mod’s life

People have commented in the past that I’m really good at the piano. And I’ve always tried to protest that I’m not really that good. It’s not false modesty at all. I will acknowledge that, after ten years of formal instruction, I do have some musical skill. I do know how to play the piano, and I can read music somewhat well. By casual measurements, yes I can play piano better than the average person. Well, given that the “average” person probably cannot play the piano at all, that is trivially true. But I will accept that I am fairly talented and can play a tune with a moderate amount of skill.

My classification of “very good”, however, is beyond what I consider myself. I took ten years of lessons, but I did not have a super prestigious instructor. I have one friend from junior high who had an extremely respected instructor, and now he plays at a professional level. I consider myself to be an amateur/casual pianist; I have never played in an orchestra or given any other performance outside of private recitals held by my own instructor for her students. Even then, I was not a flawless performer. I made mistakes. I still make mistakes. Yes every musician makes mistakes, but my technical ability is such that I actually am not physically able to play some of the songs that I enjoy (notably Chopin) perfectly given as many tries as I want. Were I to ever give a performance, I feel that I would only embarrass myself.

But even if I were to disregard “professional” musicians, even if I were to compare myself to people of comparable musical education, I feel that my skill is still average at best, possibly lower than average. I grew up in a high school that was 40% Asian. That means every other classmate could play the piano or violin or both. Those that could play both were obviously more musically talented than me. Those that could only play the violin I believe are still more musically inclined, because violin is indisputably the more difficult instrument. (For those of you who have no musical background, without going into too much detail, piano is the easier instrument to play because it is composed of discrete keys, being far more forgiving for finger positioning error. Violin is composed of continuous strings, giving almost no room for finger positioning error.)

Compared to my fellow only-piano players, I feel that my skill is not much to write home about. I was not the greatest piano student. I wasn’t the worst either; I did dutifully practice an hour a day (even if it was forced by my mother), up until high school when the homework load started interfering with the amount of time I could practice. Perhaps the only reason people still think I’m good at the piano is because I continue to practice in the present. Fortunately, I’ve grown to appreciate and even enjoy playing the piano, so practicing is no longer a chore for me. In that sense, my skill may be greater than my peers who had comparable education to me, simply because I’ve kept it up.

As an attempt to place an objective measurement of my piano skill, I will say that I did pass the Advanced Level Certificate of Merit exam. I think a lot of my peers did as well, though I’m not positive. I have to say though, I think I was very fortunate to have passed. My performance portion of the exam was less than stellar. I played a Bach piece for the Baroque era, a Mozart Sonata for the Classical, a Chopin etude for the Romantic, and Debussy’s Arabesque for the Impressionist. If I recall correctly, I did fairly well on three of them. Chopin, however was a different story. I distinctly remember making multiple mistakes as I was playing. And it wasn’t just an unlucky performance either; I had trouble with that song all through my practices up until the exam, so it was no surprise that I wasn’t entirely ready for it. Surprisingly, despite my examiner’s comment that that was one of her favorite pieces, she passed me. Sometimes I think about it and wonder if she decided to go easy on me becuase I had mentioned I was a senior in high school, and would be attending college the following year (and thus discontinuing piano). In any case, the point I wanted to make was, despite me passing the Advanced Level CM exam, I cannot claim to play even my exam pieces perfectly, much less pieces I play on the side.

In terms of music theory, I only know enough of the basics to pass the CM exam. As for general musical ability, I have absolutely zero compositional or improvisational skill. I can only read music and play it; I cannot come up with my own material, or even enhance existing material. I cannot even play by ear. I think of playing the piano as having three separate but related entities. There is the written note, what you see on the sheet music. There is the physical key, what you hit on the keyboard. And finally there is the audible note, the sound you hear. For a single note, all three concrete entities are representations for the same abstract entity. The expert pianist/musician can translate between any of the three near instantaneously. I cannot. To me, the written note is almost equivalent to the physical key; when I see sheet music I can translate it to what is supposed to be played fairly quickly. But the equivalence between either of those two and the audible note is not natural to me. If I see a written note, I cannot necessarily tell what it sounds like. Likewise, I do not necessarily know what sound will be produced by a key I am about to strike. This is perhaps the most important reason why I do not consider myself a “great” pianist.

Today I play the piano solely for my own entertainment. I am so self-conscious about my own perception of my skill, and of people’s overestimation of my skill, that I actually feel very nervous when people ask me to play for them. I am also afraid of letting people down, especially when they have heard of an exaggerated reputation of me but not actually heard me play. I suppose I would feel better if it were made known to people that I’m pretty good for a casual pianist, but I feel uncomfortable when it’s suggested that I’m “really good at the piano”.

In the past, I’ve been very reluctant to post personal opinions on sensitive subjects, especially those that I know that whatever I write, there will be someone to offend. By my nature I do not like offending people (unless the offend me first). I am conflict-averse, and I prefer to stay on people’s positive sides. I wouldn’t say I’m a kiss-up, just that I feel uncomfortable when people think negatively of me. But recently, Joyce suggested that I learn how to be more open, that I be more open to speaking my mind without fear of being wrong or being disliked. As she said, it’s fine to have some people not like me. If nobody has issues with me, then I’m lacking personality.

While she was referring more to speaking my mind in general, I decided to try speaking out on a specific topic that I’m almost certain will offend some, especially with me being a California resident. If you don’t know, Proposition 8, if passed, will ban same-sex marriage in California. Just taking a quick survey of Facebook statuses will show that there are some pretty strong supporters of voting against it, with the chant of “Don’t eliminate marriage for anyone” and “Marriage equality for all”.

And that brings me to the shocker of this post: I support Prop 8. I know of at least a handful of friends, if not more, who would be offended by or at least disapprove of my stand.  But I’ve made my decision to state it. I have personal reasons why I’m against allowing gay marriage. I also have logical objections to the arguments for gay marriage. But this post is not about either of them. Today, I am writing about my philosophical issues with those the “No” camp in general (not of any particular person).

California is pretty liberal, especially northern California where I currently reside. And coming from Berkeley, I am no stranger to the extreme side of liberalism. The Bay Area is so liberal in fact, that I have come to conclude it is almost a fad to have liberal opinions. I feel like it is popular to go against tradition, to complain over the smallest things, to hold protests for the sake of protesting. It’s the “in” thing to do; everybody’s doing it.

Example: the recent clamor for Tibetan independence and protesting China’s hosting of the Olympics. While this isn’t necessarily a liberal position, without going into whether I support Tibetan independence, I’ll say that I firmly believe a good number of the people protesting were doing so out of mob mentality. A relatively small number of people who passionately and sincerely supported independence started the fire, and then people who wouldn’t care otherwise care happened to observe them. Then it started to snowball, and soon it became cool to be anti-China in any way possible. And at that point people started to scream for Tibetan independence when seriously, I don’t think they even sincerely cared from their hearts. I mean, some of these protesters couldn’t even point out Tibet on a map. Can such a person really say they care about the issues when they don’t even really know the most basic details about it?

But I digress. I mean to talk about gay marriage here. The Bay Area is liberal enough that it’s become popular to think that allowing gay marriage is “revolutionary” and “the right thing”. While I’m sure there are some who do feel strongly about the concept, this post isn’t about them. My opinion is that a large number of people who scream at others to vote no are only doing so for the sake of, to put it unsophisticatedly, being rebellious. To me, these are the people who will go against convention just because they think it’s cool to do so. These are the people who will sit in trees to protest cutting down trees that no one will miss. These are the people who will protest the pledge of allegiance in public schools due to mention of God. These are the people who will say gay marriages are good because disallowing them is the status quo, and the status quo must be bad.

And that brings me to the main point of this post: my philosophical issues with gay marriage are founded upon my observations that much of the sentiment in favor of allowing it is little more than peer pressure and the desire to fit in with the rest of liberal California. Yes there are independent thinkers out there who support gay marriage out of their own will and beliefs. But for the others, this is simply yet another outlet to demonstrate one’s liberalism. Taking a liberal position because you feel strongly about it is one thing; I may not agree with it but I can at least respect it. But taking a liberal position because everyone you know is doing it, without even knowing the facts, is just ridiculous. I don’t have issues with people who flat out don’t care about the issues either. (I’m often one of those people.) I just cannot stand people who clamor and whine about something they probably will no longer care about in a few years.

I don’t claim conservatives are immune to the same mob mentality. It’s just that at least in California, there isn’t enough conservative momentum for the same problem to occur, and thus if a person here takes a conservative stand on some issue, I can usually be reasonably sure he is sincere in his opinion. If I were in a heavily conservative state, I might have the opposite view.

So, elections are coming up in a couple weeks. I’ve already stated my view, I won’t try to persuade you one way or another, at least not today. All I’m saying is, this time, and any time in the future where you find yourself about to take a stand on some issue, you should ask yourself, “What do I really think about this issue, and do I really care about it?”

Last night I stumbled into the living room to find f00 watching the first episode of a cheesy Chinese romantic comedy. For whatever reason I ended up watching most of it with him, understanding only about 50% of it and asking him to explain the rest. The episode (as far as I understood it) involved a man whose drink was drugged by some pranksters, and a woman who took too much cold medicine and stumbled into the wrong room. And they ended sleeping together, each thinking the other was his or her significant other.

Well, I don’t intend to watch the rest of it, especially because I wouldn’t understand any of it, but I did want to know what happened (no matter how crappy a tv show or movie, I often really want to know how the story ends if I’ve begun watching it). So I looked it up on wikipedia. Without giving too much away, the girl finds out she’s pregnant, and the show is about the guy and the girl dealing with the pregnancy.

Now that’s all I’ll say about the plot. The reason I brought it up is because it made me think of an interesting scenario. Those of you who know me really well might know that I’m moderately pro-choice with respect to abortion rights. A lot of people I know are moderately pro-life, willing to make exceptions for events beyond the woman’s control, such as rape. I myself am not a hardcore pro-choicer; I only support abortion as an option for women who do not want to deal with pregnancy/children (assuming the fetus isn’t developed past a certain point). I want to point out that I generally do not think of abortion as a good idea. In most cases I would prefer the woman keep the baby. And I do not condone consciously keeping abortion as a “bail-out” strategy and substitute for unprotected sex. But I do approve of it as an option “after the fact”. For example, if a teenage girl gets pregnant accidentally, the mistake is already made. Nothing can be done about that. Forcing the girl to keep an unwanted child is, in my opinion, not necessarily a great choice, especially if she’s not ready to be a parent. Yes I know there sometimes are options such as safe haven, but barring that I would accept abortion as a viable solution to an undesirable problem.

I’ve already gone more than I intended to about my own views on abortion; this post was actually meant to address the views of pro-lifers. Other than in cases of rape/abuse/incest/etc., I think these people generally wish to disallow abortion. I apologize in advance if I misinterpret their (or your if you’re one of them) view in anyway, but as I understand it they believe that the unborn child should not have to be punished for the mistake of the mother. We may have differing views of what constitutes a life, but I can at least understand where they are coming from.

When I watched f00’s drama though, it made me think. Would a pro-lifer support abortion in the case of the man and woman? The pregnancy was the consequence of events completely beyond their control. It’s one thing if two people get drunk and one gets pregnant as a result; you can argue (and I could be convinced) that they are responsible for their actions while intoxicated because they knowingly and consensually drank alcohol. However, if you sleep with the wrong woman/man by accident (despite how ridiculous that sounds), due to other people’s deliberate scheming and interference, should you be held responsible for their transgressions? I think that even if I leaned pro-life a little more, I would still accept abortion for this scenario as acceptable. Even if an unborn child deserves to live regardless of the parents’ mistakes, what if the mistake was not their fault? I wonder how real pro-lifers would think about this.

Just to generalize it a little more, I am inclined to agree that if people knowingly drink alcohol or take drugs, they should be held responsible for whatever actions they take while intoxicated or high or whatever. But what if it’s not intentional? What if I (for those of you who don’t know, I don’t drink alcohol) had my drink spiked, thereby losing my inhibition, and ended up getting a girl pregnant? Oh if I were so lucky. All jokes aside, should I be held liable for the paternity? Should I be responsible for a child whose existence is the sole result of me getting drunk against my will (assuming that is true)?

Just some weird thoughts I have sometimes…