*performing* music, yes. but the idea that the best way to become good at your instrument is to lock yourself in a practice room alone for hours on end is quite anti-social

but that is a skill that often needs to be taught, in some cases quite explicitly, and in my experience it's often treated as being something that people pick up by watching others do it rather than something to be taught in its own right

yeah, absolutely. i think the key here is in the *independent* interpretation of a score—sometimes what can look like someone engaging with the written material is simply them parroting what they've heard from teachers, & when asked why they've made a particular choice, they're unable to answer

it's Erika Ishii. and i personally don't get why people think their performance is bad.

of course, there's an impossibly massive amount of things that could be studied & discussed, & education systems must always condense, for the sake of logistics if nothing else. i don't want to blame any individual or any one institution for trying to exist within an inhospitable environment

as for the theoretical, there are performance majors who just want to play the parts & not have to consider the contexts in which those exist—& those people are, in my opinion, limited in the scope of their artistry because of that

that is to say, classical music performance education absolutely does not emphasize ANYWHERE NEAR enough the fact that music is a social activity first & foremost

this despite the seemingly widespread understanding that what makes a performance valuable is its uniqueness & the individual's interpretations of the score. but nooo we can't deviate from the acceptable norm (even though doing so & finding failure points is most of what pushes musical innovation)

Our ability to freely use public space rescinded, our bathroom use policed and criminalized, our literal freedom of expression declared legally obscene and our very depiction labeled pornography. Fired en masse from the military. Parents who love us declared collaborators and abusers.

Our healthcare infrastructure has been gutted, criminalized, and threatened. Our scientists have been labeled criminals, our scientific literature destroyed. Medications many need to live banned. Our very physiology is officially decreed "mutilated", legally lesser, or declared not to even exist.

I read an article only last week where something was completely deleted from the archive because somebody complained...

DO NOT assume this is a safe place to store any information

admittedly, the biggest way i'm able to hold onto that hope right now is by focusing on my own life and the things that i can change within it, and less on the bigger political things. that is selfish of me, and that's okay. it's okay if you need to be selfish, too. do what you need to survive this.