The Art of Quitting

If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time. (Chinese Proverbs)

So many things are being said about people who quit, and if you're a fan of quotes like me, you'll know that the majority of people who have gained worldwide reputation, wise or wicked, do not approve of quitting. But is quitting such a bad thing? 

I had dinner tonight with a good friend. With her, I can talk about this kind of philosophical nonsense. We were discussing about what we do and at a point she said, "I'm so stubborn I can't quit things." Then she started talking about the time when she couldn't quit reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot even though it was such an idiotic thing to do. She spent five months finishing that God-forsaken book, simply because once she starts something, she just  has to see the end of it. And after a while she said that you have to be able to quit something, and if you can't, you must learn. 

Now I always thought being persistent is a good thing. I believe that. And I'm not good at quitting either, although I'm not as stubborn as my dear friend, because I know how to put down a book as soon as I'm convinced that it's not going to make me any less stupid nor smart. But my mum raised and trained me to finish everything I do, and I always try to do it, although I can honestly say that sometimes when I take too much at a time, I'm forced to quit something. But I always look at it as being postponed, like my Spanish or Latin class, and normally the interest lays dormant. 

But recently I've been thinking a lot about quitting doing what I love to do: my music camp. This is my fourth year, and things haven't changed much. There's always this plot going on to give me a hard time (and this year it was from people I thought highly of before, which were very, very disappointing), people have no respect over deadlines, the locals are reluctant to join and complaining about the price, and the lukewarm reception of music students in the city, it's just all so discouraging. It's really ironic. I'm trying to build music life in this city, but the people who live in it don't seem to want to grow. And I know that nothing will grow in here unless people are educated. But in this terribly placid music environment, what can I do if they don't want to be made better? Would God help those who do not help themselves?

But would it make me a failure if I quit, after all these years? Sam Haywood recently put a link to my website in his with a saying, "...this company tirelessly promotes classical music in Indonesia...". Isn't it sad? Sam wouldn't be proud of me if he reads this blog. But I can make a list of negative and positive things that will happen if I stop caring, and honestly, it wouldn't be my personal loss. In fact, I would have been able to keep my saving, I wouldn't have annual headache, and I could in time raise enough fund and present myself with a gap year that I badly need. So is it really necessary for me to be so damn persistent about it? Or am I simply being persistently foolish?

And that's one question I cannot answer right now. There's a quote saying, "trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go." I always believe this. And so I might still be doing this because I love it (and love is not a choice) and also because I have the audacity to hope that I will go somewhere, and I will not end up here, and I can continue to do this thing I love, only somewhere else. But like every other important things I decide in my life, I think I will rely on my instinct to tell myself when is a good time to quit, and if it should be a mistake, then it shall be my own, not anyone else's. 

And When It All Comes Down To Family...

nothing else matters. 

Seriously, a good way of putting things back in perspective is to realize that after everything that has happened in your life, if you still have a family to be with at the end of the day, you know you'll be all right. 

I spent my weekend at my brother's house to see my new nephew. He's cute and all, but as he spent most of his still-new life by sleeping, eating and producing dirt, there really wasn't much to do with him...yet. So as usual, I spent my 2-days playing all sort of games with his elder brother and 2 sisters. 

Monday morning, I was getting ready to go back home. Always feeling reluctant to leave my little rugrats, I was feeling a bit restless and gloomy, but I knew I had to go, so I was trying to spend the last minute having fun with my nieces. My oldest nephew, in the meantime, was busy playing Playstation with his friends. At one point he was running upstairs to fetch a towel because he was getting ready for bath.

That was half-past noon and I had planned to take a bus on 1 pm. My brother's driver was already waiting for me outside and I was collecting my stuffs when I heard a loud breaking noise, almost like a little explosive. To my horror, I saw my nephew lying on the bathroom floor. It happened all too quickly. He was falling from the roof and hit the wet bathroom tiles. What's more scary was the sight of him. Shocked, he was having difficulty breathing. His face was all white and he was in tremor from pain. It was one of the most horrible spectacle in my life. 

Turned out that he found a hole in the roof and his adventurous soul took him to the area which happens to be the bathroom ceiling. It stands 3-metres high and badly needs repairing, so it couldn't sustain a 66-pound 8-year-old. But Gott sei Dank, my nephew fell on his back and perhaps a little to his side because he managed to save his head from a concussion and kept his backbone intact. Still, his mum and I were horrified and the driver and I went like mad to the hospital with him in the back seat of the car, still in pain. 

I would have cried my heart out if I hadn't had the same experience years ago. When I was 9, my dear, silly old brother also fell from the ceiling at gram's house and since he was a living proof that he could survive such accident, I knew my nephew's going to be fine as well. After X-ray and USG, the doctor confirmed that he was fine and the only thing he must endure is the bruises. But there was miraculously no broken bones. It was amazing, and a blessing. 

I missed my bus, of course, and went home in the evening. I slept early at night and woke up late the next day (which is today), out of emotional exhaustion. You will be, if your heart leaps to your feet for a few minutes. But before bed I didn't forget to write in my gratitude journal. And if you ever love someone as much as I love my nephew, you will know how I feel. If my body didn't take over, I would be staying up all night to write my thank you to God for saving my nephew. 

I always believe that everything happens for a reason. The accident hopefully teaches my nephew to control his impulses to move around all the time and to think before doing something stupid and dangerous. For me, it surely reminds me again and again that there is always something more important than all my problems. And one of this is my family. There's no problem that will not be solved, and if it's not solved it will pass, but family will always be there for you. And a lot of times, they take you and everything you've got, including your excess baggage.  

Tedious Tenacity

Same old, same old. 

Each year since the first music camp, this happens: I promote the camp, wait until the deadline is over, find that I have only too few string players to make a workable camp, burn my midnight oil to get more participants, then do the camp, and end up with everybody happy and all my savings gone. 

I don't know how the brains of all string players in Indonesia work, but I know that there is not a single wire connected between the word "investment" and "education". They just don't understand the concept of investing money for their education, or in another word, for themselves. When it comes to money, they either connect it to "expenses" or "stuffs", meaning it either goes into thin air like food or movie or into tangible materials like mobile phones and laptops. Or instruments. It's so hilarious to see a string player who walk with transcendental pride after acquiring new violin or cello. And it's even more hilarious when they actually play it.

It seems so stupid and crazy. Every year, I feel like grabbing an invisible megaphone and shouting to them that education is important because without it they will go round and round in circles of ignorance and never move forward. Sure they'll be getting money, but it's because God is good and kind and generous and not because they are good in what they do. But no matter how loud I shout, how often and how rude, not much has changed for the past 3 years. I'm still struggling. The funny thing is, it wasn't even for my sake. 

And every year, they have this same old cliché for not coming to the camp: it's the money. They never have enough money. And every time I'm tempted to correct them. They never have enough money for their education. But for a bicycle, an 800-dollar mountain bike, they do. For a 900-dollar laptop, they can spare and spend. But never for the process of acquiring a soft-skill which could actually take them places. But they don't care. 

And I don't think anybody care. Each year I open the camp for free to string players who might want to see how things are working out, but nobody show up. Nobody even curious. Perhaps my idealistic view of a perfect string player with perfect intonation is too much, too nice, too soon. Before everything they should change their way of thinking first. 

I just visited my BFF's blog. There he wrote a line from the Bible which has influenced him so much: "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." I wish I can do that right now. At the moment, I don't even pray any more. I'm too tired to do anything. This year's could be the last camp. Too bad, but what's the point of helping people who do not want to help themselves? It's probably time to help myself. After this I can save my savings and do it for my own education. Now if there's something I can learn from them, it's this thing: I can learn not to care. 

On ABRSM (2)

Today I will tell about why this ABRSM exam is so popular in Indonesia, and why it has, unintentionally, a regressing side-effect to the development of musical life in the country. 

Indonesian people are paper lovers. A lot of us do a lot of things and enroll ourselves to a lot of courses, seminars, or workshops and whatever for the sake of a piece of paper. Of course, not merely a blank paper, but a paper saying that they've done this and that and gone here and there. But sometimes what's on papers doesn't really say what's on your head or, musically speaking, on your hands.

Now every exam candidate who pays quite a lot of money to be examined will eventually get a certificate after he/she has passed a practical/theory exam, with an additional "merit" or "distinction" title if they do well enough. (Later they can mention this in their musical CV if they're to perform in a concert.) This piece of paper is certainly quite fascinating because (1) it's nicely made, with golden, embossed printing on your names and the Royal Schools' seal on fancy paper; (2) it's in English, so it has an "international" air attached to it; (3) it has a seal of originality which means that not everyone can just print it somewhere; and (4) you have to see some English people first to get this paper. All in all, this adds to the exclusivity of the whole event.

However, with their ever-lower standard, this paper now is quite easy to get. The ABRSM has 8 graded exams (Grade 1 being the lowest and Grade 8 being the highest). For instrumental exam, all candidates are expected to play a set of scales and arpeggios (and their variations), 3 pieces of their choices, along with a short piece to sight-read and some aural tests. I think basically nowadays the requirement to pass is the ability to play your pieces from beginning to end without stopping (so much). If you can do this, you're sure to receive your certificate in one or two months after your exam. If you stumble during your scales, or progress with a snail-pace while you're reading at sight, and stutter in your aural tests, don't worry, the examiners are a board of forgiving people. Good or bad, fluent or stammering, they are all trained to tell themselves: "this too shall pass."

The accessibility and facility of ABRSM exam have created the crave for going to exams among parents and young musicians alike. Many of them still think that this test is prestigious and DIFFICULT to get by and they are naturally ecstatic when they or their kids succeed, resulting in a belief, slowly but surely planted, that they or their kids are talented. I've had an ambitious dad who, after receiving his son's exam result (who passed with distinction) in piano Grade 2, decided to enroll him to Grade 5 exam the following year. What he didn't know was that there were a lot of kids graduating from Grade 2 exam with distinction that year, and a lot of them are far younger than his son. This is a rare case, but the more usual cases are that parents start to push their kids to take exam every year. Grade by grade, to heck with other stuffs. 

Ideally a pupil should complete at least half of the repertoires for his/her grade before taking exam. It's just like regular school. At the beginning of the year every kid gets a book to read, some exercises and little tests before they go to the big, final one. So musically, ABRSM exam should be this one last thing on their agenda. The most important thing of their learning process is the phase where they learn their repertoires and play their Czernys. But parents (and some teachers) today just skip the ultimate rituals and go to the exam straight away. So each year, the average young musicians only learn 2 or 3 works before they lunge at the 3 pre-meditated exam pieces and scales for months.

I think annual exam will work out well with industrious children who have quite some talent. But in today's wild world with full-day school and tons of brain-enhancing extra-curricular activities, they are rare species. The normal ones are those who take about a year and a half to complete their learning materials in order to get sufficient skills to go to the next levels. With pushy parents or certificate-chasing musicians, this is never get done. And sadly, not many care. 

So it's quite easy to tell the difference between Grade 8 certificate-holders of ten years ago and of today. By the way they play, they way they touch their instruments, you can see that their maturity level are not the same. It's like meeting two university graduates who have the same "bachelor of so-and-so" behind their names, but one reads 300 books before graduation and the other only 30. You can always tell. And they can tall you. And once they start telling, you will know that  papers don't matter that much.     

On ABRSM (1)

(This is the first part of my writing about the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, a London-based examination board for music. I will try REALLY HARD not to be too opinionated, although I know I might break my own rule.)  

Now this first writing is going to be about High Scorers' Concert (HSC), an annual event held by the ABRSM and its local representative, in this case, Indonesia. Every year they choose some kids in each exam centers (cities) who got the finest results, told them to play 1 (one) piece which bears the highest mark, to the invitees of this concert, who are mostly parents and teachers. Afterwards these kids will be given a pin and a certificate and they got to take hundreds of pictures with one or sometimes two ABRSM's officers who come especially from London to celebrate their success. 

Now I just came back from this year's HSC for 2010 result in Jakarta. This was how the day went. 

I drove at 5.30 a.m. from Bandung so I could be in Jakarta to accompany an 11-year-old violinist who happened to be selected for this prestigious event. Her parents were ecstatic and enthusiastic. They were in great mood and glorious. We drove through the fresh morning weather. Since the road was still quite empty, and this girl's dad just couldn't wait to see his darling play, we arrive 1 hour before the scheduled time for general repetition. So we waited. At 9, we started the whole procession. It was a procession indeed. We were given a fanfare music to walk to the stage as the concert manager introduced us to the audience. The "introduction" consisted of us standing up, walking down, forming line, going on stage, off stage, then repeating the whole thing up to three times because the manager couldn't decide whether she wanted us to form 2 or 3 lines. After 45 minutes, we were finally given a chance to try out the piano. But since there were so many of us today, each performer were allowed only less than 1 minute. This part of rehearsal, which was supposed to be the most important one, took only 60 minutes for 57 performers. By 11 a.m. we're allowed to try out one more time, so everybody literally ran to stand in line so we all could play our piece in one piece, but by 11.30 we were told to have lunch and get dressed and be ready by 12.30. 

The concert began at 1 p.m. Before I proceed with time-table, there's something worth mentioning here. FYI,  all ABRSM-related events (concerts, seminars, etc.) are always held in hotels, minimum four-stars. Today it was at InterContinental Hotel. Sure enough, it was posh. But the carpeting, the softboard wall, the chair with all its fancy pinafore, created a totally dry acoustic in the room. The grand piano was almost mute, and the sound of Chinese and Korean violins on that room was funereal, so the concert manager even asked accompanists to even lower that already-faint sound. It was the quietest concert I've ever attended. 

Now, let's continue with time. So I sat next to my violinist at 1 p.m. in a cold room before our turn to play. And that came sometime around 2.25. My fingers were already stiff because of the air con. We took the stage for 1 minute, then sat again waiting for the concert to finish, which was at 3. There were certificate and pin and gift distributions for about 40 minutes, because each performer took 2 pictures with each of the ABRSM's officers who came today. Then there were what I thought would be an endless photo-taking session with everybody: parents, teachers, organizers, and we left the hotel at 4. I got home at 8 p.m. 

I know it happens all the time with such communal concerts. You waited for hours just so you can show people how far you've done with your instrument. When you're not that far, you can only show it in 50 seconds. When you're already quite far, you're lucky because you get to enjoy the stage at least a bit longer. But here are some financially-related facts: (1) each performer (except accompanists) has to pay USD 45 to participate in the concert, plus (2) USD 15 to get their profiles appear in concert booklets. That's USD 60 in total for one single performance, in which the artist plays not more than 3 minutes. Now for those of you who do not aware of the value of USD 60 in my country, let's just say that this amount can pay a rent for a very decent room for one month. 

All of this just doesn't make sense. First of all, ABRSM exam is known to be pricey. And each year their prices go up. They don't have a policy on different fees for different countries with different economic situations. When I took my diploma in 2006, I had to pay about 1 million rups, which I did so unwillingly. Now a grade 8 exam alone costs 1,4 million rups. (The diploma costs 2,5 million, in case you're curious). Second of all, after everybody gets their results, the best musicians of them all get a treat, only they themselves have to pay a lot of money for this treat. And a lot of this money go to unnecessary stuffs like renting ballroom. And third of all, there were 57 mums and dads in that room today who happily paid for this.

I guess it's everybody's right to feel good, and that sum is probably nothing compared to the pride of seeing your children step in front of the piano or sing or strike their violins, or to the satisfaction of knowing that the money you've invested on their music education are not wasted. My only complaint was that after sitting all day in that cold ballroom, I got a sore throat and a tummy ache. But hey, at least I didn't have to pay a dime.