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Hey, your weekly Rx. No filler, I promise.
Words Worth Keeping
"Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else."
— Fred Rogers, who was a lot tougher than the cardigan let on.
The Bowl with nobody in it. By Tuesday there's a rehearsal on this stage.
This Week
Back in June I wrote you about Gustavo Dudamel leaving the Los Angeles Philharmonic after seventeen years. Last Sunday was the actual last one, the final concert at the Bowl. I already did that tribute and I'm not doing it again. What I want to tell you about is Tuesday.
Here's how that week went. Thursday, Gustavo conducted Beethoven's Ninth. Friday was a night of his own favorites. Saturday we played with the Foo Fighters. Sunday was the farewell, a benefit concert for earthquake relief in Venezuela. Four nights, four completely different shows, eighteen thousand people out there each time, cameras on everything. And then he was gone. Not on to the next thing gone. Lifted off the planet gone.
Two days later, Anna Handler, our new Conductor-in-Residence, walked out onto that same podium and conducted Beethoven's Fifth. Think about what that actually asks of a person. It has nothing to do with the repertoire. It's standing in the spot he just left, in front of the same orchestra and the same audience, with the whole thing still warm. She was terrific. It was a real reading with a point of view, not somebody keeping the seat warm. I'm genuinely honored that I get to work with her more, and what she did that night is the most excited I've been about this orchestra in a long time.
And here's what I keep thinking about. Seventeen years of work, and a whole season of saying goodbye to it, ended on Sunday. By Tuesday there was a rehearsal on the schedule, and the calendar had already moved on without asking anyone's permission. The stands go up, we tune, we play, everybody goes home.
For about a day that struck me as cold. I've come around on it. The calendar marching on is the mercy, not the insult, and it's the whole reason Fred Rogers is sitting at the top of this email. Tuesday wasn't the end of anything. It was the first day of the next thing. One era closed on Sunday and another season starts anyway, with new people on that podium and new music on the stands. That isn't the aftermath. That's the beginning.
The Prescription
When something big ends, most of us expect to feel it right away, and mostly you don't. What actually happens is that Tuesday shows up. There's a rehearsal on the schedule and a downbeat coming, and it arrives right on time, the way it always does.
I used to think you had to feel finished with a thing before you could start the next one. I don't believe that anymore. Waiting until you feel ready is how people lose months. You get to the other side of an ending by doing the next piece of work, and then the piece after that. The feeling catches up later.
I've watched musicians get this backwards for twenty years. You don't advance at an audition, so the horn stays in the case for three weeks while you wait to feel right about it. You finish school and wait for the plan to arrive before you start practicing like a professional. The plan doesn't arrive. You feel right about it by working, not by waiting to feel right about it.
You don't finish an ending by thinking about it. You finish it by taking the next downbeat.
Happy practicing,
Chris @ Honesty Pill Coaching
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