Gotta have all the pieces

Being in the Banff bubble for the last few days has helped me realize at least one important thing so far. As I mentioned, I have known for a few months now at least that part of my healing process, perhaps the most important part, will be dealing with pain and suffering in my brain. Recently I have come to think, with the help of my friends, that this mental healing mostly involves gradually coming to accept and love myself. Today I see that that process involves at least two parts: on the one hand, I must work to live a fulfilling life, and on the other, I must work to understand and appreciate who I was and what I did in the past. Both parts are difficult. The aforementioned bubble has helped me do the former while completely avoiding the latter. So what I realized this evening is that I cannot forget either part.

I had a talk yesterday with the director of the program, Barry Shiffman, who encouraged me to spend my time at Banff experiencing and absorbing as much as possible. It was nice to see he thought I still had much to gain while being here despite not playing at all. To that end, I am working to fill up my schedule with as many observational or therapeutic activities as possible. I'm trying to take notes everywhere I go, and I've already learned a lot in just two days. There are many people I still need to talk to from other programs that are running simultaneously here at Banff. I went swimming again today for the first time in about five days. We had a scheduled power outage as well in both the music building and the residence hall which made me realize I have no idea whether meat sitting in a nonfunctioning fridge for nine hours is something to worry about or not. So of course I did worry about it and ended up storing it outside on my balcony in a tub full of ice for nearly the whole day. Barry couldn't tell me whether my half pound of turkey would have been okay or not had I left it in the fridge but he did assure me that bears haven't learned how to use grappling hooks yet. We had the first master class today led by Don Wielerstien(sp?). His inability to hear one of the student's names as Rosie instead of Rhody made me a little uneasy. But he's one of the best violin teachers and quartet performers in the world and his coaching of my group yesterday was awesome. He dealt a lot with the physicality of playing an instrument which was exactly the kind of thing I needed to hear. That evening I talked with a few dancers that are part of another residency who sounded totally badass and I really look forward to seeing their rehearsals, performances, and talking with them about their experiences with their bodies. Maybe I can have some hands-on experience with their bodies as well. Sarah, I'm totally joking.

Looking forward to tomorrow while looking back into the past.