currently...

(Picture: Ponselle with Puccini 3 months before he died)

Is all learning a matter of diligence? I am wondering what purpose the creative mind has in learning. Or is the creative mind a separate entity? I am beginning piano lessons and there is so much i want to get my hands on and play! I want to be able to play my own accompaniment. Alas, songs are too difficult for me at the moment as my hands and brain move very slowly across the music. How does one advance their sight reading skills and a faster rate?

...still reading the Rosa Ponselle biography and loving it! I am learning a lot about Caruso and the Met as well as Vaudeville and the history between American theater music and the Opera Italian immigrants brought to the USA. It is worth mentioning that Puccini upon hearing Caruso's voice for the first time exclaimed, "Who sent you? God?!" Additionally, Ponselle never took a voice lesson in her life. Whoa. Her method of learning was complete immersion in the music. She was a skilled piano player and an excellent musician/score reader.... She would wake up at odd intervals during the night and imagine herself in the world of the opera she was preparing for...How the character would move; how the character would naturally respond to the things around her...

Music theory camp is going really well. My teacher is an angel. Every class, a light bulb goes off and I begin to put all the separate pieces together to form the entity that is music...as ambiguous as it is......

confession: I just spent 140$ on music books at amazon.com.... (for 11 books! if my thrift gene my have itself heard..)