Alarm Clock

I slept in today.

A whole 30 minutes later than I usually do...putting me at 7:30am.  Yippee Skippee!!!

This is a huge accomplishment for me to be getting up all by myself.  Without a parent around.  It's like potty training for adolescents and my 18 year old self just got there.  This entire school year, I was supposed to get up at 6:50.  I think that maybe happened twice.  But, I tried.  Oh did I try.  I had four alarms turned to deafening volume scheduled about 2 minutes apart from each other each in a different place around my room.  One of them was that sleep cycle app that is supposed to track your sleep pattern and wake you up at the best time.  And just like when trying to find an opportunity to tell your parents that you're pregnant, there really is no best time for either of those things.  Surprise! (Dear Mom, I am very much kidding so you can put down your cell phone and refrain from calling me in a complete state of panic and disarray.  Also, tell Dad to put his shotgun away, false alarm.)

Regardless, I have been able to get up at 7 just about every day and the extra thirty minutes were much appreciated.  And I had to admit, I thought I had an easy day ahead of me.  Today, we had workshops scheduled in the morning.  Each participant got to choose their own workshops and so I chose Engaging with Audiences and Yoga for Musicians.  

Engaging with Audiences was first and it was led by a few members of a chamber music collective group called Decoda.  When signing up I was expecting a few performances from the members and since there was a horn player from Genghis Barbie (The horn quartet version of the Spice Girls...yes horn players are that cool), I was all on board.  But I missed the important word in the title of the seminar: "engaging".  We were encouraged to psychologically break down a piece and connect it with the other participants in the room.  And believe it or not, your own brain has to be engaged in order to try to understand someone else's.  There's a reason hypnotists don't try their tricks when they are half awake.  By the end of it, everyone will be sleeping and no one will be around to snap their fingers and wake them up. 

Moving onto yoga, I was looking forward to some nice meditation and relaxation.  Throw some "om's" in there and I am all set.  Wrong.  I have played sports for almost all my life and like to consider myself strong enough to open those really tricky water bottles and pickle jars.  That being said, yoga is one of the most physically demanding things I've ever done.  Wearing a pair of jeans and a collared shirt because I am certainly not a "be prepared" boy scout, I think between the hopping, falling, and flailing I spent more time off my yoga mat than on it.  I would have wagered that half of the poses were impossible if the instructor hadn't been nailing them smoothly without hesitation or any stumbling.  In retrospect, I might have been able to see this coming based on my clumsy and sometimes hazardous mannerisms.  (It is in fact possible to injure yourself while playing a friendly 4th of July kickball game.)

We were less than halfway through the day and this was already not the Golliwog cake walk in the park that I was expecting.  Next up was orchestra rehearsal with Sean Shepherd, the composer of our newly commissioned piece, Magiya.  After he compared his music to an "abominable snowman" and asked the second violins to musically show-up the first violins, I threw all my sheepish and antisocial composer stereotypes out the window.  And we got to work.  

Later in the rehearsal, we found out about this amazing opportunity that we would have while in Russia (as if we aren't having enough of those already).  We will be giving a side-by-side performance of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliette Fantasy Overture with a Russian Youth Orchestra.  And after learning my part, all I need to do is learn how to hold  a full-length conversation using only the words "goodbye", "yes", and "no".  Yay for limited Russian knowledge and an alphabet that I can't even sound out.  

Clearly, I think I needed that extra thirty minutes this morning.  Tomorrow, we hit it Ferris Bueller style and take a day trip to NYC on our own "day off".   A clumsy and occasionally absent-minded teenager and a bustling metropolis.  I don't see a problem at all.  

For now though, I have to get ready.  Because although New York City may never sleep, I certainly do.  

There is good news though.  We don't have to leave until 10am.  You know what that means.  

Maybe I'll only have to set three alarms for tomorrow.