That’s what you hear from your music performance friends every single time you want a Cook-Out tray. What’s the big deal, and who would turn down the legendary banana pudding milkshake in favor of playing the same music over and over in a tiny cubicle with no windows? What is it that takes so much time out of the performer’s “free” time? The simple answer lies in the day-to-day schedule of the undergraduate music performer, a wonder of time management and vaguely insane drive to succeed in the vicious world of the professional musician.
What your musician friend really means when dropping the “practice” bombin casual conversation is that he or she is trapped within a swirling vortex of diverse responsibilities. Elon music performance majors must perform two recitals (one each during junior and senior years). In the case of piano majors, all material must be memorized. And that’s not even the impressive part.
The piano performance major’s journey starts as soon as he or she moves in for the first semester of college: yes, in order to graduate on time with a music performance degree, you have to know what you’re doing right away. Hour-long lessons occur once a week, you’re expected to practice for five hours daily, and you’re required to perform for the department at least once a semester before being evaluated by a jury of professors. If you don’t pass this evaluation, you won’t be allowed to progress to the next level of applied lessons. As if that weren’t enough motivation to live in the practice room, there’s more.
A piano major’s most daunting obligations are preparing for the senior recital and graduate school auditions. Developing a program that showcases your individual skills as well as your ability to perform pieces from different classical periods is a significant challenge, and by the time you’re a senior, you are partially responsible for teaching yourself how to play the pieces you choose. When it comes to performing, there is actually a considerable amount of research that must be accomplished in order to produce successful, authentic performances of period pieces. This is why your music major friend makes spotty appearances in the library at odd hours. After gathering useful information, the musician then analyzes it for the duration of the performance process, constantly reevaluating the authenticity of his or her interpretation. Next, the pieces must be memorized to perfection until the performer can begin playing at any point in each piece. Now, overcome stage fright, and do it yesterday. Then organize a recital reception so people will actually be motivated to come listen to the result of all your “practice”.
So, the next time your musician friend declines a heartfelt invitation to consume unhealthy food at 2 AM, you might consider bringing him or her that banana pudding milkshake anyway.
Want to experience the results of an incredible piano performance major’s four-year practice marathon? Come to Patrick Bachmann’s senior recital at 7:30 PM on Thursday, April 22. See you there!
So softly, like a warm light from a mother’s face, the feet patter, pit against the creaky boards and open, telling home. It seeks to betray you, little child, wanderer of all things mysterious and good. You patter through the night on smooth, uncalloused heels, not bruised by labour nor cut by the searing touch of a life gone by.
No, dear child, you see only the shadows by their difference from the light; you taste only tears by their salt and the feeling of some small thing you’ve not yet grown to understand. As you wander-step carefully, like a mouse against the edge of my cupboard door, I can hear you breathing.
Your heart makes its tiny rhythm, excited of unforeseeable round-corners and what light might flit between doorways shut off to you. You will learn, o’ child, and I will cry, for then you will have become me, and the shadows no more will seem so different from the light.
The tears will seem less like salt, and the feeling more like home.
The heart will beat its slower pace, and you, o’ child, will be no more. In your place, something learned, something firm, a name, and you will listen for the children, for the patter of your own feet, but none will come, and you will know you have grown.
Sincerely Yours, Your Own Steven Norris April 2010
For my MMA 460 class, we were asked to create a website to promote any type of product. I decided to create a website for Olivander’s wand shop from the Harry Potter universe. I wanted to take what I have seen on the movies and transfer the look and feel into a website.
When I was a kid, I used to trot behind my grandma, attached to her as an extra appendage. I loved that the place lived and breathed slowly, like a person content to be lethargic—hands in overall pockets, chewing on unlit cigarettes, sending genuine goodwill to people who buy, and people who don't.
There was an area where tables groaned beneath heavy Mason jars just barely within my reach. I wonder now how Mr. Pope could stay in business selling nothing but honey, but he did, right up until the day he died. That's what mattered, in the end. Or that's what folks said mattered, anyway.
On one such visit, Grandma dropped a warm jar into my hands, "Turnnat over. You want them air pockets to go up nice and slow. That's how y'know the honey's good. See there," She pointed at the jar, satisfied. "This one's pure liquid gold. Lot of people ain't brought up to understand That you can't drizzle a platinum ring over a biscuit, Or drink hot diamond water when you've got a sore throat."
I was instantly confused, but I tried not to show it. I squinted at her through the golden contents of the jar and nodded. "That's all there is to bein' an adult, baby, Realizing the difference between what's expensive and what's downright important."
She turned around to talk to Mr. Pope about crime rates, politics, taxes, and other things that sank into background music. I flipped jar after jar, setting them back onto the table upside down and imagined that being an adult really isn't that hard if all you have to do is watch golden bubbles rise and disappear until someone finally sets them free.
Splayed out and luscious, maybe a little Exotic – a pineapple, the sexy Hawaiian secretary; A pyramid of oranges, the balding business moguls.
Suddenly, the art gallery feels much colder: sterile, A cemetery of colorful, one-dimensional Headstones, wax museum of waxed fruit that speaks in garish Tongues and languishes, hostage of a brittle glass shell.
How far below the surface does the soul live?
You saw the ballet last week, took your two daughters in pink. But had you been busy, driving somewhere and trying to recall The scent of that secretary’s Versace perfume as you turned Up the volume on Yo-Yo Ma’s illumined bowing,
You would have known the feeling. Even if you had missed The beauty of broken bodies contorted perfectly, the fruit Of hours of pain, repetition, rehearsal on bloody toes, you would have Questioned our role in the worship of the poised, rejected the posed idols.
How far above the stage does the heart leap?
If you were here, not holed up again with a pineapple In some luxurious hotel suite with mass-produced still life Seeping into the cream-papered walls, you would take note Of the way Degas captured human perfection, aspiration, impossibility
In every frozen pirouette and bronze tulle skirt. You would Know your admiration as a portal to enlightenment, As a theoretical golden bubble emerging at the top of your Head, between the brain and skull: as potential energy.
Last month, I wrote an article about my senior thesis and collaboration process that took place between our theater majors and me. With the initial photoshoots behind me, I have dozens of excellent prints just waiting to be incorporated into my project. You can come to my senior thesis show over in ArtsWest this May to see the final product, but for now here's a sneak peak of some of the images I took over winter term:
*Special thanks to Luke Sanderford, Kabby Borders, Alex Pepper, Jennifer Roberts, and everyone else who participated!
A good friend of mine, Sam*, recently left me with the keys to her apartment, a stack of instructions, and a live rabbit to care for. “Remember to check to make sure my car’s still there!” she shouted from behind the mountain of luggage in her arms.”If it’s not, call the police!”
I felt very reassured. I watched her pull away in a Biobus carrying approximately twenty Elon graduate students headed for an educational tour of the grand city of London. London apparently holds many opportunities for Elon Digital Media graduate students—even for the very first students of the new program, who were now off to make their mark on a small corner of one of the largest and most fascinating cities in the world.
My job looked a lot simpler in comparison: take care of a bunny. Granted, I hadn’t really asked for the job so much as it had been thrust upon me. My friend’s two closest friends—myself and another girl—had exactly one car between us: mine. So when Sam asked us to take care of her apartment while she was in London, I knew the responsibility was going to fall on me.
How hard could taking care of a bunny be, anyway?
When I described the task to another friend, she recoiled in horror. “I took care of that bunny last time Sam was out of the country,” she said. “I still have bruises from where the little monster bit me.”
I got home and opened a Word document that was about six pages long, even single-spaced. It had all the usual instruction on it, such as where to get the mail. But it also contained useful information about the all-important care and feeding of the bunny. Specifically, how to hold the bunny so he will not bite you.How to open his cage so that he will not charge out and bite you.How to set up an area for the bunny to run to work out his pent-up aggression.
This was somewhat unnerving, to say the least. In terms of personality, it seemed Jakey* was not the most highly recommended of bunnies, it seemed. He looked cute enough: a small bundle of fur with wide, dark, unknowing eyes, a habit of twitching in a way that looks partly nervous and partly excited. I’ve loved animals since I was young, and while I can count cats, dogs, crawfish, and butterflies among the critters with whom I have shared a household, I have never owned a rabbit before. Possibly because my mother is horribly allergic to them and would have to be rushed to the hospital every time she walked by a rabbit if we were ever stupid enough to own one.
Naturally, when I approached the cage for the first time, it occurred to me that—just maybe—allergies are genetic, and that maybe I would be as violently allergic to rabbits as my mother is. But there was no time for such practical considerations, as I’d already signed away my winter term to taking care of this animal. Directions in hand, I opened his cage, and he gave a squeak—a sort of squeal which signified his terror at being potentially touched by a new person. This’ll go well, I thought.
I couldn’t get the door all the way down before he zoomed out of the cage and vanished into a Bunny Netherworld--sort of like the one your cat visits every time you think she’s run away, and returns from only after you’ve panicked and put up fliers, and looks at you nonchalantly like you’re some kind of lunatic. (It happened to me, once.) Jakey promptly stowed himself under the armoire, and neither the prospect of food, water nor human attention could coax him out. I ended up with my head shoved as far under the armoire as it could go, and crooning softly to him while holding out hay to him (yes, they eat hay) in what I hoped was an enticing way.
Forty five minutes and thirty kibbles later, I induced him to venture back to his cage. He trembled as I petted him. From the press he had received, I had been expecting a vicious Psycho-Bunny. The reality was a quivering mess of fur that abhorred loud noises and only calmed down when I mastered the technique (described on page six of my bunny-handling manual) of pinching together his ears and stroking them.
Our time together brought different joys into my life each day. He began knocking down his water bottle on a daily basis on Day Three of my duties. Each day I would arrive to a puddle on the floor beside his cage, an empty water bottle, and an irritable bunny. I dutifully mopped up my (somehow he was beginning to be ‘my’ bunny in my head) bunny’s mess like a mother cleaning up after a naughty child, but this behavior continued until the bitter end. The next personal quirk the bunny developed, around Day Ten, was chewing on the bars of the cage. I wasn’t sure if this was wholly natural behavior. It looked like it might be a tad painful for the poor little guy—that was solid metal he was attempting to eat! “No,” I shouted over and over again, but teaching him even one of the basic words in the English language had little to no effect.
By the last day of Sam’s trip, I've enough of it. I even told him so. “You’re a pain in the neck,” I told Jakey. He did not look affronted. In fact, he made what I could only term a needy squeak and hopped closer to me. I obligingly picked him up, grumbling all the while about how much I wouldn’t like him if he bit me.
He didn’t bite me. He curled against my chest like the adorable animal he was. I didn’t even have to follow the instructions for holding him given to me in the manual. He just melted into my arms as if he belonged there, snuggled up to me as if to say thank you.
There’s not much you can say in a moment like that other than “Awww….”
Katie McKenzie
Creative Nonfiction
January 2010
*Names changed to protect the anonymity of person and bunny involved.
