12 Months of Practicing: December

I am so happy to say that this is the final journal post for my 12 Months of Practicing 2019 project! If you haven’t seen my December video, you can check it out here: I give you all of my stats from the whole year, compare them with my stats from 2018, and celebrate the progress I’ve made. In this post, I’m going to expand more on what I’ve learned from doing the project as a whole, and share my goals for 2020 and beyond.

I have grown so much and improved so much from doing this project. I have become better at seeing my default perfectionistic mindset for what it is - a death trap. I have learned that my inner critical voice is illogical and should not be treated as an authority. I have learned how to use time efficiently, and that a less-than-optimal amount of practice time is infinitely better than no amount of practice time. I have learned how to set reasonable goals for myself. 

I still need to work on consistency. I still need to work on not judging myself. I still need to work on finding a way to ensure that  practicing remains a part of my daily life and identity even when I have gigs that make me feel exhausted and overwhelmed. I still need to learn how to make this a daily habit, though I am closer to this goal than ever before. I still need to learn how to keep going (in a healthy way) even if I am burned out. My goal is to be able to look back on this post in December 2020, read this paragraph, and think to myself, “Well, I’m better at some of those things now than I was back then!” 

Ironically, I haven’t practiced for the last eight days (including today). I was determined to finally finish this project once and for all, and decided that I wasn’t allowed to practice until it was finished. The nice thing is, there was only one other time this year that I’ve gone longer without practicing: a nine-day stretch back in March 2020 when the pandemic really started to take hold in the U.S. Honestly, it hasn’t felt good not to touch my cello. I feel like it’s lonely, and wants to be played. 

At the same time, I can tell that my mindset around practicing is different than it was a year ago because I’m not constantly feeling shame about it, or agonizing over it, or putting it off by watching TV and then feeling horrible at the end of the day when I realize I’ve done this for two weeks and I just remembered I have a concert I need to cram to prepare for. This time was totally different. I made a decision not to practice so that I could give myself this time without the weight of “I need to finish my 2019 project and 2019 ENDED FOUR MONTHS AGO!!!” on my shoulders any longer. It is a sacrifice I decided to make for myself. I also made a plan to keep myself accountable so that I would not end up procrastinating and dragging this out and suddenly find that I hadn’t practiced for almost the whole month. And tomorrow, I’m going to get back to it. It won’t feel great, but it will be okay. And then the day after that, I’ll do it again. And the next day. And the next. And again, and again, and again, and then maybe I’ll miss a day, but maybe not, and I’ll keep going regardless. 

THE END.

12 Months of Practicing: October/November

Let’s talk more about this Practicing Pre-Game Playlist I made! 

First, I should say that I don’t listen to the whole thing every time I practice - it’s over three-and-a-half hours long! I only listen while I’m getting set up, which usually takes about 10-15 minutes. The reason my playlist is so long is because I am continuing to add music as I think of and remember more pieces and songs that inspire me. It started at around an hour of music, and it is still growing today! This is something I really like about the playlist, because it ensures that I will never hear these pieces so many times that I get tired of them.

Also, I don’t start the playlist at the beginning every time. I really like to use the shuffle button, because I’m often pleasantly surprised by what I end up hearing. And because it’s all music I love, I never think to myself, “Oh, I don’t like this one as much, I wish I could skip it.”

I’m not going to write about all the songs in this super-long playlist, but I’d like to share what I think of as my top 10 favorite songs/pieces on the playlist, and tell you why they are especially important to me. If you feel inspired after reading this to make your own Pre-Game Playlist for whatever you’re trying to do, I’d love to hear about it! 

10. Different Trains: After the War by Steve Reich, performed by the Kronos Quartet

This whole piece is incredible and worth checking out, but this movement in particular is very meaningful to me. The first time I ever heard it was during my freshman year of college, in a car full of fellow students on our way back to campus from somewhere; most likely we had all gone out to get food together. My friend, who was driving the car, asked us if we wanted to listen to something really cool, and of course we all said yes! He put this on, and I remember being hooked right from the start. I loved it and had to hear more, so I found out what the piece and album were called, and asked my parents to get me the CD for Christmas. It blew me away in so many ways: the way the string quartet and voice recording excerpts were put together, the story that the piece told, and the fact that the guy who wrote this was still alive. This was contemporary music, and I really liked it! Because of that experience, my interest in new music only deepened the more I looked into it, and it’s become a big part of my career and life ever since then. DEAR READER, I EVEN MARRIED A COMPOSER.

9. Shine You No More by Rune Tonsgaard Sorensen, performed by the Danish Quartet

I was introduced to this piece by a friend of mine - it’s very fun, and it reminds me of her. She is leaving Baltimore to go to New York in a couple of months, and every time this piece comes up on my playlist I will think of her playing it in the car for me on the way to one of the many wonderful-but-stressful chamber group rehearsals we had together in 2018-2019.

8. Boy by Ra Ra Riot

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to tour with Ra Ra Riot twice, and we played this song on every single show. It’s a fun song with a great bass riff, and listening to it brings me back to being on stage, getting to play electric cello for hundreds of people. Definitely one of the coolest gigs I’ve ever gotten to do.

7. String Quartet No. 6 in G Major Op. 101: 3. Lento - attacca: - Live by Dmitri Shostakovich, performed by the Emerson String Quartet

There’s a lot of Shostakovich quartet movements on this playlist, because I was OBSESSED with Shostakovich in my middle school and early high school years. Basically Shostakovich is the classical music version of emo punk rock (which I got into in my later high school years...I had a lot of feelings). I don’t have quite the same attachment to these quartets as I once did, but they are still great pieces and I do enjoy listening to them a lot. I picked this one for my top 10 because it is so simple, beautiful, and sad. This may sound morbid, but ever since I first heard it, I decided that this was what I would want played at my funeral. So, now you know!

6. Arcadiana: VI. O Albion by Thomas Adès, performed by the Calder Quartet

This piece is SO BEAUTIFUL!!! I have not yet gotten to play it, but I would absolutely give anything for the opportunity to do so. I first heard it when I was hanging out with some friends at a coffee shop and one of them said to me, “Listen to this and tell me it isn’t the most beautiful piece you’ve ever heard,” and then put headphones on my ears. Normally I wouldn’t like this, but I was immediately drawn in by the music and decided it was okay, because I was being introduced to something so beautiful that just a minute earlier I had no idea existed. 

5. Escape/Chase/Saying Goodbye from E.T. The Extra Terrestrial by John Williams

This movie was a huge part of my childhood, and I always loved the music that plays when the kids are riding furiously on their bikes to escape from the grown-ups and get E.T. back to his spaceship so that he can go home. It also makes me think of my Dad, who likes to play this track over and over again at a very high volume in his car. I actually got to play this with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for a Pops concert on which we played a whole evening of famous movie music by John Williams. We did Star Wars and Harry Potter among other things, and it was super fun! But my favorite music on the program was from E.T. It was so fun to play, and it makes me even happier to listen to it because I got to experience playing it with an orchestra.

4. Cello Concerto No. 2 in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191: I. Allegro by Antonín Dvořák, performed by Jacqueline du Pré

There’s a lot of cello music on the playlist (of course!), but this is definitely the most important piece to me in that category. When I was six and first started learning to play cello, I didn’t like it. I had already been playing piano for a year; cello was harder than piano, and I didn’t like being bad at something. As far as I can remember, I hadn’t ever heard anyone play a cello before, so I had no idea what was so great about this instrument that was big and had strings that were hard to press down, and there was a bow I had to hold in a particular way, and none of it made any sense. I just wanted to go back to piano, where all I had to do was sit on the bench and press down the right keys at the right time. Luckily, my Dad (who had and still has an enormous CD collection) decided to give me two CDs of the cellist Jacqueline du Pré playing some of the greatest cello concertos of all time. I remember putting the first one in my CD player, and this track started to play. The orchestra has a three-minute introduction before the cello comes in, and I was intrigued by all of the different sounds and melodies I was hearing, but I wasn’t completely taken in yet. Then du Pré started to play, and I could not stop listening to her. She was incredible. You could tell she was giving this piece everything she had and more. That was when I knew I would do ANYTHING to play cello like that. I immediately decided I liked cello more than piano, and was determined to learn how to play. To this day, du Pré remains my absolute favorite cellist, and I still feel inspired every time I hear this recording.

3. Mountains by Hans Zimmer

My family doesn’t often go out to see movies, but during Christmastime in 2014, we decided to go see Interstellar. I remember thinking that the movie was okay, but the soundtrack was AMAZING. This track in particular accompanies such an epic journey  -- it happens during a pretty intense scene in the movie which I won’t spoil -- and I’m a sucker for things that sound epic. 

2. Tabula rasa: 1. Ludus: Con moto by Arvo Pärt, performed by Gil Shaham, Adele Anthony, Erik Risberg, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and Neeme Järvi

I just love this piece. I find it so beautiful. Pärt is one of my favorite composers. I think I was most obsessed with this piece when I was at the Taos Music Festival in the summer of 2010. I listened to it in my room all the time, so it brings me back to being in the mountains in New Mexico. I made a conscious effort to leave the piece alone for a while, because if I listen to a piece for too long I start to get tired of it, and I really didn’t want that to happen with this one. So it’s been really nice to come back to it years later and fall in love with it again.

1. Tinge by Michael Gordon, performed by Todd Reynolds

Last but not least, this piece is just super fun. I love it, and it makes me happy to listen to it. I first heard this in 2009, and like Tabula rasa, I was obsessed and made the decision to put it away for a while. I definitely get the most excited when the shuffled playlist lands on this track, and that is why it is number one! Plus it is the very first song I added to this playlist, so clearly it is my favorite.

12 Months of Practicing: September

If you haven’t seen my September video yet, I highly recommend that you check it out. Among the videos I’ve made for this project so far, it’s one of my favorites, for two reasons:

1. It documents the first time in 2019 where I’ve practiced every single day for a whole month

2. I put a Star Wars crawl at the beginning and I am very proud of myself.

I initially thought I would write about what it was like to practice every day for a whole month. At first I thought, that seems silly, why would I do that? Then I thought, why do I think that’s a dumb idea? And I realized it’s because I feel ashamed that practicing every day for a whole month isn’t the norm for me. It’s the exception. This project is proving that to me, and I am ashamed. So far, this project has been eight months of talking and writing about what it has been like to not practice every day. Therefore, I do think it is important for me to say what it was like to actually practice every day:

-it was triumphant, tiring, annoying, interesting, and exciting;

-it made me feel more comfortable and confident with my instrument and my repertoire;

-it made me my roll my eyes at myself upon realizing for the millionth time that practicing every day actually does make you better at your instrument;

-it made me feel accomplished, like practicing had become habitual instead of something I desperately kept trying to add to my life out of a sense of shame and “shoulds.”

However, I think there’s a more important question I need to address.

Why did it take me nine months to get here?

I don’t quite know the answer. When I look back on that time, I remember feeling super motivated by my friend’s concert at the end of August (see the previous July/August post for the whole story), so maybe it was a motivation issue? But motivation has a short shelf life. It can get you going, but it’s not what keeps you moving when things start to get difficult. It’s not like I had never been motivated to practice on a daily basis before September 2019.

Maybe I saw that I had a streak going and didn’t want to break it? But wouldn’t that imply that I didn’t care about any other streak that I had going during the year? The truth is, I never want to break the chain, and I’m always sad when I do. So that’s not it either.

Maybe I was less busy? I look back on that time and remember that I had my usual gigs, and on top of that, I needed to prepare and record two pieces for my album (which will hopefully be released later this year!). So...I was pretty busy. That’s not it.

So what made this month different? While I don’t yet know why it took me so long to get here, I can tell you two things I didn’t have during any of the previous months that helped me keep my streak going.

First, I used a planner. I love planners. I love planners so much that I actually tend to overuse them. I want to use colorful pens and markers, and make sure everything I write in my planner looks beautiful...which is fun, but not sustainable for me. So my planner usage tends to drop off pretty quickly, especially when life gets busy and I don’t have time to doodle flowers and stars next to my painstakingly tried-to-make-it-perfect-cursive daily schedule.

So if this is how I normally use a planner, how did it help me so much in September? I used a specific planner called the Panda Planner, which has many cool features, but the most useful one for me was a panel in which I was supposed to prioritize my top 5 daily tasks and write them down in the order I needed to do them. I optimized this system for my own needs by always putting practicing as my Number One Priority task, even if it wasn’t possible for me to practice first thing each day. This way, I was communicating to myself that practicing was the most important thing I needed to do that day, as soon as I possibly could. I couldn’t move it to later in the day, or put it off until the next day, or just not do it for a week. That was the one thing I needed to figure out some way to do during the day, no matter what. I wrote in that planner almost every day in September, and I always wrote practicing in the Number One Priority spot. I am sure this helped me shift my mindset about practicing from “a thing I am supposed to do today” to “a thing I am definitely going to do today.”

Second, I had the idea at the end of August that I should take a one-minute video of my practicing every day in September. It was just a passing thought, and a way to add some variety to the videos in my project, but it turned out to be an incredibly effective way to keep myself accountable. When I felt tired, I reminded myself that if I didn’t practice, I wouldn’t have a video for that day, and then there would be a day missing from my September video, and that would make me sad. Also, having that goal of just one minute of footage helped me remember that even if I didn’t have time to practice for an hour, I could do twenty minutes, and those twenty minutes would not only be worth more than zero minutes, they would also ensure that I kept my commitment to capturing one minute of footage every day. Now when I watch the video I made from those 30 days of footage (edited down; don’t worry, I promise it’s not a half-hour long!), it makes me feel very satisfied to see all of those days accounted for, and to see them add up to something I am proud of.

So what is the takeaway? If I look closely at what helped me, I can see that my planner activity helped me identify practicing not only as a priority for myself, but as part of my identity. Writing it down made me a Person Who Practices, instead of a Person Who Thinks They Should Practice But Doesn’t. The daily video footage was a great accountability tool because I kept my goal low (only one minute of footage per day), it made it easier for me to view any amount of practicing time as valuable, as opposed to my usual mindset when tends to default to, “If I don’t have at least an hour, it’s not worth doing.”

Maybe keeping a planner or making daily one-minute videos isn’t something that would help you, and that’s okay! Find something that validates your identity as a Person Who Does (Blank) and not “I feel like I should be doing (blank) every day but I am not and therefore I am worthless.” Pair that with something that helps you stay accountable, either to yourself or another person, but make your goal something extremely reasonable - one minute instead of one hour, one line instead of one page, etc. Thinking this way encouraged me instead of discouraging me, and I know that is why I was able to finally reach my goal. You can too! I believe in you. Good luck!

12 Months of Practicing: July/August

One thing I didn’t mention in my July/August video is an experience I had at the end of August. A friend of mine invited me to his concert, and even though I had just gotten back from traveling and felt pretty tired, I decided to go anyway. The first performer was a cellist playing Sonata for Piano and Cello No. 1 in E Minor by Johannes Brahms, a piece I know very well - it was the first “real” sonata I ever learned. It is very deceptive, in that it is much more difficult to play than it might seem. It’s not a piece for show-offs - it’s all about beauty, warmth, and poise, with some fiery moments at times but not enough to ride on if you don’t have the depth for the rest of the music. What I didn’t know as a kid learning this piece for the first time (and even as a young adult relearning it in conservatory and in my professional life) is that this is the kind of piece where every note needs intention and purpose. I didn’t have that kind of musical depth as a kid (though I know I certainly thought I did!), and I wanted to have it as an adult but didn’t quite know how to get there. Also, I was too overwhelmed by the idea that there was a level of playing that I didn’t know how to attain, which made practicing feel futile. Sure, I could play the piece well. But probably the best way to put it is: I was good, but not great.

So back to this performance. I was sitting there, getting ready to hear this piece I loved for the first time in a long time, played by someone I didn’t know very well, and of whom I was already jealous, because they were getting to play this great concert with my friend (yes I am 31 years old thank you for asking)...and I could feel this impulse to be judgmental, in order to make myself feel better. In other words, instead of planning to be a normal person and enjoy the performance, I had the impulse to pick apart this person’s playing so that I could reassure myself that I was better than them. The truth is, we all do this with our peers, both in the music world and out of it. To compare is part of conservatory culture, because not everyone gets to be first chair, or gets to have a lesson with the amazing guest artist, or wins the concerto competition, or gets special performance opportunities, or gets a full scholarship, or even gets into the school at all. We compare because we think that is the best way to figure out how we can become great. To some extent, that is true. But comparison can become unhealthy very quickly: instead of using it as a learning tool, we use it to tear someone down and make ourselves feel better. “Why does my teacher seem to favor her over me? She doesn’t sound that much better than I do. I mean, she’s really good at orchestra so it makes sense that she’s first chair, but I heard her play Rachmaninov in her recital and it sucked. Like, what does he see in her? I guess he just likes anyone who has a big sound.” Or, “I mean, I know she’s technically better than me but like, she’s just not that MUSICAL, you know? She’s kinda robotic when she plays...I just don’t get why anyone thinks she’s good.” Or even, “I bet she got the job/solo/concert because she slept with the conductor, there’s no way she would have gotten that if she hadn’t.” And yes, people say mean things about men too, but there’s a special vitriol reserved for women, especially FROM other women. Because two women can’t succeed, of course. Three or more? WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM???

Oh, and by the way - this performer I was about to judge so harshly out of totally weird and unfounded jealousy, who is also a super nice person? Definitely a woman. That experience taught me that I am not immune to any of this misogynistic tearing down, even though I would very much like to think that I am.

So anyway, she starts playing. And she sounds good. I immediately feel guilty for planning ahead of time to judge her. I start to notice in an objective way that she and I are different kinds of players. She seems to have ease in spots where I don’t — her shifts were much more consistently beautiful than mine tend to be — and instead of making me feel insecure, I decided to just enjoy it. I also noticed that the more fiery moments in the piece were not as easy for her as they were for me, but instead of this justifying my need to feel that I was truly better than her (like the Queen from Snow White needing to be reassured by the Magic Mirror that she is “the fairest of them all”), I felt like I wanted her to succeed, to feel some sort of energy of encouragement and not judgment from me.

Once I was in THAT frame of mind, I started to really enjoy the performance as a whole, which led me to have a huge realization: getting to perform for others is an incredible privilege, one that I have been guilty of taking for granted. I’ve let unhealthy mindsets and being overwhelmed get in my way so many times, and it felt in that moment like I could just let it go. I also realized that THIS is the whole point of practicing. The point is to be able to give the audience an experience that makes them feel something, and to do that to the best of your ability. And the more you practice, the better the best of your ability becomes. Maybe that sounds obvious, but no one had ever framed practicing in that way for me. Practicing was something you had to do to get better. But WHY? Especially as a kid who picked up learning music very quickly. WHY get better when I can already play well enough to impress my friends? But I’ve found that the best musicians have a freedom that I’ve rarely felt, and they have it all the time. The best of their ability means freedom. The best of my ability does not currently mean that. But I will keep trying to get there.

12 Months of Practicing: June

For my June video in this series, I kept a One-Line-Per-Day journal for the whole month, tracking my practicing (or in some cases, non-practicing) experiences. I enjoyed it, and it was nice to have a different way to talk about how the month had gone. This made me remember that I used to keep a practicing journal (on and off between 2012 and 2017) and I decided to go looking for it. When I found it, my idea was to read the whole thing and find an entry that might be interesting enough to share, but for some reason it was hard for me to get myself to actually sit down and read it. When I finally forced myself to do it, I was struck by what I found.

Here’s an excerpt from an entry, written on 11/23/15:

“All right. Here’s what’s changed for me. It’s all the things I’ve thought about before...but something more important happened recently. I had an epiphany when I was listening to [a recording of] myself the other day. Not really during the Bach, that was just depressing :( But then the computer suddenly decided to go to the recording of [a trio I had performed with for a short time named Trio Corvino] doing 2nd movement of [“Ghost” Trio by Beethoven]. I had remembered that Colin [the violinist in the trio] said it was pretty good, so I let it play. Honestly, the beginning was captivating! I was pretty excited. But as I listened, I heard myself in a way that I hadn’t before...I wasn’t playing badly, but it seemed so flat in a way - one dimensional. And there were tons of little things like shifts that either just didn’t sound good or were clearly bad ideas that I just hadn’t thought too carefully about, or really listened to how it sounded. I felt, listening, like I was the weak link in the group, and that was really upsetting. The only thing after the beginning that captivated me again was the high A that I hold for a long time by myself. It was like a different person was playing. But then it went right back to being one-dimensional, not quite accurate Lavena. I listened to a lot of music after that, both recordings of myself and of other artists, and it was eye-opening. The depth that’s there in the people I admire is something I heard in myself at times, but there were always moments without it. I remember thinking while watching [my performance of the Schumann Cello Concerto] that I could tell when I was thinking about the next part/note/hard spot, etc. But at the same time, in the Strauss, Schumann, Elgar, and even the old Bach from my master’s recital that there were moments of depth that made the performances all the more disappointing when they didn’t last. The potential is there - and now I know what to listen for. While I was writing this, I was remembering that there was one coaching where MK [Michael Kannen, my former chamber music coach at Peabody] told me to listen to myself, to the sound I was making, and it made me upset. I remember thinking, “are you kidding me? Of course I’m listening to myself. I’m super good at listening.” And then in undergrad the cellist of the Miró [String Quartet] told me that my sound was boring, basically, and I was really sad/mad. But now I get it.”

It’s sad reading that now, but at the same time it’s powerful. That experience changed my life. It essentially put an auditory version of a mirror up to my self-image as a cellist and showed me I was not consistently playing at the level I thought I was, and that I needed to learn what it meant to actually listen to myself. It’s also a relief in a way to read this entry, because it feels very far away from me at this point in my life. I have been recording an album this year, which means I’ve been listening to myself A LOT. And while I have plenty of issues and little things that bug me about my playing, I don’t hear the same Lavena I describe in that journal entry. I am a much better listener and musician now than I was then because of that experience. Sometimes going through something painful about yourself ultimately makes you better. I am thankful for what I heard that day, because it was the only way I could get to where I am now.