At 6:30 I had a new private lesson with an older Spanish woman. She really loves jazz music and saxophones, and says that any time she hears Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," she has to sit down, wherever she is.
Immediately after that I began the two hour lesson with my advanced group, making it six different classes, ability levels and topics during one day, most of which is spent standing, speaking, listening, correcting and literal thinking on my feet. It makes me tired, but they say that sitting down too much isn't good for you, so I feel lucky that I have a job that allows me to stand and interact with people. As much energy as I expend, I draw on the energy of the students too.
I concluded the teaching day by discussing the role of fear in society and how to overcome it. A man in the textbook had sold his possessions on e-bay and then visited everyone he had sold them to. Apparently the stories behind the materials were more important than the materials themselves. Then we talked about the impact of art, a perfect lead-in to my final activity of the day.
Afterward I rode the train to West 3rd street, where I waited in line for a Hiromi show. The people ahead of me appeared to be foreign tourists. They looked a little bit out of place at a jazz club. I'm not sure, but something about their manner of speaking and their clothes gave me that impression.
When they let me inside I was seated at a table behind the piano, just like the first time I saw a Hiromi show! The previous night I'd sat parallel to the piano, allowing me to see the entire trio and all of Hiromi's contagiously ecstatic expressions. As the Venezuelan man sitting across from me put it after witnessing his first glorious Hiromi show, "It's not just how she plays... you can tell just how much she loves it, and those feelings transmit to everyone in the crowd."
Just like the first show, I met the people seated near me. Tonight I will finally watch with a friend, but I've been on my own for the first two. Luckily I usually enjoy talking to strangers. If they're at a Hiromi show, something's right with them.
My companions were a French couple, a writer, and two people from Phoenix who had studied jazz and music theory in college. They were sharing stories about their recent vacation in Cuba when I joined them. Their host was a man who had just published his second novel and wrote about weddings for the New York Times. He gave me some advice about how to break in to the market: send short pieces to publications to make a name, and then it will be easier to sell a book. I should have a project completed if it's fiction, but sometimes you can get an agent without a completed book. I just know I have over 2,000 pages of shorter/medium pieces, many of which I could send to be published somewhere, two "books" I don't think I should publish yet, and one "book" that I am hoping to complete this year and share as my first real marketable work of art. I'll share some of the introduction tomorrow. I already knew about the approach he described, but it seemed like good luck to be seated next to him anyway.
Then Hiromi played. She seemed to have even more energy than the first night. I don't know how it's possible, but she manages to drop my jaw further every time. She opened with the same three pieces, Warrior, Player and Dreamer. Even so, she improvises so well that they felt like completely new experiences.
Then something absolutely yet counter-intuitively miraculous happened. The people who had been in line in front of me while I waited outside had the table closest to Hiromi. They had appeared to be acting strange during the show, and with about three songs remaining they actually got up to leave! How could someone leave a Hiromi show? I guess everyone has their own tastes. I remember playing John Coltrane for my extended family a few years ago and having everyone complain and tell me to change it, and it was pure gold that I was playing for them, not strange experimental stuff. I was happy though, because once she finished her current song I moved into the seat closest to the stage, directly behind her. I've never been so close!
Best of all, she played "Firefly," my favorite song on her new CD, and probably the most beautiful and moving song I've ever heard her play. I say that every time she has a new CD, but she manages to continue to top herself. I watched with my mouth agape in awe pretty much the entire ten minutes that she played the solo song. After that she played two more songs with the trio, Spirit and Alive, and I was in heaven.
The people I had been sitting with had never seen her live before, and the first thing they said was that they completely understood why I had come back to see her so many times. It felt as though the entire world was glowing and vibrating pure loving energy.
I had to walk around outside for a little while before getting on the train, even though I was incredibly sleep deprived and really needed to catch up and go to bed. I wandered to Sullivan Street and West 3rd, and then up to where Washington Park intersected Sullivan Street and you can see the Freedom Tower shining in the distance.
Of course, for the second straight night, the trains were over twenty minutes late. Luckily, there was a strange man playing a keyboard, trumpet and singing. He played "What a Wonderful World" as train after downtown train zoomed by in the hot sticky underground while we waited for the uptown trains.
That's all I have time to write tonight. I'm going to show #14 now, and this time I will finally be joined by a friend, the same friend who told me about Hiromi in the first place.
Wherever they seat me tonight, I am very grateful that I get to see her at all :)
When I got to work, my first task was to lead a discussion on the role of special interest groups and lobbyists in American politics. Usually we can turn unpleasant topics into good discussions, but something about the inertia of the political system kept us from getting excited to start the day.
The next class is usually a little more energetic, especially because there's this young kid from Colombia who's really psyched about the World Cup. He'd hurt his arm the day before, though, so he was very quiet during class.
The third one involved a discussion about reducing crime and the morality of capital punishment. A light day, indeed.
After that I taught a two hour private class with two older Brazilian women who are on more of the beginner side of the learning spectrum. They're lovely, but the fourth class of the day moves very slowly.
By the time I get home I am usually in dire need of a nap and some food, since I only have five minute breaks between 9 am and 3 pm. Even so, it's six straight hours of work, so although expenses remain simple by western developed standards, I don't have to worry so much about money. I'm like most people when it comes to money: I don't worship it, but I don't like wasting energy worrying about it, which, as I've learned in the past six months, can really take a lot out of you.
At 6:30 I had a new private lesson with an older Spanish woman. She really loves jazz music and saxophones, and says that any time she hears Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," she has to sit down, wherever she is.
Immediately after that I began the two hour lesson with my advanced group, making it six different classes, ability levels and topics during one day, most of which is spent standing, speaking, listening, correcting and literal thinking on my feet. It makes me tired, but they say that sitting down too much isn't good for you, so I feel lucky that I have a job that allows me to stand and interact with people. As much energy as I expend, I draw on the energy of the students too.
I concluded the teaching day by discussing the role of fear in society and how to overcome it. A man in the textbook had sold his possessions on e-bay and then visited everyone he had sold them to. Apparently the stories behind the materials were more important than the materials themselves. Then we talked about the impact of art, a perfect lead-in to my final activity of the day.
Afterward I rode the train to West 3rd street, where I waited in line for a Hiromi show. The people ahead of me appeared to be foreign tourists. They looked a little bit out of place at a jazz club. I'm not sure, but something about their manner of speaking and their clothes gave me that impression.
When they let me inside I was seated at a table behind the piano, just like the first time I saw a Hiromi show! The previous night I'd sat parallel to the piano, allowing me to see the entire trio and all of Hiromi's contagiously ecstatic expressions. As the Venezuelan man sitting across from me put it after witnessing his first glorious Hiromi show, "It's not just how she plays... you can tell just how much she loves it, and those feelings transmit to everyone in the crowd."
Just like the first show, I met the people seated near me. Tonight I will finally watch with a friend, but I've been on my own for the first two. Luckily I usually enjoy talking to strangers. If they're at a Hiromi show, something's right with them.
My companions were a French couple, a writer, and two people from Phoenix who had studied jazz and music theory in college. They were sharing stories about their recent vacation in Cuba when I joined them. Their host was a man who had just published his second novel and wrote about weddings for the New York Times. He gave me some advice about how to break in to the market: send short pieces to publications to make a name, and then it will be easier to sell a book. I should have a project completed if it's fiction, but sometimes you can get an agent without a completed book. I just know I have over 2,000 pages of shorter/medium pieces, many of which I could send to be published somewhere, two "books" I don't think I should publish yet, and one "book" that I am hoping to complete this year and share as my first real marketable work of art. I'll share some of the introduction tomorrow. I already knew about the approach he described, but it seemed like good luck to be seated next to him anyway.
Then Hiromi played. She seemed to have even more energy than the first night. I don't know how it's possible, but she manages to drop my jaw further every time. She opened with the same three pieces, Warrior, Player and Dreamer. Even so, she improvises so well that they felt like completely new experiences.
Then something absolutely yet counter-intuitively miraculous happened. The people who had been in line in front of me while I waited outside had the table closest to Hiromi. They had appeared to be acting strange during the show, and with about three songs remaining they actually got up to leave! How could someone leave a Hiromi show? I guess everyone has their own tastes. I remember playing John Coltrane for my extended family a few years ago and having everyone complain and tell me to change it, and it was pure gold that I was playing for them, not strange experimental stuff. I was happy though, because once she finished her current song I moved into the seat closest to the stage, directly behind her. I've never been so close!
Best of all, she played "Firefly," my favorite song on her new CD, and probably the most beautiful and moving song I've ever heard her play. I say that every time she has a new CD, but she manages to continue to top herself. I watched with my mouth agape in awe pretty much the entire ten minutes that she played the solo song. After that she played two more songs with the trio, Spirit and Alive, and I was in heaven.
The people I had been sitting with had never seen her live before, and the first thing they said was that they completely understood why I had come back to see her so many times. It felt as though the entire world was glowing and vibrating pure loving energy.
I had to walk around outside for a little while before getting on the train, even though I was incredibly sleep deprived and really needed to catch up and go to bed. I wandered to Sullivan Street and West 3rd, and then up to where Washington Park intersected Sullivan Street and you can see the Freedom Tower shining in the distance.
Of course, for the second straight night, the trains were over twenty minutes late. Luckily, there was a strange man playing a keyboard, trumpet and singing. He played "What a Wonderful World" as train after downtown train zoomed by in the hot sticky underground while we waited for the uptown trains.
That's all I have time to write tonight. I'm going to show #14 now, and this time I will finally be joined by a friend, the same friend who told me about Hiromi in the first place.
Wherever they seat me tonight, I am very grateful that I get to see her at all :)
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