Day 1 Reflection

I am so honored to be participating with Natalia and Ken on this project. They both bring so much wisdom and spirit to their work, and just being around them, I am growing more creative by the minute. For the past many years, I have been studying cello at various institutions across the United States. There has always been the same goal, which Dr. Epperson sums up as beauty of tone, quality of intonation, and ease of execution. That is it. I play a bunch of music cellists know and love, and I am about 82 percent at it.

But it is time for a change, and it time for me to start flexing my creative muscle, which is something that feels atrophied and only slightly developed while I was studying at the University of Maryland. It is time for me to stop giving a shit about other cellists, and string players, and conductors, and “jobs.” It is time for me to relearn bass and guitar, and metal and the blues. It is time for my love of music to come full circle, and for me to start creating music again that is new, and to share the experience with others.

So how do different artists interface? How do they communicate? What does it mean to be on the same level—how do they resonate? What is the simple input and output of artists, and what signals do they send to each other and to the world outside of art?

I’d like to make art and music useful again in my life, and currently I give no shits about playing another concert piece by David Popper and audition for another puppet orchestra. Although all my formal education has taught me this, I am blessed that Ken and Natalia are teaching me the real world again.

This is my artistic rebirth.