I watched the Nancy and Tonya documentary last night and was completely sucked in. I even followed it up by watching some other documentary called 30 for 30 or something like that on Netflix about the same situation only completely from Tonya's point of view.
There was a point during the documentary where I was watching Tonya perform her gold medal performance at worlds; the one where she landed the first women's triple axel in competition, and I thought suddenly, "Tonya Harding couldn't do that now." Now, Tonya Harding lives in some town somewhere and is a landscape architect. They had a whole segment where they showed her chainsawing down trees and she was like, "I'm completely happy with my life. I like working with my hands!" She was overweight and pasty and had just awful clothes. They showed her singing karaoke at a bar and she sounded absolutely horrible, which also made me seriously question Tonya Harding's personal judgement in that she'd let someone film her singing.
The point is, Tonya Harding is a former exceptional skating phenom who is now an unimpressive landscape architect.
Thus commences the real crux behind this entry.
I really wish I was exceptional. I've always wished I was exceptional. I don't know if anyone else feels this way. I'm sure some people do, but I'm not sure all people do. I cannot understand a life where I do not experience a longing to be exceptional, but I'm pretty normal and it's hard to deal with.
When I was younger, I played the piano. I was pretty good. I was not exceptional, but I was pretty damn good. I was my piano teacher's best student and the only one who she would "allow" to play the Rhapsody in Blue because I had big, stretchy, strong man hands that could handle the 10 key spans that were required. I practiced the piano for an hour a day, every day, from the time I was 6 years old until I was 18, except in the summer. I sat down for an hour lesson every week during a succession of 3 piano teachers and learned a whole hell of a lot. I was naturally talented. I had a good ear. I felt pretty special.
There were only two other people in the Newton school system that I knew of who were as good as I was - my friend Jaime Lucove and this kid Kimball Something. I don't remember much about Kimball except that I heard from Jeannie Miller that he said that he thought I "wasn't that good" until he found out I was learning the Rhapsody and he took it back.
Meanwhile, both Kimball and Jaime participated in piano competitions and I refused to do that. The idea of competing on the piano still makes me want to vomit in fear. I mean, I'll sing a song in front of anyone. I'll give a speech or a presentation or a funny interpretive dance, but playing the piano in front of people was always something that terrified me - even playing in front of family or friends.
The only thing I can equate it to is if you imagine yourself running down the stairs and then suddenly you start analyzing the movement of your feet and telling yourself that you're going to trip and fall. Then suddenly, all you can do is stare at your feet and think about them as they move beneath you. You slow down and get nervous and inevitably trip simply because you're thinking about it too hard. I ALWAYS did this at recitals. When I played by myself, it was sublime. When I played in front of others, I felt like an alien in my own body, staring at my fingers like they didn't belong to me as they stumbled over each other. Not fun.
Also, in another area of inferiority - I was bad at reading music and I was bad at improvising. People always expect piano players to know how to play pop songs. I SUCK at playing pop songs. I always have sucked at playing pop songs and I don't get it. Pop songs are easier than classical music by nature. They're just the same chords played over and over again. Whenever I try playing a pop song, I sound like an opera singer trying to rap. It just doesn't work. It makes me feel like a failure.
Now, I'm 34 years old and it's been 16 years since I took a lesson. I can't play the way I used to and it bothers me a lot. I feel this intense guilt when I think about how good I was then and how less good I am now, and it bothers me when people ask me to play and I bang out a few measures before giving up and telling them that I simply can't remember. It bothers me when they say, "Even just playing that shows how good you are!" And I think, "You have no concept at all. That was total crap. You should have heard me when I was 18. This is an embarrassment."
The thing is, when I was watching this documentary, Tonya Harding was all cutting down trees and talking about how much she loved her new life as a landscape architect, and I suddenly thought, "I wonder if it bothers Tonya Harding that she's not as good as she was at skating when she was 18." And then I thought, "She's like 40 years old. There's no way she could be as good at skating as when she was 18." And then I thought, "If Tonya Harding is happy being a landscape architect and being most likely pretty mediocre at skating, I shouldn't be so hard on myself for not being a piano virtuoso."
This is literally how logic works in my world. Literally.
It is kind of true though. When we're young, we have so much time to spend on mastering things. Like, in the middle of her miserable life, scraping by and living in a trailer, Tonya Harding had skating and that's about it. She spent ALL her time skating...and dating Jeff Gillooly Mullet-Face. Then, suddenly, like Tonya Harding, we have to support ourselves and work a job, and maybe get married and have kids, and have many interests, and go to the gym to make sure we stay in shape, and cook our own meals and do our own taxes, and it becomes really hard to spend all of the hours it requires to be truly exceptional at something. So, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself about not being as exceptional at the piano as I was when I was 18.
Then again, maybe it's not such a great idea to let Tonya Harding be my role model.
I really do wish I were exceptional though. These days, it seems like exceptional people are popping out of every corner on every talent-seeking TV show. There seem to be a million awesome singers and dancers and musicians and child-actors. Is it just me or are there way more talented people around these days? Maybe it is a product of all of these media outlets where people can display their talents. You could look at it as a great thing, or as another example of why you are not exceptional.
As per usual, I must make sense of it all, so I rationalize this entire entry by understanding that not everyone can be exceptional, because if that were the case, no one would be exceptional. And, it's ok that I'm a regular person, because most everyone out there is a regular person just like I am. And, I'm still pretty ok at the piano and other stuff, so I shouldn't feel bad about myself for being a regular person.
Finally, for the record, I feel very ambivalent about Tonya Harding. She doesn't seem like the nicest person and she has a horrible singing voice. Also, her skating outfits were horrible and she had a really bad perm. But, I watched her gold medal performance on youtube and she was pretty exceptional. And I give her a lot of credit for that.
There was a point during the documentary where I was watching Tonya perform her gold medal performance at worlds; the one where she landed the first women's triple axel in competition, and I thought suddenly, "Tonya Harding couldn't do that now." Now, Tonya Harding lives in some town somewhere and is a landscape architect. They had a whole segment where they showed her chainsawing down trees and she was like, "I'm completely happy with my life. I like working with my hands!" She was overweight and pasty and had just awful clothes. They showed her singing karaoke at a bar and she sounded absolutely horrible, which also made me seriously question Tonya Harding's personal judgement in that she'd let someone film her singing.
The point is, Tonya Harding is a former exceptional skating phenom who is now an unimpressive landscape architect.
Thus commences the real crux behind this entry.
I really wish I was exceptional. I've always wished I was exceptional. I don't know if anyone else feels this way. I'm sure some people do, but I'm not sure all people do. I cannot understand a life where I do not experience a longing to be exceptional, but I'm pretty normal and it's hard to deal with.
When I was younger, I played the piano. I was pretty good. I was not exceptional, but I was pretty damn good. I was my piano teacher's best student and the only one who she would "allow" to play the Rhapsody in Blue because I had big, stretchy, strong man hands that could handle the 10 key spans that were required. I practiced the piano for an hour a day, every day, from the time I was 6 years old until I was 18, except in the summer. I sat down for an hour lesson every week during a succession of 3 piano teachers and learned a whole hell of a lot. I was naturally talented. I had a good ear. I felt pretty special.
There were only two other people in the Newton school system that I knew of who were as good as I was - my friend Jaime Lucove and this kid Kimball Something. I don't remember much about Kimball except that I heard from Jeannie Miller that he said that he thought I "wasn't that good" until he found out I was learning the Rhapsody and he took it back.
Meanwhile, both Kimball and Jaime participated in piano competitions and I refused to do that. The idea of competing on the piano still makes me want to vomit in fear. I mean, I'll sing a song in front of anyone. I'll give a speech or a presentation or a funny interpretive dance, but playing the piano in front of people was always something that terrified me - even playing in front of family or friends.
The only thing I can equate it to is if you imagine yourself running down the stairs and then suddenly you start analyzing the movement of your feet and telling yourself that you're going to trip and fall. Then suddenly, all you can do is stare at your feet and think about them as they move beneath you. You slow down and get nervous and inevitably trip simply because you're thinking about it too hard. I ALWAYS did this at recitals. When I played by myself, it was sublime. When I played in front of others, I felt like an alien in my own body, staring at my fingers like they didn't belong to me as they stumbled over each other. Not fun.
Also, in another area of inferiority - I was bad at reading music and I was bad at improvising. People always expect piano players to know how to play pop songs. I SUCK at playing pop songs. I always have sucked at playing pop songs and I don't get it. Pop songs are easier than classical music by nature. They're just the same chords played over and over again. Whenever I try playing a pop song, I sound like an opera singer trying to rap. It just doesn't work. It makes me feel like a failure.
Now, I'm 34 years old and it's been 16 years since I took a lesson. I can't play the way I used to and it bothers me a lot. I feel this intense guilt when I think about how good I was then and how less good I am now, and it bothers me when people ask me to play and I bang out a few measures before giving up and telling them that I simply can't remember. It bothers me when they say, "Even just playing that shows how good you are!" And I think, "You have no concept at all. That was total crap. You should have heard me when I was 18. This is an embarrassment."
The thing is, when I was watching this documentary, Tonya Harding was all cutting down trees and talking about how much she loved her new life as a landscape architect, and I suddenly thought, "I wonder if it bothers Tonya Harding that she's not as good as she was at skating when she was 18." And then I thought, "She's like 40 years old. There's no way she could be as good at skating as when she was 18." And then I thought, "If Tonya Harding is happy being a landscape architect and being most likely pretty mediocre at skating, I shouldn't be so hard on myself for not being a piano virtuoso."
This is literally how logic works in my world. Literally.
It is kind of true though. When we're young, we have so much time to spend on mastering things. Like, in the middle of her miserable life, scraping by and living in a trailer, Tonya Harding had skating and that's about it. She spent ALL her time skating...and dating Jeff Gillooly Mullet-Face. Then, suddenly, like Tonya Harding, we have to support ourselves and work a job, and maybe get married and have kids, and have many interests, and go to the gym to make sure we stay in shape, and cook our own meals and do our own taxes, and it becomes really hard to spend all of the hours it requires to be truly exceptional at something. So, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself about not being as exceptional at the piano as I was when I was 18.
Then again, maybe it's not such a great idea to let Tonya Harding be my role model.
I really do wish I were exceptional though. These days, it seems like exceptional people are popping out of every corner on every talent-seeking TV show. There seem to be a million awesome singers and dancers and musicians and child-actors. Is it just me or are there way more talented people around these days? Maybe it is a product of all of these media outlets where people can display their talents. You could look at it as a great thing, or as another example of why you are not exceptional.
As per usual, I must make sense of it all, so I rationalize this entire entry by understanding that not everyone can be exceptional, because if that were the case, no one would be exceptional. And, it's ok that I'm a regular person, because most everyone out there is a regular person just like I am. And, I'm still pretty ok at the piano and other stuff, so I shouldn't feel bad about myself for being a regular person.
Finally, for the record, I feel very ambivalent about Tonya Harding. She doesn't seem like the nicest person and she has a horrible singing voice. Also, her skating outfits were horrible and she had a really bad perm. But, I watched her gold medal performance on youtube and she was pretty exceptional. And I give her a lot of credit for that.
I would like to follow up this entry by remarking upon the fact that I wrote this 10 minutes ago and LITERALLY thought I was 34 years old when I wrote it. And I realize I am 35 years old. And this is depressing that I got that wrong.
ReplyDeleteI recently heard it said that you have to do something for a minimum of 10,000 hours to be really good at it. Exceptional? Well, maybe that's really good with a dollop of natural ability inherited from your genes. Or maybe its just someone with nothing else in their life worth putting that kind of energy into - like friendship, family, helping others. Being exceptional at something may be great at the moment you perform your accomplishment - but what about the rest of your life? But, of course, you are still young even at 35, so if you really WANTED be become exceptional you still could. You just have to decide its worth giving up almost everything else to accomplish it.
ReplyDeleteYou should never trivialize what it means to be simply 'normal.' Normal people keep the world going, taking care of their children, volunteer to help others, pay taxes to keep the government running, and so much more. Exceptional people contribute, but do not necessarily contribute exceptionally. Sometimes being pretty good at a variety of worthwhile things works to your advantage, and to society's, over being exceptional in a singular pursuit. But to have a singular well respected achievement is, I admit, a wonderful thing. Mom
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