Take It To The Limit

So put me on a highway and show me a sign

And take it to the limit one more time.

---The Eagles

When I was in high school I was a confirmed math nerd.  Due to a series of strange circumstances that resulted in my taking Geometry and Algebra 2 simultaneously, I found myself as a senior having already completed a full year of Calculus by the end of 11^th grade.  Figuring that not having a math class during senior year would reflect badly on college applications, a small group of us (David Bennett, Susan Ayoung-chee, and AJ Toussaint) found a teacher who would gladly push us a bit further.  Thus was our school’s first Calculus 2 class.  It was not a very formal gathering, but we had fun schmoozing among our own species and communicating in our secret nerd language.

At the same time, the Eagles (greatest band of all time) released their fourth album, One of These Nights.  One of the singles from this album, released in the fall of 1975, was the song “Take It To The Limit.”  In some strange convergence of events, this became the theme song for our calculus class (if you don’t get the joke, I can’t explain it here).   Forget that this song was really about lost love—which also might have been apropos—to us it was an anthem that inspired us to pursue our nerdly destinies.  Even in college, I used to play this song before exams as a wakeup call.  I was called out a couple of times for absentmindedly humming the theme as I furiously filled blue books with pages and pages of compares and contrasts.

That “Take It To The Limit” would end up as my theme song added a prescient sort of karma to my life.  Around the same time, my pursuit of the piano as a professional aspiration approached its peak.  My piano teacher was demanding that Liszt’s original Spanish Rhapsody would be the culmination of my work with her.  (He wrote two Spanish Rhapsodies:  a backbreaking version for solo piano, and a scaled-back version using the same melodies for piano and orchestra.)  She had earmarked this piece for me years earlier, determined that it would be my final bow under her tutelage.  At the same time, I was also doing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, a sublime masterpiece that still, to this day, will stop me in my tracks and bring me to tears.

The Beethoven was my warm blanket.  Written in E-flat major, it fit the hand and filled the heart.  It was also scored reasonably for the youth symphonies with which I appeared each year.  The Liszt, however, was something altogether unknown to me.  I had played many Liszt pieces over the years successfully, but I had difficulty getting my head—and my hands—around this one.  It bothered me that I had never heard it performed on the radio; nor could I find a record of it anywhere.  Then it hit me: this piece was unplayable.  No one played it!

The composer Franz Liszt was said to have had enormous hands and super-human technique.  In his own time, he was rumored to have dallied with the devil—such was the magnitude of his ability.  He wrote behemoth concert pieces for himself to show off his virtuosity because no other composer’s music did justice to his skill.  In many cases, he recycled other composer’s melodies or folk songs, focusing his creativity on how to push the modern piano, and pianist, to their respective limits.

I, on the other hand, was a seventeen year old girl with hands that barely spanned an octave.  I am also short, which gives me little mechanical advantage over a standard keyboard.  There are passages in this piece that involve rapid repetitive motions with the hands stretched in octaves.  Without getting too technical, I needed to achieve both a hammer-like up and down movement while also manifesting a smooth left-to-right momentum.  I could easily master the notes; it was the performance quality needed for these passages that plagued me.

An interesting thing that happens among teachers, coaches, and even parents, is that kids sometimes become the ammunition in battles among adults.  So it was that my teacher conscripted me as her entry in a special gala concert featuring students from among the top piano teachers in South Florida.  The Spanish Rhapsody took on a different level of importance to her.  It was no longer about my own aspirations as a student or a pianist; this was to be her high-water mark.  I was now the “substance” of a personal pissing competition between her and her peer piano teachers.

Saddled with this responsibility and a rapidly approaching concert date, I spent almost every waking hour working a few key octave passages over and over and over.  I practiced in syncopated rhythms.  I practiced with my eyes closed.  I practiced slow, soft, fast, loud. I woke up one morning to find my hands throbbing as never before.  They felt swollen and stiff, but mostly they just ached—even when I wasn’t moving them.  I was unable to play at all.  I had reached my physical limit.

The doctor’s diagnosis back then was tendonitis.  Today, they would likely choose a more au currant label, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, or de Quervain’s tenosynovitis.  In any case, the result was the same.  Do not play for at least two weeks.  Ice frequently.  With a concert scheduled in just a month, I was under stress like never before.

I would perform the Spanish Rhapsody three times that season.  The first was the planned gala concert, which was a success in all the ways my teacher had intended. The last was at my teacher’s spring recital—my farewell performance before heading to college.  On that night, I received my first sustained, full-house standing ovation.  But it was a bittersweet performance.  Even as I felt the pride in achieving what had once seemed an impossible goal, I knew inside that I had reached my limit.  I would never be a pianist because I do not possess the physical qualities necessary to juggle a large repertoire and to perform constantly. 

I have spent a lifetime battling limits—both artificial and real.  I overcame my parents’ narrow views to live a life of my own design.  I broke the glass ceiling in a company that looked down upon women in positions of power and influence.  I returned to the piano after a twenty year absence to compete in amateur competitions, even having the opportunity to resurrect the Spanish Rhapsody after reaching the final round of the Van Cliburn IPCOA.  It was a less than optimal performance, but only two years after surgery for a large cyst in my wrist, it was more triumphant for me than others may realize.  In subsequent years, I used a personal trainer to build the strength necessary for me to endure a Liszt Transcendental Etude (#10 in f-minor)—one of my personal bucket-list pieces. 

Now in my fifties, the idea of limits becomes a harsh reality.  Plagued by arthritis, I can no longer escape my physical limits by applying mind over matter.  I am planning one more assault on the amateur piano circuit, but I cannot say for certain whether I will be successful in achieving that goal.  On the other hand, persistence of will gives birth to a creative process.  I find that I am reaching forward in other ways, such as through my daily writings and a variety of other creative and intellectual pursuits.  Sometimes a limit is just an indication that it is time to follow a different sign on the highway.

Tomorrow's blog:  Teenage Mutant Ninjas