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!