Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons

And what else is music but a space for us to live in, for a while.

Remember: music is not the notes. It is between the notes. [György Sebők]

Insert countless hours of practicing in a windowless room.

the importance of finding a place where the story falls apart, the importance of making you believe in your doubt.

my body split in two: a brain that was willing and hands like the postal service, subject to inexplicable delays in delivery.

One teacher’s comment, even one you’ve forgotten, may become the essence of you; it’s just hard to know which one.

If you forced me to sum it up, I’d tell you that is the point of this book: a love for the steps, the joys of growing and outgrowing and being outgrown. And—just as in the Mozart—how time seems to stop, or even go in reverse, when you are learning.

...the performer has two tasks: one is to do what's written in the score--incredibly important; and the other, even more important, is to find everything's that not.

While adding new lessons, you have to keep listening to the old ones—

I suppose you could pick Rachmaninoff, if you were feeling whorish (can’t wait for the hate mail on this one).

You spend your life passing on a tradition to a younger generation, and sometimes they can’t help themselves—they have to spit on it.

If you’re in a conservatory, I’d advise you not to get involved musically with people you have even the remotest sense you might be in love with, which can be filed under Advice No One Will Ever Take.

Most of all, he felt a continuous need to say what he thought, to declare what was good and what was bad. Many students feel that need, and teachers have to find a way not to kill them.

like those moments after the last dinner party guest has left and you survey your kitchen to see if any corner of the countertop seems like a reasonable place to start, or whether you should just sell your house instead

The French literary critic Roland Barthes explains that this is because storytelling is a transaction, that it extracts a price from both the teller and the listener, whether we know it or not, and sometimes the cost changes everything.

I read all the time and didn’t socialize. (To me this made perfect sense. Books were less likely to hit you than other kids; reading was a refuge and an activity that Mom and Dad wouldn’t complain about.)

A pair of vanishings: her father from a heart attack, her husband from a different failing of the heart. In music, the return of a theme is often a comfort or delight, but in real life not so much.

I feel Bach's voice in those three notes, like a message in a bottle, trying to cross the ocean of harmony he himself has created. What's the message? Those notes don't say we're in a place. How could they? We're still en route. But they remember being in a place. They remember having a home, while the chords, time, life keep shifting on.

Leland had been right to remind me that there was no end to the details one could strive for, but Sebok was also right – the desire for perfection could be a deadly weakness. Living comfortably in that paradox, without even knowing it, is part of being a musician. There’s a labyrinth of voices inside your head, a counterpoint of self-awareness and the remembered sayings of your guides and mentors, who don’t always agree. Sometimes you wish you could go back to ask your teachers again to guide you; but up there onstage, exactly where they always wanted you to be, you must simply find your way. They have given all the help they can; the only person who can solve the labyrinth of yourself is you.

But rhythms offer something to hold on to and lean against, a refuge against both change and monotony. Watching dancing friends in a club, I can see that the beat creates a protected space, a force field around them, that lets them let it all out: a structure that at once gives shelter and permits freedom. And what else is music but a space for us to live in, for a while.

responsibilities, my parents said, over and over. Excellence meant a few moments of praise, and countless more hours of work.

You passed. But have you considered the word "la"?

One of the reasons I never enjoy the music of Shostakovich, although I admire it and think it captures an essential part of the human condition. is that it's all impasse with no release. When there are solutions, they tend to be grudging, tragic, or ambivalent, like the famous ending of the Fifth Symphony that everyone argues about.

Evil moment, when you doubt the magician's magic, when you wonder if it was more image than insight.

With that I plunked out da-da-da-dum, the famous opening of the Fifth Symphony. A titter ran through the crowd—laughter of recognition. It’s just a rhythm. Once it was a half-formed idea, but now it’s almost a prerequisite of existence.

Therefore the most desired and beautiful note is also the briefest—a moral and a meaning, hiding in an “innocent” tune.