Admissions Essay

Last year at this time, I was deep into the special hell that is doctoral applications. For most PhDs, this means evaluating writing and brushing up CVs. A DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) in performance is... different. It's not that applying for it is harder, per se; it's just different. It's time consuming and nerve-wracking in a way that, for me, editing papers is not. I applied to seven schools, and each one of them had their own special application fee, audition requirements, and rep list. Some schools charged an extra fee to upload mp3s onto their website, and other schools wanted a labeled CD mailed to them along with the application. I made seven sets of audition material, learned a total of two hours of new music, and audio- and video-recorded pre-screenings (with a full-time job, without a teacher). I passed five pre-screenings, and flew to five different schools to play in person. It was hard, and I didn't really expect to get in anywhere. 

One school had an essay requirement, and the question was this:

My coping mechanism.
And also, my mom tells
me, the food she ate while
pregnant with me.
This explains so much.

If future generations of your family discovered a box of your most treasured possessions, what would they find inside?

I wrote an answer to the question, and at the time, it was the only thing I was remotely happy about in the entire DMA application process. I'm not sure I like it as much now, but I thought (since this was one of the schools where my floot skillz did not get me past the pre-screening) that I would share it here. So here it is, with some minor clean-ups, for your reading enjoyment or lack thereof.

If future generations of your family discovered a box of your most treasured possessions, what would they find inside? 

If my future family discovered a box that had been in my possession, it would be empty. I would be sorry if this was a disappointment, especially because I love the excitement of an historical treasure hunt, and have spent many happy hours digging through my own ancestors’ belongings. So if I were to leave nothing in my own time-capsule box, there would have to be a good reason.

Central Park in January.

I might have left my yoga mat in the box. I have spent life-changing hours on my mat, and I love its texture and smell. I can predict how it will stretch, and it has rarely let me lose my footing. Its calm green surface is torn up and missing pieces where my feet have landed over and over, and where my fingers have clawed in looking for a better grip. I love my yoga mat because it works well, and because it represents change and peace to me, but it would be wasted in a box. I would give it to someone without a mat, and hopefully they would pass it on too, until its life was used up. 

There would have been letters in the box as well- piles of letters in all shapes and colors of envelopes, some addressed in a business-like hand, others with the penmanship of a young child. I have been writing letters my whole life, and as much as email has simplified and quickened the communication process, I will always love pens, and paper, and envelopes. As time progresses, we will be able to talk to each other more easily. Contacting someone I love will only become faster and simpler. But the slow communication- the time-consuming letter, with enough pause to be able to think between each carefully written word- will still be special to me. The heaps of letters (from and to my grandfather, my fiancé, my middle-school pen pals) would have been in the box, if I hadn’t already passed them on to the next generation with the hope that they would understand the love of thoughtful communication.

Boulder in February.

And of course, my flute would have been there, cushioned on all sides by other possessions. Maybe not a specific instrument, but any of the flutes I’ve owned and played: my mom's dark silver-colored Yamaha from her high-school band days in Florida; an old but well-meaning Armstrong whose low register I loved; an open-holed Emerson bought from a catalog with years of birthday money; a Powell Sonaré that traveled with me through college and into graduate school. It might be my current instrument, a heavy-wall Muramatsu that I met during my master's program. It could be an instrument I haven’t found yet.

It was with the flute that I was able to express my individuality during my middle school years. It was the flute that was alternately a source of frustration and inspiration, a millstone around my neck, and the only goal I wanted to achieve.  The flute was my captor, dragging me to practice rooms late at night, and my companion, helping me sort through the issues of becoming an adult during long recording sessions. The flute would have been in the box because as seasons, friends, classes, colleges, jobs, and zip codes changed, my relationship with my flute remained my longest and most stable.

But the flute isn’t in the box either. The flute, like my yoga mat and collection of letters, won’t do any good in a box, waiting to be discovered.

I learned about Apāna (the act of letting go of things, from the body and from the self) on the yoga mat, but it applies equally well to letter-writing and music-making. When we write letters, we send a piece of our thoughts off into the world, and we may never get it back. When we play music, what we play might not be heard or understood; when we play flute, we may never completely recover the energy that we physically exhale into the instrument. Apāna is not the easiest concept to grasp; I feel that I have to re-learn it every day, but it is necessary. We send out things from ourselves because we have to, because it's healthy, and important, and scary, and makes life worthwhile. We risk giving because the greatest achievements are the riskiest. 

Seattle in March.

So it’s because of Apāna that I would let my time capsule sit empty, and instead let my most valuable possessions go to those who can continue to practice, whether their practice is yoga, penmanship, or music. And I hope that when my distant relatives open an empty box, they would be comforted by the knowledge that their world is a richer place because we pass things – like music – along, and are careful not to store them in a box.

Patience, myself

As I think I've mentioned before, one of the things I dislike about writing a blog about yoga and music and stuff is that it tends to come off as preachy. It's probably because of my writing style, but most of the time I think it would be really nice if I blogged about something I've figured out. Like, hey, look, I didn't used to be able to do a headstand but now I can and here is how I got there and you can do it too if you just have faith! Sadly, I've found life to be a little more complicated, and issues that I'm really working on are definitely more of the revolving door-type rather than open-and-shut.

Case in point: patience.

I used to be patient. Really, ask my mom (although maybe she remembers my childhood differently than I do). Here's an example: when we'd get a treat after dinner, say, an ice-cream cone, I would save mine until the kitchen was clean and all obligations for the evening were finished, climb with it to the top of the swingset, and consume it in the sunset while watching my shadow on the brick side of the house. Vivid, huh? I have great memories of Patient Me. I would do this with every aspect of my life. I happily worked on my (home)school work one page at a time, trusting that baby steps would produce some latent math genius in my own brain (hah). When I was sixteen I decided that I was too inflexible, so I started a persistent stretching routine that enabled me to touch my toes for the first time since I was in the womb. I had total faith that if I worked hard, a little bit at a time, I could be good at anything. And maybe that's true.

Then, I don't know what happened, but I grew up. And sometime between high-school and college and grad school, I started losing the calmness that I used to have about mastering a task. I started worrying that I wasn't "cut out" for the life I'd chosen, as if being a good flute player is a destiny rather than a lifetime of hard work. I assaulted people in my life with questions like "do you think I'll ever be good enough?" as if that was going to be determined by anybody but me.

I have no idea why I started worrying about predestination, but it ended up making me lazy. Looking back, I think I was testing myself, seeing if I could slide by on minimal practice because then I would "know" that I was "meant" to be a "flute player." I stopped working slowly and patiently, and started emulating my peers by procrastinating, cramming, and complaining when I was called out on my work not being up to snuff. And although the current university system fosters that kind of behavior (a blog post for another time?) it was nobody's fault but my own. I extended this negligence to other areas of my life: I stopped going to the gym and started "rewarding" myself with gobs of food, then complained when I gained weight. I stopped maintaining friendships and was surprised when I had fewer people to call. I stopped practicing yoga regularly and was upset when I lost flexibility and focus.

And this is the part where I should say, "but for $9.95 you can buy my book, and we'll throw in a free energy shot! You too can regain your motivation and the excellence for which patience is so necessary!" Well, sorry, I'm still figuring it out. Some days are better than others. Most of the time I have to keep reminding myself that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (and is made up of millions of single steps) and not get too freaked out when I don't see the end right away. Here are some other things I've been telling myself:

Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

Just because I don't succeed at something right away doesn't mean I wasn't meant to succeed.

People who are good at things often work really, really hard behind the scenes. They didn't magically get good.

Ultimately a big part of me believes that some things are "meant to be," and that sometimes makes it hard to force my way through a difficult task while my brain screams "you weren't supposed to succeed!! It was determined at the beginning of time/your lunch hour!!" So that's another obstacle, and another thing with which I'm currently struggling.

But if there weren't any obstacles, how would we learn to be patient?

Spooky Spooky Spooooky

Last night, my dude surprised me with tickets that he somehow acquired (probs with his special powers) to the Book of Mormon, a musical we've been obsessing over since Christmas break, when we listened to the entire soundtrack while driving to Missouri. If you haven't heard of it, it's an irreverent and sometimes crass musical that parodies/explains/mocks/garners sympathy for two Mormon missionaries stationed in Uganda. Beneath the frequent profanity and artfully choreographed dance numbers, however, are some really interesting and deep themes- the "hero" of the story, the most prepared missionary who adheres to the rules, basically has nothing to show for it at the end. The fibs that one missionary pathologically tells end up painting a really interesting picture of the formation of syncretic religion, where the culture rejects the parts of the book that aren't useful to them, and holds on to the parts that make sense.

Basically, it's a really interesting work on a lot of levels, and I laughed until I cried. The dancing Starbucks cups in the Spooky Mormon Hell Dream were a stroke of genius.

But this whole musical had the potential to be ridiculously offensive and horrifying to audiences. We were talking on the walk home about the guts it takes to put out something like this for audiences, not knowing if you were going to be embraced or egged. Granted, this is something that the creators of South Park have a lot of experience with, but it's still a risky venture. It had to have been, on some level, scary.

This wasn't the first time that being scared has been on my mind in the last few months. Most of the time when something is new, either to me or to society, it's scary because it's unknown. The more I look around and see great things (works of art, pieces of music, performers, writers) the more I think that everything great comes with an element of fear, maybe of being misunderstood, or hurt for your actions, or shunned by people whom you love, or rejected in general. Failure is a big one for me. I'm afraid of putting myself out there and failing. I'm afraid of playing flute from my heart and playing badly with all my metaphorical guts exposed. I'm afraid of practicing yoga for seven million days in a row and still not being able to just pop into a headstand, or achieve a good savasana, or be a compassionate teacher. And, obviously, it's safer to play with an air of practiced detachment (and not in the good way, where you do cool stuff and stay detached from the results), and have a yoga practice that is not terribly consistent. Cuz then, failure is not as scary. It's even almost expected.

But one can usually be okay, or even good, safely. It's just greatness that requires fear. So that's the catch.

Here's some stuff I'm scared of!
- going to the bakery alone in France. I'm worried that I might say the wrong word, or pronounce the right word so wrong that it sounds like I'm swearing. Obvy if some French person was trying to talk to me in English and seemed nice but dropped forty f-bombs, I would think it was super cute. I try to keep this in mind just in case I actually do make some linguistic errors.
- getting super into road biking. What if I get run over by a car? Isn't it better for me to sit at home eating ice cream and watching Biggest Loser?
- being mediocre. Ha! Irony.
- failing at the flute.
- succeeding at the flute.
- calling people back, especially when "people" is a composer whose last flute concerto was premiered by James Galway. (I sucked it up and called him. Go me.)
- going to the gym for more than one hour. What if I become one of those crazy gym people who spend all their time at the gym and only talk about going to the gym? I would clearly rather spend my time complaining about how I never get off the couch and my diet on a given day was high in cheese with flurries of pretzels and mustard and chances of chocolate downpours later on in the evening.
- dancing Starbucks cups. I wasn't afraid of them yesterday, but now I am.
- writing this post. It would be weird if I was afraid of all that stuff and not afraid to write a post about being afraid of all that stuff.

I'm sure there's more, but that seems like plenty for now.

So are there people out there who are scared of everything? How do you make it stop, or do you just push through the scared?

Auditions and Deodorant. Unrelated? I think not.

So a big part of the reason I haven't been posting much is that I'm auditioning for doctoral programs in flute performance. Music performance in general, and flute specifically, is ridiculous. The stakes are high, wages are low, jobs are few, and admission is insane (one school to which I applied had around eighty applicants for the Doctorate in Musical Arts program... for one possible spot). When I started the process, I reassured myself smugly that I would be just fine if I didn't get in anywhere, but I'm not sure I actually believed that it was a possibility. I applied to seven schools, made it past the recorded pre-screening round at five of them, and spent my own hard-earned money to fly out and stay at each school; I took lessons with as many of the teachers I could, and prepared as much as my full-time job would allow.

And then this week (after a volley of family stuff that was intense in its own right) I found out that I didn't make the cut at one school. It's the first school that I've heard from as far as an actual admissions decision, and it wasn't my first choice. However, the fact that it was lower on my list almost made it sting more. So I spent the week trying to find my center again, and genuinely worrying, maybe for the first time since I started this process, that I actually wouldn't get in anywhere at all, and would face either another year of the expensive and heart-hurting audition process, or finally cutting the cord between me and my flute, my companion of almost twenty years. The prospect of any of those things having to happen hurts a lot, and will hurt a lot if it needs to be, but like my co-teacher reminded me, nobody signs up for music because it's easy. I do it because I love it, and it's a hard, abusive, soul-wrenching love that doesn't get any easier with time or experience.

So anyway, I was catatonic. It was getting to the point where my dude probably felt like he was talking to a wall. Plus, the toughest/scariest Friday audition was coming up, at the school that I couldn't even believe passed me on to the audition round.

Then I woke up Thursday morning, and it was like somebody had been whispering in my ear all night, "the worst thing they can say is no." Maybe it was my dude. I don't know. If it was, I feel totally bad because he stayed up all night whispering to his crazy me. But for some reason, it made sense, that they can say no, and it will hurt and might cause me to make some decisions about my life path, but it ultimately won't affect who I am at the very core of me, the place where I hold my values and my friends and family, and my love of music.

Hippie self-restoring deodorant!

So I decided that there was only one thing to do, and that thing was to make my own deodorant. Because how else do you solidify your sense of self?

I have been working on decreasing the chemicals in my personal products, and while the evidence about aluminum exposure from antiperspirants isn't conclusive, it is unsettling. Plus, it's a pain to run out of deodorant, and would be awesome to be able to just whip up a batch in the kitchen. I also believe that I should be able to eat the things that I put on my body, which is why I use coconut oil as lotion, rice for heating pads, and vinegar as a hair rinse. Apparently my body is a tropical Hoppin' John melange. (This only makes sense if you put vinegar on your Hoppin' John, which I recommend.)

And yes, this whole train of thought is weird, but in times of uncertainty, I've found that it's better for me to fall back on something that feels steady, like something I can do with my own hands (thank you Nick Offerman and my parents).

I used a recipe like this one, but altered it a little bit, thusly:

1/3 c. coconut oil
1/3 c. arrowroot powder
2 T. baking soda

My dude loves me this much.

Then I mixed it, wadded it up into a ball, and put it in a mason jar. I then proudly announced to the dude that my sense of self had been restored, and that no matter what happened at my audition, I had made my own deodorant. To his credit, he did not back slowly away like I expected.

The deodorant worked well for my audition day, which went okay. I'm still fairly convinced that I shouldn't have been allowed past the pre-screening round, but I'm reassured that no matter what, I'm still me. And I have a dude who loves me, food and warmth, and the ability to do something worthwhile with my life.

And I can make my own deodorant. Bam.