It’s been a while…

Almost six months later and I

• started my last year of medicine. In less than a year I’m supposed to be a doctor!
• am able to play through the first movement of the Händel concerto
• discovered that my thumb placement in harp playing is TOTALLY wrong (I’m trying to get it right, but I’ve played the harp like this for 14-16 years…)
• have changed from a ‘shy’ ‘introvert’ person into an ‘assertive’ person (according to my evaluations.) It could have something to do with the fact that this year, my performance is graded based on 1-to-1 observations of patient encounters instead of how I function in a group full of extraverted people during a 1-hour teaching session…
• Still can’t stop procrastinating. Tomorrow, I’ll have to present something about psychiatry and it’s 20:30 already…

New things

The new harpcolumn is awesome! It’s like a social network for harpists! I still prefer having a blog – it’s a bit odd that all blogposts are synched to a central page where all recent entries appear – but I’m starting to fall in love with all the features it offers (just go and look 🙂 ).

Regarding harpcolumn.com – partly through reading such forums, I got back to the harp. Reading about everything that’s possible with the harp, issues people encounter (and recognizing, hey, I’m not the only one who has difficulties with x), interesting posts about effective practice… I’m not really active there, because there are much more knowledgable people than I am. But it’s great to read along with the discussions and sometimes contribute something.

Other new things: a new year has started, I’m a fifth year med student now! Only 2 years to go and I’m a ‘basisarts’ (junior doctor). I haven’t found a new harp teacher yet, but after a very nice three-hour session with my first harp teacher, I feel confident to really get started on the lever harp version of the Händel concerto.

Also a rather sad new development – rat #2 (Mr White Rat with a Slightly Darker Stripe than the other one) seems to have developed a tumor. After the events of last year, I’m rather reluctant to go to the vet again, so at the moment I’m trusting my clinical judgement that immediate action isn’t necessary. Actually, he’s not ‘ill’ at all – he’s still eating, drinking, he can still climb (the tumor is the size of a small chestnut!) and it doesn’t appear to cause him pain. And he’s two years old – we’re not expecting him to live forever anyway… but I’d have preferred to discuss appropriate end-of-life care for him. Perhaps we’ll give the vet a call next week…

A new challenge

I’ve always wanted to study the martial arts. I loved watching these national geographic documentaries which featured hundreds of people doing kung fu and at age 10 I even developed my own martial art, largely based on a judo book I lent from the library. My parents disapproved – they tried to keep us from playing ‘war’ with sticks (toy guns were forbidden in our home) so they’d never allow a child of theirs to practise a sport as ‘agressive’ as martial arts.

My dream of becoming really good at ‘kung fu’ gradually diminished as I turned to other interests. However, when I was in the fourth year of high school (10th grade) I discovered that I had absolutely no physical fitness at all. We had two hours of physical education every week and I noticed that I suffered muscle aches after every lesson, worsening to the point where I was aching all over during the weekend. So something had to be done – I wanted to join a sports club because it was just too embarassing. This led to a lot of dinner table discussions about the merits and dangers of martial arts – I didn’t want to do judo because it was too soft and I thought you didn’t need a lot of endurance to do that – I didn’t like karate – and my parents thought ‘kung fu’ was not compatible with a Christian lifestyle.

I’d almost resigned myself to more muscle aches and still no martial arts, when a friend from church told me about an obscure art in which she’d had a few trial lessons in through her school. She showed me a couple of things and I really liked what she showed me. After a short google search I found the instructor’s e-mailadress and I e-mailed him, telling him about my concerns (I also didn’t really like the spiritual aspects of some martial arts*). He responded with the one thing that could convince my parents: he was also a Christian!

Almost 6 years ago I started training in the art of Pencak Silat. At first, I mainly trained to become fitter – I could barely survive our warming-up – but then I rediscovered my love for the actual martial arts. I joined a martial arts forum (MartialTalk)  and learnt all about the various arts and styles that were out there. I even started training in Iaido once a month in Amsterdam – another art from my ‘wish list’. This list encompassed (still does) European medieval sword fighting, tai ji quan from a decent instructor who doesn’t teach all of the fluff, a qi-less chinese martial art and aikido.

However, the annoying thing about martial arts is that it takes a long time to master even one and that the path to mastery is rarely straightforward. In pencak silat, there are no belts or ranks, nothing to keep you going when intrinsic motivation fails.  My instructor only teaches how to learn, not how one should exactly perform the technique, so sometimes you really start doubting yourself. There is no fixed curriculum – we learn what we are taught that lesson – sometimes really advanced material, sometimes stuff that is boring to everyone but the beginners.

And yet, just like I did with harp lessons, I stuck with it and kept training. The last few years I couldn’t attend training twice a week anymore due to medical school, but I went whenever I could and continued to absorb as much as possible. I passed a couple of ‘exams’ that tested our knowledge of the jurus (comparable to kata) – and suddenly you find yourself among the more advanced people of our group instead of being a beginner.

And now I’ve reached the point where I can seriously start training to reach ‘black belt’. As I said, we don’t have any ranks aside from ‘instructor’ and ‘student’ (one head instructor and 3 other instructors). Our training isn’t geared to get everyone to reach the instructor rank as soon as possible, it’s meant to gain a full understanding of our art instead. There are a lot of people who really should be an instructor, judging by their skills, but who decline and are content with  learning. However, for those who want to, it is possible to earn a more tangible proof of their abilities by demonstrating all 36 jurus from both sides and passing a few other skills tests (self defense, being able to construct new jurus etc).

It will take at least another year to reach this level, but I’m very honored to have been told that apparently, this goal lies in my reach. It’s another challenge, next to surviving med school, becoming good at the harp – training for my ‘black belt’.

Still, I’m more than aware that the road doesn’t end there. There is so much more to learn in our art – as far as I know, after the 36  jurus there are langkah (longer forms in more directions), weapons forms, etc. etc. Sometimes I was jealous at karateka whose path to their Dan ranks is much more straightforward, but now I’ve discovered the importance of getting to know the art itself. Yesterday, our training consisted of something ‘boring to everyone but beginners’ – and I still enjoyed myself immensely, discovering interesting aspects to techniques I could do in my sleep, being taught how to ‘unlock’ them.

I’m really grateful to my instructor, who doesn’t demand perfect repetition of forms the way he does them, but rather to make the form our own, to make it adapt to our body and skills. Perhaps he’s a bit like a good harp teacher – one who emphasizes musicality in favor of just ‘playing the notes’.

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Requiem by J. Rutter, performed by the KCOV and the Promenade orkest @ Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam

Going to the Concertgebouw is an entire experience in itself. First, the people in the audience. The average age is above 40 – at the very least – and everyone is dressed impeccably. I felt a bit self conscious, as I had gone to the Concertgebouw right after clinical skills training and I was dressed in a comfortable pair of black jeans with a pink shirt. Secondly, the building. It is a beautiful monumental building. I don’t know anything about architecture, but there were all kinds of engravings/bas reliefs in the walls and it really felt like a castle or something like that. The concert hall is surrounded by a long corridor and has entrances at each side – the entire atmosphere in the building is a setting of long past times, when people still travelled by horse carriage.

Then the concert hall itself – now I finally understand all this talk about accoustics. Before the concert, I wondered whether the harp would be amplified – the sounds of tuning the harp didn’t carry over the hundreds of conversations that were taking place. However, when everyone shut up and the music started, even the slightest whisper could be heard throughout the hall. Two people in front of us decided to comment on the music and a lot of people turned their heads and glared. The harp was clearly audible, even more than on the recordings which I’d listened. I always like it when I discover new aspects of music I know by heart – just like I immensely enjoy hearing the basslines during an Equilibrium live show (somehow, the bass lines are much less discernible on CD).

Still, this musical experience differs a lot from going to a metal concert. I’m used to enjoying music with all of my body – listening to the music (with ear plugs in, of course. Wouldn’t want to miss a grade 1 murmur…), moving to the music, clapping and cheering on the musicians. During a good concert by a good band, you forget that your legs hurt due to waiting for five hours – they manage to sweep you away. In a concert hall, you wouldn’t even think about moving to the music – you’re sitting rigidly in a chair and listening intently without tensing one muscle.

This makes enjoying a classical concert a very mental endeavor – it’s all happening in your head, you need to surrender yourself to the music in another way. Especially during the pieces I didn’t know well (Mass in C, Ave Verum), eventually my throughts drifted off and I found myself thinking about something completely else. And yet… there is this special athmosphere, the focused attention – in this suspended state of mind, where everyone submerges themselves in the music, there is also a kind of ‘togetherness’. An experience I wouldn’t want to miss.

Regarding the actual performance – it turned out that the choir consisted of professional amateurs. They sung very well but they were often just a little bit too late or too early. I didn’t notice this myself – I only ‘felt’ that the Requiem felt ‘off’ at some times – but my friend, who is really into choral music, said it was because of the choir’s timing. Quite interesting because they didn’t make actual mistakes… but it really diminishes the impact of the goose-bump moments in the music.

The music was great. I really liked it that the musicians were really playing together, not just playing their part but really playing as if they were ‘one’.  And the harp! What a wonderful sound. This was the first time I heard a concert harp in a performance – absolutely awesome!!!

Finally, a youtube clip I wanted to share – apparently, one orchestra didn’t like this static playing thing so they made an entire choreography to be performed during playing. So everyone walks while playing (apart from the poor harpists…), sometimes they form groups, or ‘battle’ each other. All of this really suits the rather calm pace of the music. I think it’s a great way to express classical music.