Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Composing, playing new music and faith.

As my journey and struggle with focal dystonia continues, I’ve found it is much like life. When times are really hard, the universe seems to shit on you. Upon trying to clean yourself, it kicks you in the head once more for good measure. I’ve been around long enough to know this also a sign of good things to come if you can stay positive and focused. Not that it makes it any better in the moment.

I played my first live show in 7 months last month. Though not completely without dystonic symptoms, I was able to quickly adjust and free my mind/body in the moment, so I could implement alternative techniques I worked on, tension free. This allowed me to go back and successfully use these most dystonic-tending techniques later with success in the show. Just as important, I was not devastated about my performance like the last 2 years.  The weeks leading up to this were my most successful rehab-wise.

Aside from my continued Skype sessions with Farias, there were two factors that helped facilitate this. The fact that I could start practicing for a show again created momentum. This created a good environment for creativity again, which led to a focus on composing and playing new music. It cannot be emphasized enough how important it is to either create new music, or if that is not your thing, choose new music to work on for both your dystonic and non-dystonic movement(I know for some it is all dystonic). The brain has locked into these bad memories of dysfunctional movement in the pieces we played leading up to our demise. It’s not that we can’t ever play them again; we just need to take the focus away from them. It’s easy to get stuck playing a 10-20 second section of music that you don’t do well. Start playing through whole pieces. New music helps bring back the pure joy that got us into our art in the first place.

After this show I was mentally exhausted for a couple days, but continued my rehab practice. After this was the worst 3 days in months. Again it felt like I had slid backwards significantly. The difference was this time I knew what to expect. It didn’t make it easier, but I put faith in my ability to bounce back. After 3 days things got a bit better. I still felt at 50% capacity compared to the weeks before the show. Everything was an effort, nails scratching out crappy tone again, and the most dystonic areas of my playing were not doing well and I lost most of my speed.


This whole dystonia thing is a real bitch, even when you are getting better. You can only overcome the physical if you can get over the psychological. Focusing all my effort to creating new music and playing super soft and slow again brought about a complete change within days this week. I feel very much on track once again and I’m composing my best music to date. If you are recovering and struggling with the bad days that are inevitable; focus on all new music, and have faith in your ability to heal yourself. After all, you are the only one that can do it. Abrazos- E