All Work and No Play

...makes Rebecca an unhappy girl.


So I called James to patisserie and paint the town red! In high style, of course.

James and I at our favourite spot, Patisserie Valerie. We come here to celebrate, to laugh, to chat about our days, to heal. And the staff is always happy to see us.

Darlene and I in Covent Garden. Notice the caption at the top of the storefront.

In the Mood for Complaining.

Crunch time is on, which means something must give. First went the social life, then the stilettos, then the make-up. I am still eating, but only if it is food that allows me to eat with one hand while practising with the other. You know, hands separate work.

On the menu tonight:

Main course
Flame grilled steak...flavoured potato chips, that is.

Desert
Bounty bar, dark chocolate edition.

Yes, I've been dining at the vending machine. It's no way to live!

***

I decided to do some Spring cleaning last weekend because I can't work in a messy environment. For some reason, my room accumulates dust like I've never seen, and to give you an idea of how dusty it is, I had a sneeze so gigantic that I blew a pile of receipts off my desk.

I also learned that hand-held vacuums need to be emptied. The stuff that goes in doesn't just magically disappear, like I had hoped. In fact, while emptying, the amount of dust and hair collected in the vacuum made me sneeze again, such that I blew the dust all over the floor and had to vacuum the same area twice. Sigh.

Can't wait for the day I return home to a country where hot and cold water doesn't come out of separate faucets. I mean, what were they thinking -- that the temperature would balance out if the right hand froze while the left hand burnt?!

Tales of Woe.

A week ago, the internet in my flat decided to stop working. And our service provider is of no help, but what is new with the English! It also doesn't help that I think the modem is the router, that I don't know which cables fit into which holes, and whether or not the little green lights should be blinking.

This is when I consider marrying an engineer so I will have 24 hour technical support for the rest of my life.

To complicate matters, when I tried logging on at the Academy's computer lab, I realized that I use the computers so infrequently that I had forgotten my password. To retrieve my forgotten password, I simply needed to enter my Academy email address. Which I don't know. Finally, I figured out how to change my password altogether, and will most likely change my password each time since I keep forgetting my password. If you think I'm bad, compared to some other musicians I'm a technical whiz. Fancy that!

On another note, the Italians have an old belief that it is a blessing to have a pigeon poop on your head. I received such a blessing the other day in Regent's Park. This blessing better come in the form of solid performances in concert, because being pooped on is really horrifying.

I have a string of performances coming up, and the pressure is most definitely on. First up, De Falla's Spanish Dances. Originally written for voice and piano, I'll be playing them with a cellist. Wish me luck!

Art and Politics

Of course, while I am faced with a pile of work and deadlines, instead of practicing I have my nose in a book of George Orwell essays which I read alternated with daydreaming -- I mean, philosophizing.

Interestingly, his essay, "Why I write" resonated with some of my recent thoughts on politics, and I use this word in its broadest sense.

Orwell describes four motives for writing, and I believe these motives may be applied to any form of art, including music. And one such motive is political purpose:

Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free of political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is in itself a political attitude.

This is when I wonder what role artists have in the Western age of free speech and democracy. And relativity and diplomacy. Artists are political, yes, under the guise of aesthetics. Surely they are not being exiled or thrown into prison. But are they not silenced in other ways?

Is it not the task of art to push through mediocrity towards higher ideals? Or at the very least, to present to society something which is mysteriously pure -- even divine -- amidst a chaotic, noisy, and unimaginative life?

What shall we say, then, is the purpose of art if it doesn't stem from some sense of injustice, some lie to expose, or on the flip side, glorification of something great?

The alternative purpose, one might say, is entertainment and simple joy. Like when a mother hums to her child. It is beautiful without the excellence, without all the right notes, and yes, without political purpose. But can we still call it art?

Some would say that it doesn't matter. Art doesn't matter; it takes too much time and effort to appreciate and understand. Leave it for high society and the elite. But it does matter, because where politics exist elsewhere, it is so often designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

And this is why art and music education should have a more honourable place in the public school system. It is too crucial for it to be a luxury item, because otherwise we are raising a generation of mediocracy or worse, a very polite generation that has never before been so unconcerned with truth.

Ich Liebe Berlin!

Architecture:

Food:

James and I stayed with André, who lives in a posh area. André owns a charming café!

Musikinstrumenten Museum at the Philharmonie:

Berlin life and streets: