“I’ve seen pianists who happen to be gay, but I’ve never seen a gay who happens to be a pianist.” - man in the front row of my concert, as reported by a friend.  San Francisco, 8/12/11

——

PRESENTER: I can’t thank you enough, Adam.  You made the Festival into the most awesome evening beyond my fondest dreams.  You brought something to the people of Berkeley — most of whom were fools not to attend—that we almost don’t deserve.  

ME:  I had such a great time … when it ended and I came out of my performance delirium, I felt mostly terrified and vulnerable — what did you all just see?!  — like waking up hungover and realizing you swung from the chandelier the night before.  I couldn’t accept a compliment to save my life.  I wanted to flee.

——-

——-

This is the first time I’ve been in the same room as cocaine.  Usually I just see it through a cracked door, a friend descending over a table, and even then I’m scandalized.  Like a child.  Tonight I’m that child again, watching curiously while nursing a Coca-Cola as a small group bobs up and down to the kitchen counter.  A little later, on the sofa, swimming in thoughts about last night’s concert, this trip, and why none of it feels right, a glass pipe packed with marijuana falls into my hands.  I put my thumb and forefingers (1, 2, and 3, for the pianists) around the circular glass bowl and begin lighting it while bringing it to my lips, not realizing that the mouthpiece is pointing away from me, across the room.  Over and over I try, wondering why isn’t this working! until I finally realize that, yes, I’m putting my mouth up to glass and, yes, I’m sucking on nothing, and yes, the mouthpiece is darting in the other direction.  Yes, I’m lighting my face on fire.  Fuck.  I quickly turn the apparatus around, speechless with embarrassment, and everyone in the room, all of whom have been enrapt with the struggle, laughs. 

“But…but…” I hear my inside voice saying.  “But I’m from New York!  I play the piano!  I had a concert!  I was a Top Pick!” and suddenly life seems really absurd.  I already told these people this anyway, and no one cared.

My best friend from New York, also visiting San Francisco this week, sinks beside me into the couch and we begin talking about Ned Rorem.  “I can’t believe the gaps in his life,” he says, referring to the Diaries.  ”How several years can skip by between one page and the next.”

“Well, we all have gaps,” I say, allowing a pause before the inevitable question: “Am I in a gap?  Is this a gap?”

His response occurs in less than a second.  “No.”  I nod, staring ahead.  “But last year, yes.” 

——- 

FRIEND: I was just astonished at how you’ve internalized and embodied the music you’re playing, how you play with such a variety of touch and attack— very interesting that when you accent a chord strongly, your body lifts upwards as your arm descends— and your lyrical line, and how much you managed to do with that piano!  The program is beautifully conceived, and moves beautifully from piece to piece, making a real statement of love and loss and the transcendent power of the human bond.  You communicate so much to the audience, through your speaking, of course, but also just through conveying the music so strongly and directly.  I think a lot of pianists, with less familiar repertoire, don’t make the extra effort towards a clear conception, because they figure the audience won’t really know the difference.  But you put all that extra effort into it, and the result is that you show the same respect for Ned Rorem that you would show for Beethoven.  It was just a fantastic concert from beginning to end.  I haven’t been really grateful for attending a concert for a long time, but yours was really inspiring and enlightening, and it was such a pleasure to hear you play.

ME: …especially when I do Autumn Lines, [it’s] akin to waking up with a hangover and hearing from your friends that you danced on the bar the night before and jumped in the pool from the roof…  You’re right that I put a lot of myself into the music, but when the spell breaks and I’m faced with the people I just shared this experience with, I sometimes feel a little bit startled and exposed.  Strange, I know…

——-

[typed on my phone near Civic Center, San Francisco, 8/9/11]

To me, a truly gifted journalist reports interesting situations that few people know about, and interesting people who want to avoid other people knowing about them, which I feel must be impossible nowadays when neither of those two things exist.

——-

AUDIENCE: Hello. A friend and I attended your concert last night and loved it. Bravo!

ME: Thank you for coming and your encouragement!  I’m really glad to hear you enjoyed it. I’ve heard lots of different — well — … ideas about what I was doing, what I could’ve done, what I should’ve done… which is tough considering that, while I believe in everything I do, this doesn’t make the experience of presenting it to others any less sensitive, or me any less vulnerable.  I think last night went well, and yet, I have this weird embarrassed feeling, like I’ve been caught with my pants down. You know that dream, when you’re naked in front of an audience?

——-

——-

[8/10/11, 5:10 p.m., written on my cell phone on the M49 bus, Mission District, San Francisco]

She looks like a college student, delicate features hardened only by the fact that she produces the word “fuck” in every sentence.  I must be a chauvinist, because even though I’m reading Joan Didion (literally right now, on this bus), each sentence in which this girl says “fuck” saddens me.  I sympathize with her companion, too, who hasn’t cursed once but who nods her head and carries on the conversation politely, a conversation lit continually by her friend’s indignation.  Why have I been so sad this trip to San Francisco?  On the last day of camp last week I read Roald Dahl’s THE TWITS to my seven year olds. At one point, Dahl explains that Mr. and Mrs. Twit grew so physically ugly because they’d always had ugly thoughts.  One kid asked from under his Yankees cap (without raising his hand), “Is that true?”  I looked up from the book.  “…what?” “…about ugly thoughts making you ugly on the outside.”  I have a way of messing these moments up, telling kids by mistake that Santa is dead or that Mommy doesn’t love them, etc, but this answer felt rather easy.  ”Yes,” I said, and then eased the blow a little. “… but only over time, and only if you have a lot of them.”  ”I have ugly thoughts,” he muttered, his head sinking.  The air became thick and morose, but I did, maybe for the first time all summer, feel like a teacher.  “Me too,” I said.

——-

FRIEND:  …Sorry you didn’t feel as elated as we did after your SF performance.  It was very beautiful… I’ll tell you what you can do - do you know Nam myoho renge kyo?  It’s the title of the Lotus Sutra and it cured my colitis many years ago (in one weekend).  The vibration it creates is truly amazing and it never fails to change any negative situation.  Please try chanting it even a few times in the morning.

ME: I will take your advice and start.  Do you sense I’m in a negative spiral?  How did you hear I wasn’t elated?

——-

——-

FRIEND: You were fucking amazing.  You totally rocked it.  I’m so proud of you.  You are raw, honest, and uncompromising - a real artist.  So happy I got to see you.

ME: Thank you — I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that you came.  I feel really weird about the show, so……yeah, your words help. 

——-

[editorial written to The New York Times in 2 minutes while on a teaching break, never sent]

While hardly a musical anarchist, I have to say that I read with delight the Times’s lament about the disturbance of other people practicing their instruments in the Mannes School of Music during Marc-André Hamelin’s recent concert.  It must have been quite a disheartening experience, hearing that “noise” in the background, especially considering the exceptional amount of ink The Times used in notifying its readers of the concert beforehand.  Apparently even some of the students at the conservatory didn’t find the occasion so momentous?  

As a concert pianist who has performed internationally as well as in every state in the union, I’ve competed with everything from coffee grinders to enemies of modern music.  As a concert pianist living in your immediate vicinity, I’ve competed with car horns, subways, fellow musicians, a dismissive pubic, and an oblivious arts press.  The other day, when I attempted to practice a soft Ned Rorem waltz at 2 p.m. in my apartment, a neighbor reported me to the Housing Authority.  In many ways, I owe a good portion of my life in music to the work of Mr. Hamelin and The New York Times — both served to inspire me in my formative years — so let me emphasize that it’s with the highest respect that I welcome you both, in this unforgiving century, to New York.