"My practice"

This morning's dark roast coffee accompanied by a crack-my-life-open essay by David Whyte on Ambition vs. Vocation. "True vocation calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden, core nature of the work that enticed us in the first place."

I have yet to find a better description of a lifetime of practicing a musical instrument.

In the past few months, it has been difficult for me to find the motivation for practicing. I have been gifted new experiences, people, journeys in my life that I have been prioritizing. If you don't prioritize gifts, after all, they just seem like things you earned. So my time has been shared, cleaved, wrapped in paper and handed over; I am glad for this. I don't regret it.
But as a result, the thought that resides in my stomach lining after I don't sleep enough is I MUST PRACTICE MORE. All of the things I "want" to do in this world necessitate my feeling confident about my horn playing, my being skillful in my craft. I use my iPhone timer, I set my music in order on my music stand, I oil my valves before I begin so I can stay in the room, stay with it, for 60 minutes or 45 minutes or 38 minutes. And it's not working. I don't feel alive to the "hidden, core nature of the work" anymore than if I had left my horn in the case, taken a nap, and traipsed off to my next gig.

The blister that friendly poet Whyte casually ripped open this morning is that I have been "ambition"-ing my practice. I have been calcifying my hours by outlining the beginning and the end of each one. Ambition is the pistol at the start of the race, or perhaps the circular track itself. And where we arrive is back again, looped on ourselves. Vocation is the whitewater churning of the lactic acid in the legs, lungs desperate but trained to keep it to themselves, limbs tied on with fishing line, the primitive stem of the brain announcing "now" and then "now" and then "now." 
If practice could assume the qualities of vocation rather than ambition, life would be steeped in a teeming curiosity. My hours with my horn would not be a metaphor for a life well-lived; they would be a microcosm, a fractal that contains the entirety and yet is contained. And fractals juxtaposed with fractals, hours touching other hours, tesselate until all we perceive is this warm net of "vocational practice" that simplifies everything else we do.

Or so I think. When I was in school, the ideal of "practicing" was an athletic montage- now vs. then, how good I'm going to be in 3 months, how much ass I'm going to kick at this audition because of this time I'm depositing into my musical savings account. Now, the ideal is of "my practice" in the eye-rolling New Age-y Birkenstocks sense. How can I discover an hour in my life of relative quiet where my brain is alert, my inbox is triaged, and my lips sensate with the familiar mouthpiece not yet placed there?

"A calling is a conversation between our physical bodies, our work, our intellects and imaginations, and a new world that is itself the territory we seek."

Are track stars called to serve? Yes. They are called to run around a circle. They are called to glue all these different sensations together, not too much or it'll wrinkle, making that almost-embarrassing collage of empathy. And horn players? We are called to buzz. Called to buzz, to fill every nanosecond with "now" and "sing": sing now, now sing, now sing sing sing sing now. Called to urge the metronome digits higher, called to tame the shoulders/throat/hip flexors/ankles in the quest for a neutral inhale, as still as the crepuscular pond. Called to make music, fashion it with our mouths of all things. And who am I to judge that calling? Who am I to proclaim its worth? I just picked up the phone.