My cats are having a strange week.
Every day of this last week, I've gotten up... and gotten ready to leave the house. Although it's been a while since I've done it so regularly, my cats know the signs. The viola by the door. The coat. The mask. The pre-departure "scurrying." And then, I step outside and I'm gone.
As anyone who's lived with an animal knows, the most frustrating thing is not being able to explain to them what's going on. I remember so clearly taking them to the vet for the first time. It was the first time they'd left the house since coming here from the shelter. I wished I could let them know that we'd be back soon. I couldn't. They toughed it out, and I did too, and I'm still not sure who had it worse.
Suddenly I'm leaving the house all the time - to head out to A Far Cry rehearsals! That blessed daily schedule again, the thermoses of tea, the conversations about offbeats, the slightly sore feet at the end of the day. Of course, my cats don't know where I'm going. When I come back, I sit down with them in the middle of the kitchen and give them some time to smell everything and bring their experience up to date.
I can't ever tell them how long I'll be gone. And as much as I regret that, I also am coming to realize something else. This thing I think I know, this certainty I crave to share with them, is not absolute, and never can be.
It only took a pandemic to figure that out.
Last year at this time, A Far Cry was traveling, touring with the memorized Tchaikovsky Serenade. We knew exactly when every performance would be, where we'd be going, what we'd be doing.
What we didn't know yet was that we actually didn't know anything like that; we only thought we did. It would be the living room, not the Kennedy Center, and it would be a long, long, solo haul for each of our musical selves.
Now a year later, we're back together again for the first time, and the simple fact of making music in the same room has gained inestimable value.
Do we know more now? That's a huge question, and probably one for another day. I'm inclined to think that, like my cats, we are in a better position now to understand that we know less. But there is something else at play here which we also share with my little ones: We remember.
We remember so many things, large and small. All the ins and outs of being with each other. The particular things each person says. Or does. The ways the first 10 minutes set up the flow of a rehearsal. The way each of us takes our bow off the strings. The way each of us structures and places our musical commentary. The inevitable conflicts, the movement towards resolution.
It makes me laugh because I know the exact moment when the cats will jump off my bed and run to the kitchen, knowing that breakfast is coming soon. They know when I'm really awake - ready to get out of bed and move - sometimes before I do. They're good readers, they can pick up the signs. Just like in an A Far Cry rehearsal when a comment hits wrong and you can read it in the subtle body language of the room. (It's excruciating when it happens to you and we've all been there.)
What else do we remember? The Tchaikovsky Serenade.
We'd committed it to memory - first for our tenth anniversary, and then last year to take on tour. Memorizing a piece with eighteen musicians is unlike anything else. The trust is off the charts. But also: you use all of your skills; muscle memory, straight-up analysis, singing it to yourself all day long, you name it. By the time it's committed to memory, so are all of its moods. By memorizing a phrase, you also scope out its tendencies, and how they stay the same or change as the leadership for the work rotates. You get to know the piece like the way my cats know how my breathing changes from sleeping to waking.
It's beyond moving to have the first thing we do, as we step back into sharing space with each other, be to revisit this palace of memory.
And it's just so interesting. We can't know the future. But we can know what happens in the Waltz. And that's actually an immense form of freedom. In knowing what "happens" - in having that shared knowledge of our collective tendencies - we have the privilege to play. We can stretch a phrase, because the collective knowledge can not just tolerate that, but respond to it in a communal way. We can play with color, knowing that our combined knowledge will allow the result to be coherent. We have the agency to act.
The strange freedom of being known is a magnificent thing.
It was funny, when we started rehearsals again this week - although I imagine it was different for each of us, there wasn't a single collective rush of emotion. Instead, we simply played together, and learned to listen to each other again. The roots were deeper than what we could experience in a moment. And that was all right - we knew it would be, because we knew it would be.
Tchaikovsky, Pärt, Bologne, Sunday afternoon.
If I know this group, it should sound pretty gorgeous.
All my best,
Sarah
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