'Please, I don't want to be happy'

There is this charming new video I found with David Dubal talking. We have gotten to like David Dubal on this Web log whether or not we agree with him on every little thing. Most of the important things we agree on.

There is nothing like Dubal giving you a pep talk.

"Go buy that piano! Don't whine and say, I'm too old. And if you need to because everything is so instant, well, I would say take one year to learn one page of a Two-Part Invention. Then why not take a year for the second? Take a third year to put it together."

Then his voice drops as he imitates a complainer.

"What, three years to do one minute of music?"

"Yes, that's right, that what I ask, that's what I demand of you. Because I demand us to survive. I want us to survive. Let's take a look at the reality of the world. We are uncreative today but consciously, where we do live, that's where we do live, including that wonderfully unknown language which is so vital called the dream."

There is other stuff in here that made me laugh out loud. But I do not want to give it all away. For now, no Dubal video is complete without him running down modern technology and this one has a great sequence confronting that issue.

"There is no silence and every day they are inventing new machines to make us more anxious. We can't do without the computer or the iPhone." Then he goes on to add generously that  if used properly "they can be as helpful as any household appliance."

But then he attacks the notion that machines are always supposed to make us happy.

"Please, I don't want to be happy, I want to be Franz Schubert."

Hahahaa! I love that. I got to talk with David Dubal on the phone a few weeks ago, a startling episode in my life because I read all his books but just never imagined I would ever be talking with him. But that is a whole other story. Meanwhile, I keep thinking about what he said, what I wrote about that one time, about "Play the piano daily and stay sane."

I try my best to follow that advice!

'Play the piano daily and stay sane'

Just now for the first time in weeks I sat down and played the piano. This is a funny thing about playing the piano: After playing for an hour or so I have problems typing. It has taken me forever to type that last sentence! And normally I am a champion typist.

That is because your fingers get the piano keyboard mixed up with the typing keyboard. It feels something like getting off  a boat onto land. Wow, you should see me trying to type this! I am hopeless.

I was playing the piano partly because of David Dubal, the, ahem, piano pedagogue. I have written about him before, about his book "Evenings With Horowitz."

A few weeks ago I had the honor of being in touch with a friend of his and I believe it was this friend who hipped me to this article Dubal wrote in the New Criterion about why we should all play the piano.

"There is a proverb that goes, 'Play the piano daily and stay sane,'" the story begins.

That is the truth!

Later he writes: "There is another saying, 'If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well,' but I disagree," Dubal writes. "Like Chesterton, I feel that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing even badly."

I love that!

"Good practicing is like meditation without the mantra," Dubal also writes. "When you commune with Bach or Schubert, you can reach the heights of Mount Parnassus, where the atmosphere is rarified."

I communed tonight with Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms. And I am only now getting my land fingers back! Now I am finally starting to be able to type again. That was a weird feeling for a few minutes there!

Anyway, a sweet, sweet story and it has stuck in my head for a few weeks now. The only part I did not like was about the guy who rented a hall to play for his friends and got nervous and blew it. I feel sorry for that guy. I would like to think his friends took him out drinking after that. My friend Annie who teaches piano to kids, she has a saying she tells her students: "If you play well, people will clap, and they'll eat pizza. If you play badly, people will clap, and they'll eat pizza."

Well, the rest of Dubal's story is sweet. I thought I wrote about it before but I guess I did not.

Tonight I did not have to read it.

I lived it!

An Impromptu a day ...

A new Twitter friend of mine sent me a link to this cool article by David Dubal about the happiness that comes from playing the piano. It is in a magazine called New Criterion.

I like David Dubal's opinions. I also like that quote at the beginning, "Play the piano daily and stay sane."

Just because of that, just now I went and played the piano! That is a painting of me up above, entertaining myself and my friends.

I played a Schubert impromptu, the one in triplets that has you sailing all over the piano, because I am getting my technique back into shape. Then I did that cool Beethoven sonata Op. 101. I did the first movement once through and then went through it again. It is funny, do that and the second time is so much better. The second time, I hit that last chord and let it fade out and then I thought: You cannot improve on perfection, you know?

But one thing in this story, this New Criterion story by David Dubal, that I really love is when he trots out that old saw -- that is a word I love, saw -- about how anything worth doing is worth doing well. And he says he sees things differently.

He writes: "Like Chesterton ...

... I feel that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing even badly."

I think he is right! Even if you are having a bad day and really goof up that Schubert, at least you are trying, and as Dubal puts it you "commune" with Schubert.

Schubert, as he looks down on you, probably does not care that you are playing his piece badly! Heck, he could not play his pieces himself.

He loves that you are thinking of him! And that you are taking time out of your day to give a, well, impromptu performance of his Impromptu.

Dubal has a lot of other stuff I like in that story including about how homes should have pianos instead of TVs. My brother George often says that. Howard and I love having pianos all over the house because our friends play them. Howard calls the Steinway the home entertainment system.

The story goes on and on which I love. What is the hurry, you know? It makes me want to play the piano a lot more than I am doing and it also makes me want to play reductions of Mahler symphonies and Wagner operas.

A great declaration:

"Almost everyone who plays the piano as a child and quits wishes they had stuck with it. But the present is here. Take charge. Go to concerts. Buy recordings."

I love that. The present is here.

Take charge!

Grouchy old man

There is a problem I have in that the things I like to listen to, I listen to over and over, and the things I like to read, I read over and over. It is not a bad thing but it is hard to find the time to do it. I wish I were a teenager again, when all I had to do was sprawl on my bed and listen to Bach.

Now I sneak in pleasures here and there.

The other day at a second-hand book sale I spent a buck on a book I get a kick out of, David Dubal's "Evenings with Horowitz."

It has been a long time since I looked at this book and there are some things I am foggy on. The book tells how Dubal's friendship with old pianist Vladimir Horowitz collapses because the Horowitzes will not let him bring a date to any of the parties. I am not sure why that is. Also I am not sure why Horowitz gets addicted to having students playing for him. Did he just want to feel like the Maestro or was it more nefarious? Probably what I should do is sit down with this book and read it cover to cover. But when? I do not even have time to dry my hair.

So what I do is, I open the book here and there, and read this and that, often when I am drying my hair, which was the mental connection there. "Evenings With Horowitz" is always fun.

I like the book for its insights into Horowitz's personality, which I think must be pretty accurate. Also, not to sound too nerdy, but I like Dubal's use of adverbs.

"Wanda ardently agreed."

"Horowitz said glumly."

"Horowitz and Wanda nodded vigorously."

That is Horowitz and his wife, Wanda, the daughter of Toscanini, up above. By the time Dubal knew them, though, they were much older.

One paragraph last night got Howard and me laughing.

Dubal wants to bring his girlfriend to a party the Horowitzes are having and he is arguing with Horowitz about it.

"You know Wanda is in charge of these things," Horowitz says. "She likes only married people. She's Catholic."


I said, "Come now, Maestro. Are Woody Allen and Mia Farrow married? And I can name other exceptions who are allowed to your parties. ..."


There was no doubt Horowitz was rather upset at this confrontation. Just then, we were called to dinner.


"We go down now. I go peepee first. After a good dinner, you will feel better."


When he returned, he sat, as always, at the head of the table, with me at his left side. During his absence, he had regained his composure and started talking about the people who had been ostracized from his life.

Hahahahahaa!

That is what cheers Horowitz up!

Well, Dubal makes the point that Horowitz was thinking of ostracizing him, making a subtle threat. But I think even besides that, Horowitz probably liked to think about the people he had ostracized. Like notches in his belt.

Gotta love him, you know?