Do it Right

Two weeks from now I will no longer be in Dance School, and parting will be such sweet sorrow. Part of the resolution I made with myself as I exit this Eden of kinesthetic and artistic exploration is to remain, at all times, a dance student.

Seven years ago, in the prime of my willfully starry-eyed youth--an embracing illusion shored up by the support of teachers and parents alike--I went with my mother to buy a clarinet. I was talented, I was interested, and maybe this was the undertaking, the crucial mineral additive to the soil of my upbringing that would lead me to flower in glorious form. Committed mother that she was, she sought out trustworthy, quality clarinet information, and received a recommendation from my teacher, a slight man sharpened and pulled taut by an unflagging and self-aware commitment to impossible expectations. For him, of course, the only guy to see about a new instrument was Paul Olivia, the clarinet guru of the Bay Area.

So we drive to some other tree-inhabited town with impossibly long driveways and low stone walls, and walk into this guy's garage. It had been transformed into a labyrinth of shelves, clamps, and workbenches, dimly lit but reflecting a yellow-gold glow from unexpected surfaces. He had on a thick black apron, looking like he'd just walked out of a foundry, and attached to his glasses was a device that could swing over the left lens and that looked like something a jeweler would use to inspect fine stones. Naturally his face was covered with black smudges, smeared by the faint perspiration of intense focus. When he maneuvered his wide shoulders through the rows of shelves he left no question that he knew exactly where each box of imported reeds was, each type and size of impossibly small screw, each plastic bag of oddly shaped metal keys and levers. In no time he had two options for a student of my level--the first, less expensive, which he treated with gentle contempt, and a second model which was already sold by way of his respectful treatment.

I played a bit, so he could figure out which number imported French reed I should buy. In two minutes, after one scale and a chromatic, I had already been thorougly sized up. It wasn't just that the corners of his mouth were pulled down into a near-scowl, or that he stopped my playing, or that he had no time for niceties in his speech, because these were all defaults of the alchemical workshop thing he had going on. More that he recognized serious when he saw it, and it was bugging him that I was sitting there with a smile on my face, buying a nice instrument and possessing the ability to play the clarinet, but lacking the reverence to go deeper, to will the tone richer. I knew sitting on that stool and blowing my lungs out that I'd been seen through, and that to some extent I was an intruder to his shrine of clarinet-ing just riding the swell of good feelings: praise from my clarinet teacher and band director; the love involved in my parent's sacrifice and commitment to see me succeed; the vague promise of future success. Paul Olivia tilted his head forward and looked at me through his glasses, complete with outwardly-hinged eyepiece, and he knew that I knew I'd been seen through, so he threw me the following bone: "You only really need to practice for ten minutes a day. But you have to practice right."

He continued on a little bit about tone and what to aim for, but this was the important part, the bit that's stuck with me these last seven years. Just the words are little more than a revision of the quality over quantity truism, but in context it felt more like: "I have this passion for this instrument and its capabilities, which has built all of this around me. I'm going to tell you where to start, so that if your exploration of this sound in its fullest incarnation is sincere, you could love it like I do." In context, it was a gentle reminder from a severe man that in striving for something pure, you've got to be driven by more than good feeling. That in time the knowledge of the thing, made in your effort and commitment, will change you; that those ten minutes a day of doing it right can nurture a craft, a discipline, a life.

There was the evidence, standing right in front of me, too much a caricature filled out with human dimensions to not make an impression. Thus impressed, and having encountered something personally worthwhile in my daily ten minutes of dance (done right, of course), I'm off to America not only to obtain gainful employment, but also to be a dance student in a new environment. I foresee future posts having to do with the lumbar spine in sitting positions...