Occasionally I regret it

Violin: As I thought about what I would write tonight, and the fact that I haven't posted in like a week, I came to what I see as a very interesting, albeit "duh" inspiring, insight. After suffering through about 5 days of practicing 2 hours at most, and comparing my progress and posts to that of few a weeks ago when I was doing 5 hours a day, I realized a major difference which wasn't initially clear to me. Every day that I practice less than about 3 or 4 hours, I feel like the most I have to say in this plog is that I need to keep working on the same kind of thing that I was working on the day before. And though I would say similar things when I was practicing 4-5 hours, it wouldn't actually happen, i.e. I would "discover" something new, or make substantial changes in my focus nearly every day. And as I doubt I have recently discovered the be all end all of violin playing, I must conclude that my old teacher was right yet again when he told me more than 6 years ago that "almida is right, the magic number is 5." I mostly just took his statement on faith, as I did with almost everything he told me during the 4 years I studied with him. And so this most recent development continues this semester's process of discovering all of my teacher's comments for myself. So as you might expect, most of what I have to say about practicing today consists of "reaffirming" what I have been working on for the past few days. Basically I have been trying to make myself more consistent. I am trying to make every bow feel exactly the same, and every left hand movement completely reproducible. It is very difficult. Trying to bow consistently has brought my left hand tension very much into focus. I think this consistency thing has a lot to do with understanding the students in my old studio. For instance, this korean girl who was always very technically proficient but musically lacking was probably practicing extremely consistently. Therefore, she didn't have to practice a lot, and furthermore, practicing was boring because she was doing the same thing over and over again. Of course this is a total assumption. But I think I have much to gain from it. I focus too much on making "music." What bullshit. ha

Life: So what have I been doing with all my time if I haven't been practicing?!? Well not much, unfortunately. The biggest thing(s) to note are 1. I drove my car into a ditch, forgot that I have a AAA membership, and thus ending up paying $85 to some towing company. Made me want to shoot myself. 2. I went to hang out with this girl at this cafe and listen to jazz, and when I got there she pretended she didn't know me. All the other pertinent details suggest a total bogusing on the part of this chick. I don't want to chalk it up to just, oh I'm completely uninteresting and undesirable, because that would be highly depressing. So I don't know what to think. I'm going to ignore her and see how likes it. So there.

Practice Time: 2 hours