Perfectionist????!!??

Last night Janet was in class and we were working on Cranes solos. She gave us 20 minutes to noodle, but I haven't spent any time on Cranes solos because I never get to solo and well, I've been working on performing group stuff so much that I've kind of neglected Cranes. Anyhow, she went from person to person, helping them on their solos, and when she came to me, I didn't have anything. Nothing really. It's so hard for me to come up with something from nothing in 20 minutes. I was frustrated and I knew we would be going around doing our solos for the whole class. Frustrating! Impossible! She even pulled a drum up and played basic to force me to try to play something, but nothing came.

When we did go around and do solos individually, she asked if I wanted to skip having to do something in front of the whole class, and I said yes. Spared the torture! Hallelujah! Then she said I wasn't ready because I was a perfectionist.

Hold up.

A Perfectionist?

Me?

A perfectionist???!!

I think the reason why it stings so much, is because it's true. I am a perfectionist. She just was the one to point it out. Sigh. But it's true. I mean, just look at this blog. I have trouble sleeping because I can't play a song right. I spend my free time forcing my hands to play those ridiculous rudiments. I spent 12 hours coming up with a solo to play with any base beat of my choice for the P-group audition, and most of those 12 hours were spent crossing out the patterns I had just written down. And it was only 8 bars long! That's like not even 30 seconds!

Is it that I'm not satisfied until I can do something perfectly? Or I won't accept anything less of myself than perfection? What is wrong with me? I know I can play solos. Last weekend at the Sushi Summit, I had to play an odaiko (big, giant drum) solo, and I did fantastically! Susan thought so. Even I thought the solo was really good, and I'm a tough critic of myself. But I didn't set it, I didn't practice it, I didn't even think about playing a solo until I was actually playing it. And it was good! At work I can noodle and doodle and play really neat patterns and riffs or whatnot on my desk all day long. No problem. Sometimes I even surprise myself because of what I play on my desk.

So what is wrong with me?? Why do I have to be so hard on myself? How do I let go of that perfectionist side of me? I know I can play, and I know I'm a halfway decent player, but I hold back. How can I break through that? I mean, it's not even with just my solos, or just the cranes solo, but with everything. There are only moments of abandonment when my superpowers shine through, but I don't quite know how to tap into that. I know it's there, but where? But how? I feel like crying.

Just Humor Me

Humor me for a minute while I be superficial and materialistic. If this were a perfect world, I would have these things. Then I would be happy. Oh, and maybe my own sound-proof space--because then my neighbors would be happy too. Until then, I'll continue to dream.

Sushi Summit/ Kiai Power!

On Saturday a small group of us went to the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco to play a gig at the Sushi Summit. It was a day of sushi competition, sushi preparation, sushi tasting, sushi paraphanalia and sushi accoutremonts. There was sushi to the left, sushi to the right, sushi upstairs, sushi downstairs and beer and sake all over the place. Our job was to play two short sets of taiko between sushi deomonstrations by Sushi Summit sushi chefs--try saying that fast. It was an impressive place to play a gig--we had a nice little stage and when we came on, the sound of our fabulous playing pulled everyone away from their sushi and they watched us instead! Believe me, it's really hard for taiko to compete against food for attention. During the second set, there was a guy sitting in the front row and he had been sucking on a lollipop, but when we started playing, his mouth hung open and he was just sitting there holding the lollipop up next to his face--the whole time. It was funny.

But I also wanted to write about a lesson that Janet taught us in class just two days before this Sushi Summit shindig. As we were working on Cranes solos, she was telling us that we need to kiai more for the other players (kiais are shouts of encouragement--not necessarily words, but just good strong yelps that let the soloist know that their fellow players are rooting them on. It really makes a difference because it gives you extra energy). This wasn't the first time that we've heard this, but I think her explanation really hit home for us, or for me anyway. She was saying that all you need for yourself is enough energy to breathe and play basic, and the rest of your energy should be directed toward the soloist. So then she had us kiai-ing our hearts out to the other players. We went around the room doing kiai solos for the soloists and group kiai. Janet even demonstrated her kiai power, and I have to admit, I was a little afraid after that. Janet is a little tiny woman but if anyone were to mug her in a dark alley, everyone would hear it. She said it was her "stage kiai." I don't think I've ever heard anyone kiai louder than she did (Susan's word was "foghorn" which is actually a more accurate adjective and it makes me snicker, but no, that's wrong of me. Bad Kathryn, bad!...snicker). When I first started playing taiko, we learned a song called "Renshu" which means "practice" in Japanese. It's the song you learn when you are just starting to learn taiko, and part of the song has a "hup!" built in. I was so embarrased and shy to make such a loud noise that I thought, ok, I'll just fake the hup and I won't ever have to hup in taiko--I'll just pretend like I'm hupping. Yeah right. First off, you can't get away with not kiaing. And second, a good kiai makes you and the other players feel good. I mean, why even play taiko if you're not going to put any energy into it? And why would you put all those long nights and the occasional long weekend in to play taiko at all unless it makes you feel good? Kiai then! And that's what we did for the performance on Saturday. I kiai-ed more than I ever have, and louder than I ever have, and I think it added a different sort of dimension and energy to the performance. Some guy came up to me afterward and said he really enjoyed watching us because it seemed like we were really enjoying ourselves! And it's so true. I think I've unleashed my kiai-power, so watch out!

Sleepless

The night before last I got home from taiko after working on a really tough and complicated piece. It's a really nice arrangement of a song by the blind African duo Amadou et Mariam. John is a guest composer for the group, and he hears things in the song that I don't, but I guess that's because he's got a pair of really well trained musician's ears. I'm learning--slowly--but I'm learning. Anyhow, everyone in the group was struggling to try to fit all the different pieces of the song together. It was a challenge. You start to play something and it goes ok, but then you have to switch parts and your hands don't play what you want them to, or your head won't remember what you just got through going over for the tenth time just a minute ago. And the parts don't start in logical, easy places--they start in the middle of a bar, and I barely understand what a bar is and it's in a weird time signature, and I barely even understand what a signature is. But that's kind of the fun part of taiko--the struggle. Every song that I play is really hard at first. I don't know if it's because I'm just inexperienced, or if they're giving us really hard songs to play, or what. Even Janet and Susan were struggling come to think of it, so I feel a little better.

So when I got home that night, my mind was still struggling. Class ran late and my body went straight to bed, but my head didn't. It was up all night long and it kept waking me up. I would be dreaming about playing pieces of the song and I would mess up in my dreams and I would actually wake up. It was pretty horrible. I woke up several times and was frustrated because the I couldn't get the song right and I couldn't sleep. And the thing is, this isn't the first time this has happened. Janet-songs do that to me too at first. I guess I just like to figure stuff out. Hopefully I'll get the song down and sleep better!

Bachi

Today I made three pairs of bachi. Bachi are the sticks you use to hit taiko drums, and they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. The vast majority of bachi are the simple dowels you see above. I needed a pair that were light enough to hit a shime with (shime have more delicate heads, so it's best to use a lighter pair of bachi on them to avoid premature wearing) as well as a josuke, which are the barrel-sized drums that you saw in my previous posts. We're learning another dual-drum song which also includes a lot of bachi flipping. I have a pair of bachi that are fine for hitting both the shime and josuke, but they're tapered, and are hard to flip around because of their uneven weight. There are bachi out there that you can buy that are very light-weight, and are perfect to hit the more responsive shime with, but they're way harder to flip and don't produce the kind of boom I want to get out of a josuke. So today I went to MacBeath Hardwood, our local lumber company (excellent customer service by the way--I think 3 or 4 guys asked if I needed help!), and picked out a few dowels that I thought were both light and heavy enough for the song. They're skinnier than the bachi I normally use, but I was excited to bring them home.

I like my bachi kind of long because I like the kind of fulcrum action you can get out of them. I feel like I can play faster and more economically with slightly longer bachi. I have a pair of bachi that we call "Miyama-style" that are 16 3/4" long, so I decided to make my bachi the same length. Cutting the bachi is one thing, but getting the ends of the bachi to have that nice smooth edge to them is another. You want a smooth tip to protect the head of the drum. I used a dremel that my dad gave to me years ago to help the process along. I've found that homemade bachi have strange angled ends on them--probably because people try to angle a file or something to get the edge tapered out, but they never look even. All of my homemade bachi are like that. But today I figured out how to use the dremel just right to get that professional look. Instead of bringing the dremel or file in to force an angle of the edge of the bachi, just let the dremel follow the grain of the bachi so that it goes from the side to the top of the bachi. It takes a little longer but it's so worth it when it's even and smooth. After that I sanded everything down with some 220 grit. It's best not to sand your bachi too smoothly because you might end up dropping them, or worse, flinging them at teachers/classmates!

Take a look at the tips! Not bad, eh?

Children's Day!

When I was a kid, on May 5th, my dad used to put up the carp kites on a pole on the roof of our house. I thought that was so cool to see them flying up there, swimming wildly through the sky. On the other hand, back then it was actually called "Boy's Day," so the carp were flying for my brothers. Carp are symbols of strength, perseverance and long life, which are traits that you want in boys--I guess. I mean, it's ok to have weak, short-lived, wishy washy girls--they don't need no stinkin' kites. I think on Girl's Day you actually put out dolls or something boring like that. I never liked dolls. But I LOVE the carp kites, or Koinobori as they're also called. They're beautiful things. There are just some things that are really beautiful in spite of themselves. I think the symbolic power of our flying koinobori rubbed off on me, because I've always been one stubborn girl. I have koinobori of my own, but they're tiny--not meant to really fly. But they will fly today. I'm going to hang them out my window at work.

(I need to put a disclaimer here--I'm not bitter. Growing up, you just know that there are things that you do for boys and things you do for girls. They're called traditions and you should savor every one of them because it's so easy to lose touch with them. As a kid, you don't have this sense of inequality or discontent. You just look up in the sky and see the carp flying beautifully and say to yourself, hey, it must be Boy's Day, and then you enjoy the view. I'm really glad my dad put up the kites because it's something I look fondly back on and treasure. If I have kids I'll do the same--but I'm putting up kites for girls because they need to be strong and perserverant to make it in this world.)

Let's just enjoy some fine examples of koinobori:

Bizarre

You wanna hear something bizarre? Ok, so all day long at work I walk up and down the hallway outside my office. Every once in a while, I'll spread my arms to try to touch both the walls at the same time, but I can never do it. Isn't there some sort of factoid out there that says that the wingspan of your outstretched arms is the same as your height? So I always figured that the width of the hallway was just a tinier bit more than 5'6", which is my height. In fact I've often resisted the urge to lie down across the hallway to test that out. Anyhow, today I was walking down the hall and I spread out my arms and to my absolute amazement, I could touch both walls simultaneously! I've been walking up and down the hall for five years now and I've never touched. Ever.

This leads me to believe one of three scenarios:

Scenario #1) At age 29, I'm having a second growth spurt. This would require that the factoid about your wingspan and your height being equal is true. I don't know if it's wise to believe every factoid you hear. Blowing in someone's face while they make cross-eyes doesn't make them cross-eyed forever. And I haven't tested out the one where if you don't close your eyes when you sneeze, your eyeballs will fall out.

Scenario #2) My arms are growing longer independently from the rest of my body. This somehow seems more plausible than the growth spurt theory, yet it just seems ridiculous that my arms would decide to grow on their own accord. I mean, what's their motivation?
Wouldn't that just make me more proportionately ape-like? Why would my body take such a backward evolutionary step like that?

Scenario #3) My arms are more flexible than they used to be. Ok, this is probably the reason. We've been doing a lot of arm movement stuff for taiko and extention and reach and "big arms" are what we generally strive for. I just had no idea that stretching out your arms made them longer, or rather, made them reach their full potential.

So, following the logic of Scenario #3, wouldn't stretching and extending your legs make them longer, and hence, make you taller? Why don't you work on that theory while I try to sneeze with my eyes open.

Who are you. Who-who? Who-who?

I really wanna know.

So today I was walking into the post office and I held open the door for someone who was walking out of the post office. She was carrying an armful of packages and it was one of those things you just do--you just hold open the door and let them out as you go in. Then this person said to me, looking me right in the eye, "Thank you Kathryn." I was taken aback. You see, I have no idea who this person was. And the way she said it--it wasn't mean or anything. Kind of like when you do a favor for a friend and they don't say thank you, and you say "You're welcome." Not quite scolding. Not angry. More like--you should know better. And now I feel really bad. I stared at her as she walked away because I was thinking, it'll come to me in a second, just let me think, just let me think! But I have no idea. No idea who that was. She was blond, wispy hair. I think she had on a country western style shirt. No idea. She kind of looked like someone I knew in college, but no, I don't think it was her.

I should have chased after her and asked because now it's bothering me. Who was that? Did I know her well, and just completely forgot all about her? Were we friends? Did we work together? Did we have (gasp) a meaningful conversation that I've forgotten all about? Do I owe her money? Did I read her short story in a fiction workshop? Isn't it just awful how you can meet and interact with another person, and then just completly blank out on them when you see them a year or however long, later?

So if you're out there, mystery-thanker-lady, please let me know who you are so I don't go crazy. And if you prefer to remain mysterious, at least give me a titillating hint.

I know it's totally pointless to plead to my blogger audience, seeing how I've only gotten 6 hits on my site , and two of those hits were me, and another one of those hits was a friend testing out the hit meter.

Jeez, this is driving me crazy . . .