I had an epiphany today. And a little bit of a nervous breakdown. I was at a little Chinese wok shop out on the Eastside this afternoon. They had a huge HD television that was facing my direction. It was impossible to ignore. CNN was on, and it was a roundtable discussion leading up to the closing of the polls for what they were calling “Super Tuesday Two”. I don’t have broadcast or cable tv at home, so I haven’t seen this sort of media in well over a year. The hype level was extraordinary.<\/p>\n
I felt my pulse quickening. My mind\u00a0became jumbled and full of worries. I really felt that my blood pressure was rising. I shook it off, tried to concentrate on my meal and my companion, and soon left to go home. Once home, I did a brief look around online. The view from there wasn’t much better. Everything was as wrong as wrong could be. The sky was not just falling, it was on fire and full of giant pieces of jagged rock. I felt like I was being shouted at from every direction. Every voice was diametrically opposed. Even my usual sources that used rational and even judgement, and those with ample perspective were taking the hardest possible lines on both sides of whatever issue was being ‘debated’. My\u00a0entire realm of experience outside of actual face-to-face conversation is like being screamed at for most of the\u00a0hours in each day.<\/p>\n
But do you know when that goes away? Well, when I’m asleep for one, or in the arms of my beloved, for another. But also when I am making music. When am practicing, nothing else exists for me but the notes on the page and my desire to realize them with perfect fidelity. When I am rehearsing with my friends in a chamber group, or in the orchestra, I’m thinking about a dozen things at once – none of it concerning anything happening outside the confines of the rehearsal room, or the concert hall stage. When I’m performing for an audience of a half dozen, or thousands, all that matters is what I and my colleagues have to say, and how the audience receives that communication – sending it back to us in that mysterious alchemical transubstantiation of live performance.<\/p>\n
This, I realized, is the cure. You can make beauty. You can make ugliness. But only through the arts can you create that chimera of beautiful ugliness that transcends each and causes us to lose our\u00a0self<\/em>, and become part of something more. Through art we are transfixed, transformed, and transported. I’m so proud of what I do, and what my friends and colleagues do. We don’t often get much appreciation on the level of national discourse, but ultimately, all politics is local, and we are making our localities much more hospitable and humane places to call home. That is something to be proud of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had an epiphany today. And a little bit of a nervous breakdown. I was at a little Chinese wok shop out on the Eastside this afternoon. They had a huge HD television that was facing my direction. It was impossible to ignore. CNN was on, and it was a roundtable discussion leading up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-3Ev","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":533,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/14\/is-something-wrong-with-this-picture\/","url_meta":{"origin":14043,"position":0},"title":"is something wrong with this picture?","author":"Charles Noble","date":"November 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The irony is that if 83% of people who\u00c2\u00a0 earn more than $150,000 studied music in school, why do those of us who chose music as a career make much, much less? I am glad, however, that those people who studied music and then went on to other things were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1191,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/09\/29\/the-orchestral-shakes\/","url_meta":{"origin":14043,"position":1},"title":"the orchestral shakes","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We've got two out of our three performances of Beethoven's Ninth symphony out into the ether, and the reviews of the first performances have been mixed. David Stabler writes: But despite some wonderful moments, Saturday's performance was not the orchestra's best. The playing sounded diffuse, lacking angles and urgency. Let's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":873,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/23\/gigs-gone-wrong\/","url_meta":{"origin":14043,"position":2},"title":"gigs gone wrong","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Bass blogger and Major Midwest Orchestra member Michael Hovnanian writes about a Good Friday gig gone wrong - horribly wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, no one was physically hurt during this gig, but I'm sure the mental scars will last quite some time.","rel":"","context":"In "freelancing"","block_context":{"text":"freelancing","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/freelancing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7943,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2012\/10\/11\/eloquent-but-wrong\/","url_meta":{"origin":14043,"position":3},"title":"eloquent, but wrong","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I got taken to task Thursday night by Robert Levine (my bratsche blogging brother) for my recent post (concerning the contentious negotiations and work stoppages in recent weeks) over at the Polyphonic.org blog. It's good reading, and Robert has good points, and I make a weak rebuttal attempt in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "bloggers"","block_context":{"text":"bloggers","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/bloggers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6124,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/04\/06\/opening-statements\/","url_meta":{"origin":14043,"position":4},"title":"opening statements","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 The concert the Oregon Symphony is presenting this weekend has been given the title \"A Pair of Sixth Symphonies\". The first of the pair is by a Czech composer who many have heard of, Bohuslav Martinu, but whose works most likely have remained unknown to the vast majority of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/kunsthandel_stephan_andreewitch_ansicht_von_wien_von_ptzleinsdorf_aus_gesehen_12573345815208-e1302140214362.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13486,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/10\/musical-performances-city-parks-for-the-soul\/","url_meta":{"origin":14043,"position":5},"title":"musical performances: city parks for the soul?","author":"Charles Noble","date":"July 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"It was a warm afternoon here in Portland - the beginning of what promises to be a pretty lengthy heat wave (there was a 'heat wave advisory' declared today for the weekend and beyond). I spent the early afternoon working on the Dies Irae movement of Verdi's Requiem for Saturday's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"wallace park | photo: charles noble","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_7508-500x177.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}