The joy of practice

It's hard to practice when it's hot. Not just because heat makes me sleepy, like a cat, but because in a house without central air, I don't want to take even a cheap guitar in and out of air-conditioned rooms, and it's TOO hot to play in a non-AC room. Sweat and all that... Today it cooled off enough for me to have fun flailing away at it, though kinked into a terrible posture and, I'm sure, inflicting Aerosmith on the unsuspecting neighbors through the open windows.

It reminded me of the last book I read on the elliptical before I left Chicago, Glenn Kurtz's memoir Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music. Though a great read, it was in some ways incredibly depressing. Kurtz was an extremely talented child guitarist and practiced his way right into the New England Conservatory. (I knew a bunch of singers at NEC in Boston -- lovely and only somewhat dysfunctional place -- and attended many a concert in their Jordan Hall.) There, he retooled his technique, fought for the good practice rooms against other instrumentalists, and eventually headed for Europe to really brush things up for a great career. One fine day in Vienna, he abruptly realized he didn't have what it took, packed up his guitar, headed home, and didn't touch it again for ten years. (Instead, he went to graduate school to study literature, and if that didn't depress me thoroughly, well...)

But he did pick it up again another fine day, taking us back through his career by framing it in one of the loving and rigorous practice sessions he now does next to the window of his San Francisco apartment. I think I was supposed to feel good about how things turned out for him, and that an amateur or failed professional can still love, enjoy, and vigorously pursue their music. But I have to say that it also made me selfishly glad that I have so little musical talent, because at least I never really thought I could make a career of it. I don't know if it's better or worse to have so much and still not enough.