Limbs. Made of embochures.

On Saturday I took a lesson with a wonderful flutist in Boston. She was kind enough to invite me into her home on a weekend, and the lesson ran over an hour. I tried to soak up all the information as best as I could, since I left the memory for the recording device lodged in my computer (fail). I played the Faure as awesomely as I could, because I figure if I play as well as I can in a lesson, I free up the teacher to tell me what I really need to work on. In this case, it was embochure.

I'm no stranger to changing my embochure. I did it over the summer in 2005ish, and it was awful, and here I am, 2012, heading back into it.

Paul Taffanel: great embochure, or just
correctly shaped facial hair?

How to explain changing your embochure? It's not quite like speaking a new language- maybe like changing your accent to one that feels totally unknown. It affects every area of your playing. No note can be un-scrutinized, and passages that you were playing faster and faster with the metronome have to be slowed back down to the speed of a geriatric snail until you can play them in the right way. Then the fingers get confused because you're not focusing on them (for once). The face feels weird, you question whether you're doing it the right way. You question whether you should do it at all. This time around, the voice is much quieter than the first time I changed my embochure (I was younger and full of pride about my flute playing), but there's still a voice that says "maybe you are just supposed to play the way you did. Who cares if you're doing gymnastics with your face? You like your sharp upper register. What about the edgy lower notes? You're just going to let those go? What if your mouth isn't meant to play that way?"

So then it's a huge leap of faith even to start the process. Fifteen minutes here, then five more. Stop when you feel yourself slipping back into old habits. Only practice the right way, and don't give any more lip service (pun intended) to the old way.

In some ways, it's a giant allegory for practicing in general, or, you know, life. Every time I practice, in some way I'm walking out on a limb, having faith that I am doing the right thing by playing what I'm playing, by pursuing music in general. It's exhausting, and I think that's why I didn't practice for a year and a half after grad school: I ran out of faith. I could always be practicing a bad habit and not know it, or pursuing the wrong thing, only to find out about it later. Anyone could, in any aspect of life. We just don't know all the time. I think about this a lot.

So I'm walking out on three limbs this fall. I'm music-ing. I'm running in minimalist shoes. I'm changing my embochure. 

Vegan Week!

I've always been really nervous about taking the plunge and going vegan, even for a little bit of time, but after the airplane food on the way back from France, we decided to give it a shot for a week and see how it went. For quick substitutions (and to ease into the process), we went with non-soy Earth Balance instead of butter, Vegenaise instead of mayo, and rice cheese instead of normal-people cheese.  Verdict: E likes Earth Balance better than butter (and it seems to work fine in all our recipes, as an added bonus).  I like Vegenaise better than mayo, and the roasted garlic flavor is delish.  Rice cheese is good if you are expecting rice, but you are out of luck if you are expecting cheese.

The best discovery? These "meat"balls, which E found at The Vegan Stoner. Basically the gist is this: you take a can of black beans, drain, rinse, and mash. E made it the first time, but I heard his swearing as he tried to mash a can of beans with a fork, so when I made them again, I did it with my hands. This method worked great and was also fun and gooey. After that, you add a handful of oatmeal (we used quick oats) and some soy sauce. Then you can add whatever spices you want. E rolled them in bread crumbs and baked them, and afterward pan-fried them in some olive oil. They came out like so:

They don't taste like meatballs, but they're so good that we found ourselves surprised that we didn't care. They are easy, fun, and great on whole-wheat spaghetti with zucchini, as shown in the "before" picture.  The "after" picture doesn't exist because it was just an empty bowl and we didn't see the point of photographing it.

So then later in the week we were having two great friends over for a vegan We Made It feast, and we figured that we would use the same recipe. But then we decided to make soup, and thought "meat"balls and soup would be weird, unless it was Italian wedding soup, but these beans would not hold up to that kind of Italian soupness. So instead, we made them into sliders. I made buns from scratch (chock-full of flax seed), and we made a slider bar with tomatoes, onions cooked with mustard seed, the rest of the rice cheese, and very fancy garlic chipotle vegenaise made with the following recipe: add sriracha sauce to garlic vegenaise. Stir.

Today was the first day off of the vegan diet in a week, but we still ate vegan meals. The end result for me is that I feel better and lighter physically, which makes me feel more motivated to get outside and do stuff. To be fair, eating vegan meant that I couldn't snack like I normally do, so that might have something to do with it. I also found myself thinking less about what I put in my mouth- instead of thinking about whether I should eat something, it was just a matter of whether I could eat something. As long as something was vegan, I didn't worry about whether I should eat it, and that seemed to work fine (you'd be amazed how much stuff out there isn't vegan). I even got to work one day to find a big plate of cookies in the break room, and since I knew I couldn't eat them, I didn't waste time mentally agonizing over it.