Oboe Confession

I had SOOOOOO much fun at my oboe lesson today! Kyoko can turn every little gaff or setback into a huge laughing moment. We spent the 2nd half of the lesson doing a kind of sight-reading marathon, with her accompanying me on piano. I felt like someone who's not quite reading at grade level, but she actually seemed pleased with how I did, and also with how, despite the LOOOONG summer hiatus and my recent stressful schedule, I had managed to keep up some of what I had gained with the instrument. What a relief! I thought it was going to be a bad lesson.

She's gently trying to get me to consider a recital and put Gordon Jacob's lovely "Ten Little Etudes" under my nose, carrot-to-Bugs-Bunny style, to tempt me. When I started taking lessons I had told her up front that I would never, ever, ever, ever do an oboe recital. Now I'm enjoying the instrument so much that I'm not so sure I hate the recital idea the way I did before...except that being gazed at publicly is still such a horrifying thing for me to imagine. Play in a group? That I would do. In fact, I'd LOVE to be in an ensemble, if I could be just one of many voices, contributing my part but not alone in the limelight. She mentioned there might actually be just the group for me in a neighboring town; her friend conducts an ensemble of adult beginner musicians. But a recital? No way. The very word recital gives me the creeps. I suffer from physically incapacitating, stomach-gnawing, horribly terrifying, emotionally crippling stage fright. (There's a great article here at Mandolin Magazine that sums up the experience and possible ways to deal with it.) If it was bad during my dancing years, when I was at least performing in something I was good at, how can I possibly bring myself to do publicly something I'm barely tolerable at? I'd almost rather be coding someone in the O.R. ...

Meanwhile, my son's loving violin. He was practicing in the living room while I was in the kitchen and I overheard him talking to himself, saying "That was fun!" after a couple of the things he was practicing. I think I had about as happy a feeling for him as I could possibly have. I love the fact that we can now enjoy my violin mix together. We're suckers for Neville Mariner's cut of Vivaldi's Winter, and Gil Shaham playing Sarasate.

Kyoko's in concert next week with the Philharmonic at Sanders Theater, my old stomping grounds, where I struggled to stay awake through many an undergraduate lecture. They're playing a new work for violin and tabla as well as some Ginasteras and Mussorgsky. I think I'll bring the kids to hear Pictures.

Learning to Play; or, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back II

I think a capacity for silliness or playfulness is important. I find that people who don't seem to have one either are miserable or tend to make other people miserable, or at the very least extremely annoyed.

In med school I wrote a contemplative poem about my cadaver. That was not playful. But the little verse below, also penned during medical school, was meant to be, another self-check to make sure I wasn't taking everything so seriously all the time. In the wake of my recent ranting and raving, I include it as a way of stepping back and lightening up a little.

Ode to a Mitochondrion; or,

a medical student's homage to Ogden Nash

Cristae, cristae curling 'round,

In your matrix have we found

A clue to evolution's jaunt?

Are you an endosymbiont?

:)

_________________________________________________________

My son started taking violin lessons with my daughter's best friend's mom. Naturally when he brought home his little rental violin we all wanted to try it. No one sounded as screechy and awful as I did. It was pitiful. Best of all was our little boy, who produced a rich, mellow tone from it right from the start. I asked his teacher how this was possible - we had all been expecting to have to plug our ears during practice time to get through the squeaky beginning phase - and her explanation was eye-opening. Without a relaxed grip on the bow, it can't vibrate against the strings properly, and you get that awful scraping noise, whereas if one just eases up a little and "goes" with it - "goes with the bow," as it were - a nice tone comes out. The moral of the story is I am way too tense, and I need to learn to be more like my child who, despite a bit of an anxious nature, is still relaxed enough to be open to his experiences and just let the music flow through him. Maybe that's what's meant in part by "the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."

_________________________________________________________

That being said, I have to confess my annoyometer registered a pretty high reading this afternoon when I was dealing with someone from a local oboe reed manufacturer on the phone. This manufacturer charges $4.00 for delivery even though the same box sent through the mail by another manufacturer shows postage for MUCH less (like, by about 300%). Already this was irritating the first time I ordered from them. At that time I asked if I could pick the reeds up in person because I live so close by. They agreed, and it turned out the pick-up spot was two streets over from my house. Today I called and asked if I could do the same, and the woman made reluctant noises before saying finally, "We really don't like to do it that way."

"Why not?!" I asked, unable to imagine a powerful enough reason for her to object to such a sensible arrangement.

"Well, it's just coordinating everything..."

"But there's nothing to coordinate. The last time you let me know when they were ready, and I walked over, opened the front door, and picked them up from the foyer."

"Well...we like the orders to all to go out at once."

Eventually she agreed I could come on foot the two ridiculous little blocks, not worth $4.00, and pick up the reeds on Monday, but this whole exchange struck me as silly - not the kind of silliness I was advocating when I first started writing this post, but the ANNOYING kind, the kind of bad PR that makes you never want to call the company back or order from them ever again.

The problem is, their reeds are REALLY good, and I still haven't gotten to the point of learning how to make my own. Sigh...that's the trouble with getting attached to a brand. The only thing worse than your favorite pen or ice cream flavor or lip gloss getting discontinued is it remaining available but at the hands of people you don't really want to deal with!

First lesson of the fall is next week. Between my travels and my call schedule, not to mention my kids' activities, I may have to start from square one. This summer oboe hiatus has gotten pretty worrisome. I can feel my gains slipping away. I need to remember the lesson from my son's violin: I gotta just relax and go with the flow.

Oboe-ing in Rural France

I haven't entirely abandoned my trusty little oboe. I'm so glad it's so portable! There was plenty of room in my carry-on bag for other stuff next to my little oboe case. I wish I could have taken a picture of the security guy's face when he paused the conveyor belt to scrutinize the x-ray image of my hand luggage inside the machine. His eyes got more and more scrunched up and finally he put his hand over his brow, leaned on the screen, and looked at my bag intently. I wanted to speak up and say it was just an oboe, but I thought better of it.

I've realized that I love a lot of things whose origin is (as far as I know) French. Crêpes, croissants, and opera gateau. Ballet. Oboes. The French language. Lots of great saints. Gothic cathedrals. My husband. Maybe I had a past life in France or something! :)

Practiced in our cozy country home with the windows open and a breeze blowing in from the fields, while my kids and their cousins were clomping up and down the wooden stairs and raucously practicing a play my daughter had written, partly in French. It was a brief practice session, especially because I really don't feel comfortable playing when other people are around. 'Twas in the Moon of Wintertime (a.k.a. the Huron Carol), in honor of René and his fellow-Jesuit missionaries. The opening passage of Swan Lake. Scales. Gabriel's Oboe. Some exercises from the method book. They are getting easier, but it's tought to practice consistently on vacation!

We're off to Paris tomorrow for a couple of days. Not sure if I'll be able to keep writing, but I have no doubt I'll be hungering to catch up either from there or when we get back. If anyone has suggestions for where we should go to eat, let me know!

Summer Oboe Lesson: just the thing for a post-call day

I've had mixed feelings anticipating today's lesson - dread that I would be indescribably AWFUL and my poor, patient teacher would feel I was a waste of her time, and excitement that I would be trying out some new musical things and getting tips on how to play better.

I needn't have worried. Kyoko was as helpful and encouraging as ever. Got through Lehar's Merry Widow Waltz, a duet with her, and started working on vibrato, which is like a Holy Grail of oboe sound for me. It was a relief (not to mention fun!) to get some more insight, finally, into ways of improving my air control and of avoiding embouchure pitfalls, like biting and lip-moving during each attack.

Sadly, we decided I should return my trial instrument today. It has a GORGEOUS sound, really beautiful, but one of the notes tends to flat; it's not quite "the one."

I had an amusing exchange with the guys at UPS. One of them pointed to my bubble-wrapped bundle and asked, "What's that?" When I said, "It's an oboe," I got a puzzled, "Oooooh-kay."

The guy at the cash register asked the same thing: "What is it?" Again I replied, "An oboe." Then I got a real contraction of the eyebrows, and he asked, "What's that?!" My daughter, who was with me, had an adorable glint in her eye and couldn't suppress a giggle. I said, "Um...it sort of looks like a clarinet, but a little slimmer..." A look of recognition came over the cashier's face. "Oh, it's a musical instrument!" I keep forgetting how esoteric my choices are sometimes...

It's funny, but I feel like I have this exact same conversation, except it's about anesthesia, all the time.

The rest of the day was low-key. I watched the Woody Allen movie Scoop, which disappointed a lot of hard-cord WA fans but which I REALLY enjoyed, maybe because I love Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, the city of London, light-hearted romance, detective stories, and ballet music. The Dance of the Four Cygnets from Swan Lake, the Annen Polka, and the battle scene from The Nutcracker were all used to perfect comic effect.

Sleep is my absolutely favorite thing to do post-call, but watching enjoyable movies is a close second.

Box of Dreams Arrives

I've been waiting for this package for almost a week.

When the UPS truck drove up around dinner time tonight, I jumped up and down like a little kid. My husband had to get the door and sign for the package.

I was on the phone with Hilda when I finally had the chance to start opening it.

My trial oboe! It's here! I hope I like it. But even if I end up sending it back, this is so cool - "trialing" an instrument. As if I had earned the privilege!

Now, how can one tell if it's a good oboe if one is an awful player? :)

So far it seems lighter and easier to get my fingers around, and hits highs and lows more precisely and consistently than my rental. It's a little brighter-sounding than my rental, too - less wanna-be clarinet or sax. Likin' it so far!

Brief Oboe Update

Yes, I've been practicing even on vacation. It's hard to find a good time and place in a hotel, but I managed to practice every other day last week, and a little more this week at our cabin.

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring is actually getting a little faster. I now have recognizable trouble spots I can work on amid more fluent runs, instead of every measure being one messy trouble spot.

I can sight read most things I like out of our church hymnal - D and G major better than E flat or F# minor, not surprisingly.

I can play Gabriel's Oboe all the way through.

But I'm unhappy! Why? Because I sound like !$^&*@#!!

No, it's not my reed. No, it's not my trusty little student oboe. It's ME. If Mr. Kolyenkov from the play You Can't Take It With You were my teacher, he'd be pulling my husband aside and saying, "Confidentially, she stinks." I feel like my whole family thinks it sounds awful but they just feel sorry for me and don't say anything. *Sigh*

I won't have another lesson with Kyoko till August. Then I have to go on this trip with my husband's family...then what? Should I just keep taking lessons even though I feel like I'm gonna sound like stink for the rest of my life? Poor Kyoko...

A Few Things You Should Almost Never Say to People

"Are You NUTS?!"

When I told people I was going to embark on medical school with a ten-month-old in tow, I got various versions of, "Are you friggin' NUTS?!" in response. See, I think you should only ask that question of someone who's about to jump off one of these (visited today at the Lake Placid Olympic Ski Area):

"We Think Your Child Might Be Retarded." [sic]

When I was four or five my kindergarten teacher expressed some concern to my mother that I might be developmentally delayed. After premature birth at 32 weeks in the early '70's, this wasn't out of the question, but when my mom asked why she suspected a problem, the teacher reported that I couldn't seem to pay attention and often looked blank.

"What are you teaching them?"
"Oh, the shapes and colors-"

"She already knows those."

"How to count to ten-"

"She can count to a hundred."

"The ABC's..."

"She's been reading the New York Times to us for weeks. Look, is there anything else?"

I don't think the meeting ended too well. Just for documentation my mom brought me to Clark Air Base to get psychometrically evaluated by the Americans. Everything checked out reasonably well. She put me in a different school.

"You'll Never Amount to Anything."

Sometimes I think conventional measures of ability and the tendency to judge people based on personality do little justice to the capabilities and gifts people actually have. I came across a wonderful letter to Stanford pre-meds by Michael McCullough, M.D., that I wish were required reading for ALL high school, college, and med school students and teachers. In it he reminds us: "Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, and Mother Teresa all had something in common: they didn't do well in school. Take home point: Don't rely on a grade point average to prop up your sense of self." We so often define our worth by our successes; it's high time we redefined success!

My favorite example of the school-"failure"-yet-genius is the story of Australian make-up artist Ann Maree Hurley. She kept telling people when she was growing up that she was going to be a make-up artist, and the best response she ever got was, "That's nice, dear." She failed her last year of high school and struggled through Wodonga Catholic College. But she persevered with her true love and has now worked as a make-up artist on all three Pirates of the Caribbean films. To that I say, you go, girl.

Oboist Caroline Plamondon posted a story on the Oboe BBoard relating how her school band teacher discouraged her from trying the oboe, because she was "too shy," then later tried to persuade her mother not to allow her to audition for the Montreal Conservatoire and two other colleges: "He called my mom and told her it would be a good thing if she discouraged me from entering those schools, because I didn't have any chance of getting in, let alone becoming a professional musician. Well, I got in to the 3 schools, chose the Conservatoire, studied there for 6 years before changing schools to obtain my Master's degree." SO THERE! Way to go, Caroline Plamondon!

***

When I was applying for pediatric residencies (before my anesthesia days) the chairman of pediatrics told me that Children's Hospital in Boston would be a "reach" and I shouldn't bother. In many ways he was quite right and the advice was practical. A couple of years later, after I had fallen in love with anesthesiology and switched my career track, I couldn't help laughing at the whole episode when I found myself practicing medicine at, guess where, the O.R.'s at Children's Hospital. The only way to know if you can reach something is to stretch for it.

This was the same chairman who, during my internship, after listening to me explain the molecular mechanism of hyperkalemic periodic paralysis, asked me in front of a roomful of pediatric interns and residency applicants to draw a diagram of the mechanism on the board. After a split-second silence, I said, "Sure" and walked up to the board and drew it. Then I left that program and started my anesthesia career.

But that's when learning became grueling.

During my first year in anesthesia residency I took an early leave-of-absence to help my husband and children move to the Boston area, and the day I returned, with my "skill set" still nonexistent (how I hate that phrase), or embryonic at best after only two weeks on the job, the attending physician I was working with sniped at me all day with insults before finally saying, "Maybe you shouldn't be doing anesthesia." When I looked at him in disbelief that a teacher could be so un-helpful to a trainee, not to mention in pain at being disparaged all day, he just emphasized, "Yeah. Maybe you shouldn't."

His labeling of me haunted me in various ways throughout my training, and despite some genuine teachers, like my residency program director, who were willing to judge me for the good progress I made and the expertise I attained by the time our training ended, there were still those who didn't have the capacity to look past that prejudicial incident and my early struggles during that challenging first year. Thankfully they weren't able to discourage me from taking good care of my patients - from the Peruvian child at Children's who put his arms around my waist and thanked me the day after I had to intubate him awake with a fiberoptic device, to the elderly Korean gentleman who spoke no English but conveyed his thanks with a squeeze of my hand. It was in these unseen, uncredited moments that I felt I was truly a physician my program could be proud of.

To the teachers who actually TAUGHT, I send out a heartfelt thank you, for bringing me to this successful place:

Lesson 7

Good lesson today! I'm improving! Kyoko will be leaving for the Colorado Music Festival, so I won't have another lesson till August. We crammed a lot of material in - long tones, little etudes from the method book, a teensy bit of repertoire, reed adjustments. One of my favorite moments was when she connected for me the anatomy/physiology of wind production with the physics of the oboe - and explained the greater breath support needed to counter the loss of wind velocity for notes played further down the length of the instrument. The doctor in me thought, This, I get!

She gave me one of her reeds as a summer gift, and it's the best one I have so far. And she gave me homework: Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. I'm going to have to work on my breathing for that one! One of my other favorite moments of the lesson was at the end, when, after talking about Bach for a bit, we started humming Sleepers Awake together and couldn't bring ourselves to stop. Bach has a way of reeling you in...

I've figured out why, for me, oboe is harder than piano. I need to recruit more of me to play the oboe - lungs, abdominal muscles, and oropharyngeal muscles in addition to arms and hands. When I hit a key on a piano, a sound is guaranteed; not so on the oboe. And notes on the piano keyboard are spatially arranged in ascending/descending order, logically. On the oboe there's definitely more jumping around that's not always intuitive. On the plus side, with the oboe we only have to worry about one note at a time...but I think it's harder to make that note sound "just right."

I've listened to more oboe music now and have come to the conclusion that pieces written specifically for the oboe are often less appealing than oboe parts written within larger orchestral works. That said, I have to admit I can't seem to go a day without hearing at least the first movement of Vaughan Williams' Concerto for Oboe and Strings, the second movement of Saint-Saens' Sonata for Oboe and Piano, and little snippets of Albinoni's and Marcello's concertos. I've also found some shorter works by Henri Sauget and Fernando Sor that I really like.

Yesterday my daughter had a piano recital and did beautifully. I don't know how she can be so relaxed about them. That's probably WHY she does well. I have been plagued by terrible stage fright in more than one area of my life and I've already told my oboe teacher I can't possibly EVER do a recital. At most maybe I'll play at church someday. Maybe. Years from now.

***

At work my colleagues and I take turns providing anesthesia for patients undergoing elecroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Today it was my turn. It's not like it is on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; it's a pity that it's such a demonized procedure. For some people it's literally the difference between life and death. Again I face the marvels and mysteries of the human brain and its workings during my day-to-day tasks at work...and participate in both altering and protecting it. This is always in the back of my mind during ECT's, which are some of the shortest procedures for which we provide anesthesia: the fact that the psychiatrist and I really have to take care of our patient's brain and concentrate every effort on helping it heal. And of course I'm also preoccupied with the airway, the cardiovascular system, the musculoskeletal responses...

Found this on Panda Bear's blog, and it made my day: "I’ve seen an Emergency Medicine Chief resident and a Medicine chief resident both fail to get an airway which the anesthesia junior resident put in while still half-asleep." At last! Someone who gets what our expertise consists of! Someday I'm going to have to vent about how little people seem to understand my specialty - even other doctors. Right now, though, this little anesthesioboist is bushed. Lights out.

Pie It's Not; or, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Why, oh why, just when we seem to be making progress, do we suddenly BOMB?

Yesterday's oboe lesson was so WEAK. I don't know what happened. I've been practicing DAILY. Scales, long tones, method book, and, dare I say it, "repertoire," embryonic though the latter may be. Practices have been going ok, with only a few bumps in the road due to fatigue, lack of technique, lack of know-how, what-have-you. Yesterday I was not fatigued. I was not nervous. I was having fun. 'My teacher was good-natured and laid back, as usual. And I just BOMBED. Couldn't even get through D major. Tone was horrible. Took 10 minutes of back-tracking and re-warming-up to regain my "sound." I was totally inconsistent. I kept making mistakes. I sputtered. What is UP with that?

I have a neurobiological theory, of course. I think when we learn a new skill and begin to practice it, our brains start rearranging little functions and electrical discharge patterns. Neurons adjust to new bursts of neurotransmitter, new connections. But I think there's a shifty phase when they're not quite comfortable with their new assignments. In the building process, with the "scaffolding still up" and some exposed parts here and there, I think some misfirings occur, and we have one of those dreaded bad days that supposedly everybody has. [Speaking of building: even during last week's barn-raising there was a major snafu that needed some re-working to resolve: the center post was actually off-center, so one of the major spans came up short!] I think eventually the activity patterns become established and coordinated, more orchestral, and the brain itself acquires new architectural elements, like a cathedral with a new wing. I guess I need to remember that every work-in-progress has to pass through major imperfections & ups & downs to get to a "more perfect" place.

If only it really were easy as pie. My family is very appreciative of my apple pie. My son calls it "Paradise Pie" because he says eating it is like being in paradise. When he was asked in school last November to write down instructions for how to make a turkey dinner, he wrote on his paper, "My family doesn't like turkey. We have ham and chicken at Thanksgiving." So his teacher asked him to make a list of instructions for any Thanksgiving dish, and he wrote,

How to Make a Pie.
Get 7 apples.
Bake a pie.
Eat it.

Love it! Wish I could apply that to music: pick up oboe, blow through reed, play music. Simple, right? If only!

And it's not like I can use an "oboe simulator" to learn. In medicine some of the best learning experiences I had were at our residency program's medical simulator. We could practice managing some pretty hair-raising scenarios and social psychology quandaries in the sim. I think it's the wave of the future for medical education and crisis management training. But to make music, I can't imagine there being an effective equivalent. The only way to be a musician is to keep TRYING to be a musician. I get so embarrassed when loving family members call me a "musician" - I feel so unworthy of the word right now!

Tonight I could only practice for a short time because it was close to the kids' bedtime by the time I got started. My son came up the stairs because he heard my scales. I said sheepishly, apologetically, that I wasn't that good. Like the supportive son that he is, he said, "I think you are, and you practice every day, so that makes you good." Sweet boy! My daughter soon joined us, and likewise said encouraging things that had more to do with her affection for her mother than her mother's abilities, but hey, no complaints here.

At the end of yesterday's lesson I asked Kyoko to play a portion of the Raymonda adagio I love, which I had transcribed clumsily onto some music paper a couple of nights before. I don't think I've ever heard it sound so beautiful. Wow. She has the perfect, rich tone and gentle vibrato for the piece. It sounded so gorgeous I could barely breathe. *Sigh* Something to aspire to...

Oboe Poem while on-call

(Disclaimer: I know that "poem" is a presumptous label. I am well aware that most of us are a far cry from W.H. Auden or Elizabeth Bishop. But poems don't always have to be good, do they...? Although then maybe they shouldn't be called poetry, but just scribbling...)

The Double Reed

The world in which I rest is vast
a passage, mysterious
sonorous and dark.

It cracks in extremes
when tensions seen and unseen
are high. I am tiny
and fragile in its grasp
wedged well into
my tiny place.

A source of breath
I cannot see
blows through, and walls
that hold me in
now resonate
and set me free.

A song unfurls
like a sail
I tremble, never
more alive; I fill
with longing and with hope
that my home for a time
will be changed
while I'm here

from a silent to a singing thing
an ordinary object all at once
made dear.

ABC's for today

A.
I love the A played by the oboe when an orchestra tunes prior to playing. How a single note can be so moving to me is a mystery, but moved I am. When I know it's coming I almost hold my breath waiting for it. Then it sounds, and it's as if it emits a beam of light right into my heart, drawing me in, drawing everyone else in, so that we're all turning, tuning, to that sound. It repeats, and when it does, layers of anticipation continue to be added as the different instruments of the orchestra prepare. The oboe is like a divine messenger signalling the start of something wondrous, a voice singing out: Listen, and enter into the story we have to tell; surrender your hearing and your heart, and we will open up a whole world to you, and you will not be the same.

Never was this more true than when we waited for B.U.'s April production of La Bohème to begin, knowing our little girl was backstage, happy and excited as part of the children's chorus. That starting pitch had special meaning for me as a signal that something magical was about to begin for her. When the music for Act II started and the curtain rose on Tijana Bjelajac's exquisite sets, which elicited the anticipated "Aah!"of admiration and applause from the audience every night, our daughter was right there in the center, dressed as a child customer at the Café Momus getting ready to enjoy a meal with her "family." Her best friend, one of the nicest boys we know, played her "brother" and got to sing the solo asking for "la tromba, il cavallin'." Singing and acting in Puccini's opera, especially that second act, must have been like entering a storybook come-to-life for them, an experience of joy and wonder that they will carry with them always.

B.
B is for ballet. Today I was listening to the ballet of ballets, Swan Lake, which as it happens is centered entirely around the oboe.

But before I wax rhapsodic about the oboe parts in Swan Lake, let me first kvetch about the Romantic Period.

I remember once right before performing the Peasant Pas de Deux from Giselle for a bunch of school kids, I thought to myself, "Smile! It's the 1800's, and you're a happy rustic, and when your lover breaks your heart and you die of that, little wings will sprout off your back."

I love the Romantic Period. I hate the Romantic Period. It's like a guilty pleasure. The intellectual, rational part of me wants to disavow any attachment to it, to roll my eyes at its fairies and broken hearts, its ecstatic loves and its weepy losses. The other part of me gets sucked right in. Bring it on and let me wallow.

Take the ballet Giselle, for example. Anyone can see that Albrecht is just a rich playboy taking advantage of a frail, naïve village girl. Poor Hilarion, who actually cares about Giselle and shows her mother some respect and affection, gets the short end of it. At the end of Act I, after Giselle meets Albrecht's fiancée and realizes that she (Giselle) has just been a whimsical diversion for him, her heart gives out (hmmm...rheumatic heart disease, anyone?), she goes mad, her hair flies out of its neat little "do" all over the place, she takes Albrecht's sword and stabs herself, and she drops dead.

Puh-leeze - the cad doesn't seem worth the salt her tears are laced with. She should have just kicked him to the nearest wine keg, stepped over his body, and asked Hilarion to forgive her for not seeing what was right in front of her all along. The weird thing is, when you're watching the ballet, you usually don't root for Hilarion. You're suckered into rooting for the rakish aristocrat, just because Giselle wants it to work out.

In Act II, we learn that Giselle's spirit is condemned to join the ranks of the Wilis (of "that gives me the wilis" fame). These are the spirits of women who die before their wedding days, some say betrayed by their lovers. They wreak their cold-hearted revenge by ambushing any men, guilty or innocent, who happen to wander into their territory in the forest and dancing them to death. So guess who falls victim to their vengeance in the middle of Act II: of course, our poor, loyal Hilarion, who was just going there to pay his respects at Giselle's grave, for heaven's sake. The Wilis dance him to exhaustion, then throw his body into a conveniently located bog.

Already this is so antifeminist you just gotta give up. The village girl gets duped and dies, and the "women warrior" types are actually petty, vindictive, pale-faced murderesses who don't have the maturity and good sense to just let go and move on.

What's more, Albrecht gets away. They're gonna try and kill him, too, but Giselle intervenes, begs for mercy, saves him by the power of her love. Should we be mad at how unfair that is, or should we admire her magnanimity? No matter. In the end Albrecht shows he has a heart after all and is capable of remorse, and Giselle flits back to her grave and disappears as dawn breaks.

Ah, the Romantic Period. You hate it, but you gotta love it. And why? Because it's YOU. You've been in love. Desperately, nonsensically in love. You've been betrayed. You've used people. You've been ignored or unappreciated like Hilarion. You've been enraged like the Wilis. People from stories in the Romantic Period really fell in love and fell hard. They cried their eyes out. They dared to feel and express all the emotions we're now supposed to think are so weak, inferior, and embarrassing, no matter how true to life and vital to human experience. I for one am glad that my kids (and their father too), like these heroes and heroines of a bygone age, are the sensitive, compassionate types who get tearful when Rodolfo sobs over Mimi's lifeless body in La Bohème. People today can deny the power of feelings all they want, try to downplay them, try to squelch them and claim it's more sophisticated to be free of them...but I think they're missing something.

So then there's Swan Lake. What more classic ballet among the classics is there, than Swan Lake? It's really not my favorite ballet; among the classics, I love The Sleeping Beauty more, even though it's shallower, more fairy tale and confection than love story. And among contemporary works, William Forsythe's In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated totally rocks. But Swan Lake will never die. It's familiar, like a home you know well and go back to just often enough, yet lofty, too. [But also eminently mock-able - it's too easy. The Ballets de Trockadero version of Act II is hilarious.] Here again we have a cast of frustratingly obtuse characters. Siegfried has his heart in the right place. He falls in love and vows to get Odette out of her ridiculous spell wherein she has to spend her life as a swan by day and a woman by night. But he screws it up. Someone shows up to a party at his castle looking exactly like Odette, but weirdly more seductive, less delicate, flashier, not as sweet. And he falls for it, the moron! It ruins everything.

Ordinarily, one might have absolutely no sympathy for either of them. I mean, how ridiculous, for all their problems to hinge on one or two functioning neurons in Siegfried's brain! But why are we drawn in, and willingly? I may be biased, but I think part of it's...the oboe. It opens the entire ballet with strains so full of longing, sorrow, lost love, and regret that you already know it's going to tell a story that's yours, from somewhere in an aching corner of your soul. After that tense moment when you know Siegfried is about to witness Odette's transformation, she appears, and the oboe then takes over completely for a moment. Its voice is plaintive and lonely, like Odette herself. The oboe closes Act I and opens Act II with the theme that has become one of the most well-known oboe passages in classical music, and if you listen well you hear it just weeping. No holds barred. Love out in the open, vulnerable, raw. The voice of the oboe speaks directly into that place right in the middle of your chest that aches or seems to swell right before your eyes well up in tears.

I always wondered what created that sensation, the physical sensation in the body right at the heart when sorrow pierces it. No amount of cadaver dissection during anatomy class in medical school or observation during surgeries today has given me the answer. Sometimes there aren't any scientifically observable explanations for the workings of human sentiment.

C.
Call. I am on call this weekend. This means I woke up yesterday feeling mopey and had a mopey little corner in my heart all day, despite attempts to stay warm and upbeat. For this particular weekend I was in-house at the hospital for 24 hours yesterday, then on call from home all day today, then in-house again tomorrow for another 24, then off on Monday. I haven't found it less painful over the years to be separated from my family for call. But at least I got some oboe time in. My scales are a tiny bit faster and smoother. My new reeds are breaking in. I still stumble a lot at certain transitions and frequently feel like a total clod, but I also feel like I sound more like an oboe today. Must be the new reed!

If you don't like your D, don't go to C; or, The Gift of Imperfection

Today I had my fourth oboe lesson. I have been having trouble descending down the C scale. I'm fine till I get to E, then D, then C...I have trouble there, whether it's crooking my pinky finger just right to hit the low C, or getting the appropriate tone if I do hit it, or sometimes getting any sound at all. Kyoko gave me some pointers on where to position my finger and also how to rest my lips around the reed to make a fuller, rounder, more open sound in the low registers. "You have to have that full sound already at D," she advised. "If you don't like your D, your C will not be good either." So I worked on getting that whole, round tone before moving on. This will take some practice. She did say despite my struggles, "Don't worry, you actually have a nice, warm sound. Don't get stuck."

After she scraped at my reeds a little, things got better. "It's not you, it's your reeds!" she joked good-naturedly. We had a good laugh at my horror of blaming equipment rather than myself for bad form. As a doctor I can't ever say, "Sorry I didn't pick up that Grade III aortic MURMUR there, but it was a bad stethoscope," or, "Well, I couldn't get the airway and the patient DIED because my laryngoscope was broken."

Plus, I've heard my teacher play my "bad" reeds, and you know something - a really good oboist can get a good sound out of a "bad" reed. But I understand her point - as a student I probably need a good reed to achieve a good tone consistently, at least until all the mouth muscles and lumbricals get in better shape. "You so want to be a swan," she commiserated, noting my love of the oboe parts in Swan Lake, "but with oboe you have to be willing to be a duck first. I was a duck for years."

The great thing about all this is I can LAUGH about it. Hear me quack. We spend half my lessons in stitches over my playing. For someone who's been a perfectionist all her life, for whom patience has never been a virtue, whose psychological self-flagellating capacity rivals that of St. Augustine, this relaxed attitude to imperfection - in fact, to being really BAD at something - is a HUGE deal. It feels great. Maybe that's why I feel so comfortable blogging about all this and have the audacity to name myself an "anesthesioboist." My definition of success is true peace with oneself, and I'm so at peace with my own imperfection at the oboe that I feel I've already succeeded, in a way.

Oboe is helping me with my spiritual homework. Here's what I mean. I think "the meaning of life" is to learn how to be more loving and more complete each day, but I also believe that under that umbrella-meaning, each person has little "homework assignments" to work on. I think some of mine are to learn about human worth - what defines it, and how to honor it; to learn patience; and to learn enough humility to accept imperfection (my own as well as others'), and also to forgive and let go when imperfection causes me pain. I have other homework assignments, but these seem to be the recurring themes, I think because I am a slow learner. I try, I fail, I try, I fail - "I'm all... 'this is hard!' " as the speech-impediment girl on Will & Grace said. Oboe helps me slow down and work on learning these lessons.

So if I'm playing badly because I haven't developed sound technique or muscle strength yet, so be it. I'll just keep working. If the reed really is at fault, ok then. We'll scrape it and try again. Patience, patience, patience. No need to fixate on blaming something.

I believe, like so many self-help books and gurus have expressed one way or the other, that assigning blame is one of the most immature and unproductive human tendencies (speaking as someone who has succumbed to it many times). People seem to NEED to point to someone who's at fault, and also NEED for themselves NOT to be found faulty, as if imperfection were the end of the world (again, guilty).

I had a very recent experience of this latter phenomenon when I pointed out an instance of unequal treatment to someone, and that person bent over backwards trying to find outside explanations for the event rather than taking responsibility for it, however unintentional it may have been, as if admitting a mistake or a failing or an imperfection were going to destroy some precious, unblemished identity. But people are intrinsically precious; if we could all really, truly believe that, no matter what, then dealing with our own imperfections and mistakes, and those of others, would be so much easier. We wouldn't be wound so tight. (This was actually what my NPR essay was about.)

I think Jesus was probably one of the most relaxed people on earth. Heal on the sabbath? Sure, why not. Hug a leper? Absolutely. Tell a person caught in adultery that she wasn't condemned? No problem. I think one of the reason's he wasn't wound so tight is because of what HIS faith was made of. He KNEW people were pearls of great price - all of them. "You are the light of the world," he said. I think this "good news," in fact the whole point of his life and the reason he was willing to enter fully into our human experience, was to help us learn this about OURSELVES.

So many of his teachings are precisely about the worth of each human being. No, don't sit in the place of honor, because EVERYONE has dignity and value. Wash each other's feet. Trust like a child, live simply, be generous. If someone asks you to walk with him a mile, go for two. Do not judge (if only people would take THAT one literally more often). Don't lord it over others. Don't just love when it's easy - love when you don't feel like it either. "Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)

But wait, isn't this post about imperfection? What happened to, embrace your own imperfection?

In the koine Greek of the New Testament, as I understand it, the word translated as "perfect," teleios, implies not sinlessness or faultlessness but completeness. Being whole (whole, holy, same root, I think), fully integrated, without missing parts, mature, having no need for external honors or affirmations. If you believe every person is precious, including YOU, then there's nothing to be afraid of or envious of, not a movie star's beauty, not a businessman's wealth, not an academic's accolades or publications, none of that. You're already worth the world. You can be at peace. You can also stop thinking, or needing to think, that you're "all that," more deserving than others, superior to others. I repeat: you can be at peace.

I remember recently hearing an ad on the radio for a summer program for high school students being offered by a well-known Ivy League university. It was inviting young people with talent, vision, "leadership," etc. to apply. I had to roll my eyes. If EVERY child were a leader, where would all his or her followers come from? Why is "talent" so important? If our children were "average," would I love them less than if they were prodigies? DUH, of course not. This is why I love the movie Little Miss Sunshine so much; the idea that life is a beauty contest in our society, but SHOULDN'T be, is so true and so humorously rendered in the film. I'll be thrilled if our kids grow up to be loving, kind, happy, hard-working people with good judgment and integrity. Integrated, whole, holy, teleioi. For all their imperfections, I already think they're pretty perfect.

Oboe-lover's Guilt

"Which is more important - my jacket or my book?" asked my son as I reminded him to take all his belongings out of the car when we got home. Actually he prefaced the question with, "Mommy, can I ask you a question that just popped into my head?" and any time questions "pop" into his head we know we should brace ourselves for whatever his big little brain might put before us.

So I had a decision to make. Should I go with my completely irrational, from the heart, "Well, your BOOK, of course! Books are EVERYTHING!" or should I reign in my personal feelings, dredge up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and say, "Well, you do need clothes to keep you warm when it's nippy." *sigh* I dutifully went with Maslow. And he, logic-driven, scientfically-minded little boy that he is, replied, "I knew that. Because I was thinking if it were a house or a book that was more important, we would have to say house, because even though books give us knowledge, a house gives us shelter." Yes, O 6-year-old sage, houses give us shelter, but books give us HOMES.

The first thing we set up in the kids' bedroom, before beds and dressers and closets, was a reading corner. My warmest memory of moving into our current home was of our content little daughter sitting in her Colonial period costume in the reading corner with some papers, probably a play or song she had written.

Music and literature have been such a vital part of our family history. Music brought my husband and me together - his pick-up line was, "You have a lovely voice; you should join the music group" at church, for which he played guitar. Music is the heart and soul of our daughter's life; she has been singing since infancy, and now performs in a children's opera group and cantors with the children's choir at our church. My husband and his brother, their guitars, and the summer camp for inner city kids their parents run have a long, rich history together. My dad's family ties with the Manila symphony brought into our home a wealth of stories - like the time they hid all the instruments in the family distillery during the Japanese occupation - and friendships, like my dad's close bond with his late mentor, Herbert Zipper, a conductor and Auschwitz survivor (whose life is described in the film Never Give Up).

But is music so important?

Of COURSE I would say yes. But there's so much external pressure to say otherwise. Just recently our daughter was in a children's opera, Brundibar, that had been performed in the Terezinstadt, a survivor of which related that he told the Nazis he was a cook - something USEFUL - and felt it probably saved his life. Useful. Practical. Important. This is what we're supposed to be. I have to confess part of me did go into medicine not only because it was the kind of work in which my beliefs and values could come alive, but also because I was concerned about earning a living and supporting a family.

When I recall the publish-or-perish academic world I spent so much time in, and think of the nitpicky things high-achieving academics would be obsessed with, I remember thinking to myself, that guy in Africa I heard about on the radio, or that kid that came up to my car at an intersection in the Philippines, doesn't care about this stuff! For them it's eat or perish. I feel at times selfish being so in-love with something so "useless," or having such "impractical" interests. I'd love to explore a writing life, a life in anthropology or the arts, a world of ancient or modern languages, but how self-serving that would be (for me, that is, in my current situation, without the real commitment to make a life out of these fields of study). If I were a refugee in Sudan, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe, I imagine I would be worried about the most basic needs: clothing, shelter, safety, enough food for my family. But I know of artists in refugee camps who still paint, musicians who sing. My friend's fiancé , Tha'ir Shafiq, an artist and humanitarian trapped in a squalid refugee camp, organized an ad hoc art class for the camp's children, to give them a way to express their feelings and hopes. He says pictures of their hopes are beautiful.

Herbert Zipper told me a story that I've never forgotten, of an experience he had doing hard labor in one of the concentration camps. He and his fellow-prisoners were exhausted and starved. Someone laboring near him began to recite Goethe. A few others who knew the work joined in. The power of Goethe's words sustained them, and they kept going. After he told me this story I remember him saying, "My dear, there is one word you must take our of your vocabulary, and that is fear." Coming from a concentration camp survivor this piece of advice hit hard. Zipper organized secret concerts in the camps. Even without adequate food, clothing, and shelter, music was important.

So what am I to make of all this? I have a self-centered dream, to learn to make music with an instrument that has enchanted me. I live in a cluster of towns where music and art programs are being cut from school budgets as nonessential and not reinstated, for political reasons, despite successful parental efforts to raise funds. I live in a society where it's good to be practical. I live in a world where inequalities are rampant and atrocious, and to which I bear a responsibility, having been given so many opportunities to educate myself and build a good life. But I also cherish a family life in which we can sit around our cozy wood stove in a cabin in the mountains, pull out our instruments, and sing together. I want to be able to making a living and, more importantly, make a life.

I don't have any easy answers for all the questions in my heart. For now I'll just keep practicing.

First Oboe Lessons

I have to wonder about naysaying. Why do people do it? Is it that they're setting things up so they can say "I told you so!" later? Is it that they have no faith in you? Is it that they can't tolerate the idea of imperfection or failure, like those things are the end of the world? When I told people I really wanted to learn the oboe, I almost invariable got, "Whoa, that's a REALLY hard instrument." I'm re-learning Syriac too, which I think is a hard language -do they think I should quit? Obviously not if I don't want to. I'm just wondering why people do this. Why do they acquire a tone of discouragement just because something's not going to be easy? Ooooh, you might fail. So? You might look bad. And?

Anyway, I've been mulling this over a lot because I was seriously beginning to think that signing up for lessons was this outrageous, impractical, unrealistic, crazy move. Am I glad I didn't listen to the naysayers (kind of like the way I ignored all the folks who were horrified I was applying to med school with a husband & kid after NOT majoring in a science). I LOVE my oboe lessons. I am having the time of my LIFE. I don't care if I'm terrible right now. This is FUN. Last week I was all sputters and squawks. This week my teacher said I was actually producing good long tones. I gotta admit, I am impatient: at the end of my practice sessions last week, I put away the exercise book and tried playing things by ear, and though my technique was completely horrendous (having had only one lesson at the time), still, it was tantalizing to see what MIGHT be if I really work at this. I got out a couple of phrases of some folk songs, hymns, & carols. Someday they might even sound like they're being played on an oboe. :) I've resolved to be more patient, though, especially since after my second lesson I have a better idea of HOW to work on things like tone & tonguing (which I find so much harder than just slurring notes smoothly together; my teacher says it's often the opposite in children - wish I had started younger).

Now I just have to figure out what to do about my left fourth finger, which tends to lock and get stiff when I press on the G key. I think it's weak, and it may not be pressing on the key properly either. Hope I can fix that problem.