I can't go on. I'll go on.

I just wanted to use that Beckett quote from the novel I'm currently writing about. I don't actually feel discouraged in any way that I might be tempted not to go on. No way. I've gone too far--and seen to much progress!--to give up now. I feel kind of nondescript right now. I'm improving yes, but slowly. I had to get wrist bands and guards because my right wrist was hurting, but they helped a lot and now I feel none of the pain at all. I thought I'd hurt it somehow while playing piano, but I realized that wasn't the problem at all. It hurt because of the heavy water filter jug I lift daily while making coffee! So I started being a lot more careful with that.

Otherwise, I'm just working hard on the first three RCM Level 8 etudes and doing my new technical exercise regime--the one I mentioned 2 or 3 blogs ago. I feel like I make noticeable progress every day, but also that I'm still really far away from being able to play well and with confidence. So in that way, the title fits: my progress seems asymptotic. Except I'm nowhere near the tail of any kind of piano progress. I still have trouble with the Etude in D Minor, and at several of the same spots, but I find I am playing it consistently faster. So I think that's progress, though it doesn't really feel like it while I'm in the middle of it.

On Having Attained the 2.33-yr Mark

In the previous "On Having Attained" post (January 3, 2017) I listed the scales I'd learned and also those I'd as yet failed to learn. I've been working on the minor scales I'd been lacking. The new schedule has me practising B, C#, F#, G#. E-flat, and B-flat all in the harmonic minor mode. I've been doing all but B minor in parallel motion though, since I hadn't even learned those at all yet. Yesterday's B minor in contrary motion went pretty well. I was practising it aesthetically, trying to make it cantabile and remove all rigidity from the turns. It gave my left hand a tiny bit of a workout, though I recall getting up from the piano thinking my right hand was (as always) gaining technical ability faster than my left. The penultimate thing I played was Maykapar's Toccatina, and I was doing it veeery slowly. But with that piece being heavy on the right hand, the work out felt a bit lopsided when it ended. Haydn's Menuetto was last, and I could tell my left hand was a bit heavy (i.e. uncontrolled) in some of the sections. 

The day before that (Feb 2 - Groundhog Day!) I was practising the first part of Solfeggietto in the morning and it sounded so so harsh and uneven--much more so than previous practices--that I lamented my progress for the rest of the morning. But then when I returned to it in the evening, I was playing it better. It was the first thing I played when I returned to the piano, so I wasn't sure I could attribute the difference to having warmed up. I hadn't. Plus I had been a good deal warmer in the morning while playing it because I'd been playing for quite a while before I began Solfeggietto. So... piano progress is weird. 

Last night, almost immediately after lamenting my left hand's lack of suppleness, I started (absently at first) drumming my left hand fingers on the desk and suddenly noticed it was a good deal more supple than it's ever been. I recall having a similar surprise moment with my right hand several months ago and been reckoning ever since with my left hand's lagging behind the right in this respect. I never thought, however, that I'd see this improvement happening on precisely the same day I get up from the piano thinking, and actually saying aloud, "My left hand sucks!" It's early in the morning right now, so I don't know what today's practice will bring, but I do hope yesterday's final events augur well.

It's weird how it feels like no time has passed since I first began. But that actually helps me proceed--as always--as though it were the first day.  

Over and out.