Heart full of cavities - updated

The other night I had a strange conversation.

A woman I know had a mistaken idea about me, and she told me about it. The problem is not that she said anything, but that I kind of liked it (her wrongness may have been encouraged by my actions; in other words, I'm not really surprised that she came to this conconclusion). It was awkward because I flitted between the "right" response (disabusing her of her incorrect notion in the shocked manner of someone with morals) and the "wrong" response (being flattered and not-so-secretly pleased). This was confusing for her, too, no doubt.

The whole night, in other conversations, I made the mistake of being too confessional, too self-deprecating, and too personal. Saying everything, I'm finding out, doesn't make me feel better. I don't know when to shut up sometimes. More on this, but let's go back in time to Friday for a minute:

On Friday, I had a rehearsal with Patty and two of her students. We're playing a quartet for her next students' recital, which is coming up at the end of May. I'm not her student anymore (so I'm not playing a solo; maybe if I was, the whole rest of this post could've been avoided), but she has enlisted me to help support her students, and I can't resist. These particular students are fun to play with: they're good players, and one of them is really taking big steps with his flute playing. The other one sounds beautiful when she lets herself go. That's so fun to see (and hear)! And I always love playing with Patty, who brings me closer to her level, or lets me tag along for the ride, anyway. I like the piece we chose (by Catherine McMichael, it's called "Falconer"), and I'm playing flute 2. In the 3rd movement, the slow, pretty movement, I get the melody for 8 bars. The melody happens to be lovely. For one second (ah, maybe about 30 seconds) during one of our many run-throughs, my playing matched.

This music is not technically difficult (Catherine McMichael considers it "upper intermediate" level); I've learned harder music, and have played it well. I don't need to ask anybody or verify this with the experts, it's not one of those things I've never done but have convinced myself in daydreams that I could do if I just tried. When I practice, I know I can sound beautiful on a consistent basis. I know this, but I rarely do it.

It's not hard like running or taking a class at the gym. I'm not embarrassed by my skill on the flute. Nobody cares how fat the flute player is, or how fat she thinks she is. It is something that I could consistently succeed at, and I don't do it.

But what I meant to say about those 8 bars, that 20, 30 seconds of music, was that I heard how pretty it sounded, with the other flutists supporting that part, and I got a little emotional. I realized that I miss that. Without music, I'm just a big throbbing vein of too much information. My writing is not good enough to do that whole hide/reveal thing in a way that's compelling. I always say too much, even in emails. I don't know when to shut up.

So Sunday night, I'm sitting there drinking my yummy Fat Tire beers, and I mentioned to the aforementioned totally interesting yet wrongheaded woman (wrongheaded only about this one thing...) about how I admire how other musicians (my husband, for example) can improvise and make stuff up, and how she and the other actors can get on stage and do what they do, and how scary that would be to me, and then I expressed a seemingly contradictory desire to be involved (with my flute) in one of the potential upcoming shows at City Garage. Then, my friend David and I were talking about The Emperor and the Bird of Paradise, a piece for solo flute and narrator that I've been working on forever. And he reminded me that he would be interested in taking a look at it and possibly working it up for a workshop or something. Even though we've discussed this before, I'm starting to feel a little bit of urgency about it, and when we were talking about it, I felt like maybe it won't happen, maybe I won't get a chance. So what the fuck am I waiting for?

And right then (granted, with two beers and very little food in me... my food intake on Sunday consisted of pocorn for breakfast, small fries and a chocolate shake for lunch), talking to David about performing something (anything) for City Garage members, I felt a very strange feeling:

I felt my heart well up a little, like it did on Friday during "Aire of the Falconer." It was very brittle and the opposite of shatterproof (I believe that word is also "brittle"). I pictured it doing that - swelling, breaking, blowing apart like those Harold Edgerton photos of apples being pierced by bullets, glass from my cold apple heart all over the place, and I think that's why I don't do anything about it.

...

I just gave David the "go" to do whatever it is he has to do to schedule this for a workshop, if okay with the powers that be at City Garage.

Nervous, now.