You know what it’s like when you build something up in your head that you know you want to talk about because it was very meaningful, and then, when you decide you have the time and/or inclination to do it, nothing actually comes up to the surface? It happens for the most powerful things, even. Life just has a way of circumventing your desires. I knew I wanted to write about my Rachmaninoff Third Concerto experience, and of course, that’s what this is, but I have no idea if what’s coming out even approaches the level of profundity that this particular journey registered for me. Whatever may actually have happened, I liken it to only a couple other events in my life: when I finally read “Infinite Jest“ by David Foster Wallace, and when I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2012. After I read IJ, reading everything else—and comprehending it, even just along the lines of poetry, which is not exactly meant to be “comprehended”—seemed easier. After I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, physical feats (to the degree I attempt them at all, which is fairly rare) have seemed easier. We musicians are athletes of the smaller muscles, Leon always said. So, partially, playing Rachmaninoff‘s Third Concerto was a physical feat. (I have noticed, in the intervening days—when practicing anything— that it does seem easier, much in the way that literature and words became “easier“ after IJ and quotidian physical obligations like walking and gym workouts became easier after Kilimanjaro.) The Rachmaninoff, though—this experience—was so much more than just merely physical, obviously. It is the Mount Everest of the piano concerto literature, only I am not using ropes and carabiners and my feet and legs. (Shhhh yes I’m pedaling but ??) (There is a special OnlyFans version, but Rachmaninoff refused his publisher’s request to include it in the first edition, deeming it not suitable for public consumption, because, in his estimation, “the public” hardly ever owned harnesses.*) Maybe people who climb Everest also use their spirits in the way that I am fitfully trying to describe—and maybe I’m also full of shit, because climbing Everest is ACTUALLY physically dangerous, in the sense that you might really actually die, rather than experience the pale imitation of danger that ego death in the form of making mistakes that likely only other musicians would notice represents—but, all that said, I feel like I’m at a new plateau right now in my playing, and that is significant. I’ve written about the plateau/peak/plateau experience before, and I feel like it informs the entirety of life, not just artistic pursuit, but it’s especially palpable here. After each of these experiences, I was a different person. The same, but different. Here, but more. Just understanding. Better, but equally as valid as I was last week, and as all of you are right now.  Wherever my journey may take me, I will never stop chasing the tail of that horse, the one which is paradoxically always already in my grasp, in the form of us already “being enough.” But there is always more, and greater, and deeper, and wider, and it is accessible to exactly everyone. I feel extremely lucky and exceedingly grateful to be able to do this at all. Life exists in these peak/plateau/peak/plateau forms, anyway, whether we are aware of it or not, but to be able to participate in it consciously is a special gift that I refuse to squander. Thank you for being in my sidecar on this journey; I love you all, in your own particular ways, and also unconditionally beyond everything. ❤️? *this has not been corroborated by researchers, either of Rachmaninoff or “the public“ ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnSrj3CF9Bk

Baltimore aquarium tomfoolery ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0WM7JSj2qg