Getting from Here to There. . .

. . . with grace.

Big or small, there is always something we have to go through.

Sometimes getting from here to there can seem impossible.

The little Mozart doll in my studio is not pleased with the first week of lessons.  How are we going to get from this Mozart to something that is at least a little more like Mitsuko Uchida.  A little more grace.  It is not one student's performance I'm talking about. . . it is a whole crop of high school students who all described their Christmas break as "relaxing."  Obviously.  They relaxed. . .

So how to get them ready for an "honors" quality performance in three weeks.  Little steps and a whole lotta faith and obviously--some hours at the piano, please.  Slow practice.  Extra listening--the Uchida recordings I lent you would be a great place to start--but the key word--is to start!


You have no choice.  You are signed up. The money is paid. Put one foot in front of the other.

To put things in perspective, my friend had her daughter in the emergency room with pneumonia twice this week. When you are the mom and the child is sick, there is no choice. You have to go through it.  You have to get from here to there. Put one foot in front of the other.

And, my first reaction to learning about my dad's terminal cancer diagnosis was--okay--here we go. We don't have a choice. We can't run far away. We have to put one foot in front of the other.  Ditto on the funeral weekend.

So. It's only Mozart. Or in my case this week--loads of laundry, the ghost of Christmas chaos in the house and a stack of deadlines looming for chamber music, SPTG, and SAM.

Here is a radical idea:  perhaps we could do even better than just putting one foot in front of the other.  In her book Simple Abundance Sarah Ban Breathnach lists six principles to help us start the new year with more grace:

Gratitude

Simplicity

Order

Harmony

Beauty

Joy

Hmmm. . . let's see:  I'm so thankful that we have Mozart sonatas to work on. . . it takes a lot of work to make them sound simple. Order, harmony, beauty, and joy?  Those make it worth it to get from here to there.

It's only Mozart, but it is a little bit the same as life.  There are times when you have to get through it--but when you look back--you mostly want to see how grace filled it was--not just a stack of notes, tasks and days to get through.

After writing this, I'm ready to tackle my deadlines and my house now. I've put Mitsuko on my stereo.  I'm thankful I have deadlines and a house.  I'm working toward the other five--hopefully with just a little more grace.