To Practice and Polish

Practicing a piece you love is like reading your favorite book or looking through a treasure box.

The first time looking over it, it’s like skimming through, going through the action, the pulses, the feeling of each phrase, the emotion it evokes. Your eyes look at it with amazement and anticipation to uncover its beauty within.

The second time is more careful, more detailed. You look closely at every line, the smaller feelings with the main one. Each note is run through when it was first run over at the start.

The third time is the little snippets of details, the inside moments. It’s looking for little nuggets of colorful gems in a treasure trove of gold.

The fourth time is reading through it again, a little more slowly, but with a lot more weight. It’s looking through it again, a little more slowly, but with a lot more weight. It’s fuller, more noticeable in those little details dotting through the big moments.

The fifth is a deconstruction. You jump from one place to another. It’s like how you did the first time you ran through it, but this time it’s a different kind of exploration.

The sixth time is constructing it, building it up, cleaning it. you polish each golden nugget, each crystal gem, every precious moment in the piece until they shine – shine not to outshine, but together as a whole.

The seventh is the most beautiful of all. The result of all that hard work. They glitter and gleam like ocean waves that sparkle in the sun.

And then…your work is not done.

You do it all over again.

And again.