Your own world...

[jeno]

I am currently writing a series of surrealist poetry for school and  was wondering if anyone would like to perhaps share what enters their minds when they are losing themselves in playing the piano. It could be a train of thought, your own fantasy world or maybe a response to listening to music...anything! I just need some ideas to help me...it would be greatly appreciated and I will not use your exact experiences, I just need ideas to get the wheel rolling.

[debussy symbolism]

Greetings.

Surrealistic poetry? That sound interesting, as I never had first hand encounters with such poetry(well, if you want to call Stephane Mallarme's poetry surrealistic then its another matter). Do you write it using the uninhibited "psychosis" method as Dali used it to paint, or do you just artificially create sentence structures that contradict apparent logic? Anyways, I am very fascinated by your type of poetry and would love to read some of it if that's okay with you. 

[m1469]

Well, I have recently become more and more aware of this and it's been quite an interesting thing, really (it's helped me realize some pretty heavy things).  To be honest, I have realized that there is often a deep churning of sorts within me when I really go to the piano.  Often memories of my family will come up.  And, for whatever reason, many of those memories are the negative things that I experienced growing up; my abusive grandfather, my cold-mannered, distant-seeming grandmother, my fear of my mother, my feelings of 'not belonging' within my family. 

Sometimes I find myself processing this stuff I mentioned, or I am processing the rest of the world around me as I percieve it (and sometimes specific events).

Performance is a little different because I have an audience with me that I can feel sitting there.   I am trying to reach some place within them that resonates with the place in me where I need this music that I am playing, and I want to make them need it, too.

How's that for ya' ?    I think I need to make some drastic changes in my life becaue that's just... depressing. 

[jeno]

Thanks for the replies (I had a feeling this was a dodgy question to ask but you guys have restored my confidence)! I would love to have you read some of my poetry debussy symbolism-when I have finalised the drafts...you can be my critic! The poems I am writing are in a short story-like sequence. As for the style, it isn't really like "psychosis", but it is definately uninhibited. One could say it was like a train of thought almost but there is some degree of logical structure. So far I have just written half a book of what is just trains of thought without attention to editing. It is somewhat like Dali, he paints a lot of what he dreams and dreams must be stimulated by reality. Using this as a way to delve into reality, I suppose you could say my poems would be more like an escape into reality rather than from it (which is probably the 'conventional' surrealism-but there are so many different strains of it, I am just inventing it again). In a nutshell, I suppose I call it surrealist because it is unleashing the subconscious mind to give a deeper insight into reality.
I'm really sorry if I sound like I'm contradicting myself, the ideas are still forming, it is a work in progress. 

Thanks for your reply m1469, I was considering writing about the emptiness of adult-adolescent relationships. I like the idea of your 'processing'. I am wondering, do you find that maybe in performance you channel your feelings of 'not belonging' into the music, or is it more like escapism where you forget about it and hear the music as a different entity with it's own emotion.

This is where I think I am stuck, because I really want to write about music in my poetry as the protagonist is a pianist. But I find that when I am really lost in a piece, there is some kind of dreamlike state and I start to fantisise about events-perhaps that is daydreaming (but it seems to be intensified by the music!)

Anyway, as you can tell I am still a bit lost so I would really appreciate more help with my creative journey!

Regards

[m1469]

Thanks for your reply m1469, I was considering writing about the emptiness of adult-adolescent relationships. I like the idea of your 'processing'. I am wondering, do you find that maybe in performance you channel your feelings of 'not belonging' into the music, or is it more like escapism where you forget about it and hear the music as a different entity with it's own emotion.

I think most of what I wrote to you in my previous post has to do with the things I am becoming aware of in myself as I just sit down.  I start to hear my train of thought in a different way when I sit down at the keys.  I find myself in a different way at the keys.

However, in my furthest reaches (that I have explored thus far) into the state of performance, with an audience, it is different.  And, there is one specific "spot" -- for lack of a better word -- that I am constantly aiming for.  I practice this all the time with my students when I am performing a prospective piece for them.  I want to see if I can make them love it and want to play it.   I have experienced playing from this "spot" with the 'most clarity' when I was in a particular lesson with my Uni teacher.  I will never in my entire life forget that experience.  Also, I have experienced this a couple of times, most vividly, while I was playing for my Uni studio class.  In both these scenarios, a reaction occured in these listeners that seemed beyond their control and I realize that something was communicated that could not be talked about.

[pianowolfi]

I am currently writing a series of surrealist poetry for school and  was wondering if anyone would like to perhaps share what enters their minds when they are losing themselves in playing the piano. It could be a train of thought, your own fantasy world or maybe a response to listening to music...anything! I just need some ideas to help me...it would be greatly appreciated and I will not use your exact experiences, I just need ideas to get the wheel rolling.

Well for me it is not easy to make a difference between realistic and surrealistic ideas that appear in my mind while I am playing. I think I have mainly three phases.

1. Practicing. There I know I "should" focus on the learning process, the music reading, the automatization and so on. During this phase, which is sometimes  a bit boring, I often start to think about what is most important to me currently. The most intense sorrows apear as well as the most joyful experiences. Whatever my soul is currently busy with. Then I always try to bring myself back to the practising process but it does not always work. If it is not successful at all I stop practising and give my thoughts the priority.

2. Playing for myself. There I try to incorporate my deepest thoughts and my most inner and secret feelings into the music. As this phase is currently the only one for me (I don't actually practise at the time, I just play) I would need to write thick fat books about my thoughts that have influenced my playing. Purpose of all this is to let the music get more intense and passionate. For a prospective listener it does not play any role what I was thinking about, he can have his own thoughts and feelings and associations when he listens to my music. But to give you an example, which also shows that my thoughts and imaginations seem to be somewhere in between surrealistic and realistic. Often I even don't know where to put them exactly. Once I had watched the dark red sunset and wished I would be able to leave my current place and just float over the ocean, into the red sunlight and the clouds, floating to a place far away. Another example: I have had a vision of Jesus on his way to the cross. I sat down and played something that represents my mood about this vision. I can't tell you if this vision represents a reality or not, for me it does but not necessarily for a listener. Since all these associations were the cause for my music they are very important to me. Since I am a musician and not a philosopher it is not necessary to me to analyze my visions and imaginations. They mabe sometimes relistic, sometimes surrealistic and sometimes in between. But they get real in a higher sense, since they become part of an artistic statement.

3 Performing. This is beyond any thoughts and ideas. This is metaphysical. Of course I have thoughts and ideas when i perform but they are not in the center of my attention.  It is a process of dying and resurging. it is the total flow. There is just a stream of energies that I need to steer. I can't create these energies, I can just "invite" them to inspire me. If they appear I am part of a bigger deal so to say. I don't rule the world  then but I feel myself as a mediator of the forces which do rule the world. Hope this helps! 

[pianistimo]

pianowolfi really took it to the essence.  you can't really put your deepest subconscious into a piece until it's learned.  i mean, you have a sort of idea how you want it to sound at the beginning - but it morphs as it gets faster and faster.  then, it's almost an entirely different thing to you.  also, you start seeing 'lines' and notes that you should bring out within the piece.

once all that is figured out - i do get into an extremely meditative state before playing.  it's almost like i can't hear the person going before me.  i actually do try to walk away - farthest from earshot of the performer right before me - and look at the pages of music and get a 'recorder' going in my mind of my last practice of the piece.  whatever the piece reminds me of (usually something outside of my personal realm - and more the 'composer's mind').  for instance, when i played the op 118 - i don't personalize it as much as think about the 'longing' in the piece.  it is full of intensity of feelings from brahms to clara.

for saint-saens allegro appasionata - i think about the heavens and the stars.  that is because i read somewheres that he was also an amateur astronomer. 

for mozart fantasy - i thought about mozart's landlord's wife - and how annoying she might have been (to get these free lessons - for rent) and then - also to worry about her or her husband tiptoing up the steps when he was gone - peeking in the door- and possibly ripping off a few pages of his manuscripts (even if they were in the trash).  i think he was a bit crazy - by the time he wrote this fantasy for all the pestering and breaks he had to take when people came for lessons, for rent money, for this , for that.  he never could just sit there and compose - unless it was late at night.  and then, constanze and the babies probably needed him. 

well, that's my mind - sort of.  the deepest parts of our psyches can actually come out during a real performance.  you get so INTO the music - that it takes YOU for a ride.  i hope that when i perform - i get a feeling that the composer would have enjoyed the performance too.  mostly i feel this with mozart and beethoven - but occasionally with other composers once i've practiced enough.

the waldstein (on of my favorite sonatas of beethoven's) is probably the one that inspires me to actually think of something about myself.  i feel this intense drive and impetus to perform.  when i play the piece - it completely exhausts me by the end.  i mean, i make it to the end with energy - but afterwards i feel like i actually played something of substance.  of all the pieces i've ever played - this is the most surreal in several places - the jumps to odd keys (that you don't expect) and the continual swirls and 'development' and 'return.'  the development = i think - is where the subconcious truly enters.  you are developing an idea.  HOW you do this is really dependent upon what you think is happening.  to me - by the time i get to the development - my subconcious has taken over.  i am no longer nervous about beginning, or the audience, or anyone - i am completely IN the music.

[alzado]

Sharps, flats, key signatures, time-values of notes, dynamics . . . .

The idea that I can play difficult material with my mind wool-gathering in La-La land is totally absurd.

[pianowolfi]

Sharps, flats, key signatures, time-values of notes, dynamics . . . .

The idea that I can play difficult material with my mind wool-gathering in La-La land is totally absurd.

If you think about all this when practicing it is surely useful and right. But for performing you should not need to think anymore about this but about the musical content. Sharps, flats, dynamics and all that is in your fingers and will just run by itself. If the practicing was good.

[elspeth]

At the moment, among other things I'm learning Chopin prelude no 4 in E minor.... I was working on the LH this evening, and although its a pretty easy piece, that just makes it easy to play badly, I think... anyway, listening to the harmony to help myself learn it, it reminded me for some random reason of the patterns of light you get when sunlight falls through a stained glass window and the colours fall on a soft stone floor below. Why, I couldn't tell you.

Sounds always have colours associated with them, in my head at least - those chords in the Chopin were purple and shades of dark red and blue. Mozart is usually green, and Bach is silver and blue. Beethoven is shades of yellow and orange, like the light in Turner's paintings.

[nanabush]

If I'm playing something very structured, like bach, I'll be honest, my mind wanders, I think about school, what i'm doin durin the day, stuff I'd normally think about when I'm not playing piano...

... For other stuff, it's not the music making me see things, usually it's me forcing myself to see what the music portrays.  I mean like imagining nighttime while playing a nocturne... If I focus on images that relate directly to the music, I play it better.  So like for danzas argentinas, I'd imagine someone, insane, running around.  Another example would be jeux d'eau, I imagine standing in a large pool of water only like 2 inches deep, and drops of water cause ripples.  Pretty straightforward, what I see usually reflects the title or typical mood of the piece.