A breakthrough

 Last night I decided to just work on octave exercises on the headjoint but with a difference: On Reddit someone had asked about embouchure and someone experienced had said that beginners will tend to either have a "loose, unfocused" embouchure that results in an airy sound, or they'll tighten up which *can* work, but while it results in a more focused sound, the sound is thin and incapable of much nuance, and besides it's tiring. 

I think I had been falling into the latter bad habit, a carryover from trumpet. With everything about the flute, you want to be relaxed. So I decided I'd do octave exercises but keeping as completely relaxed as I could, and pay attention to tone. It turned out to be really easy to do good ones for quite a while. Once I hit the half-hour mark it got harder, and I think eventually I just got tired. 

Even with a delicate task, like say balancing something, eventually you get tired and start to "muscle" it and that's where it's time to call it a day. But you can build up the time you can do it while being relaxed, and that's my aim. 

I'd been on considering scrapping octave exercises, too, because they'd been becoming very difficult with my tensing up. I'd started to think that maybe I'll just work on learning pieces and let my tone take care of itself somehow. 

But I really don't want to train-in bad habits. A good fundamental embouchure means a good fundamental tone. And I saw how a good fundamental tone helped my trumpet playing. I was making shit money because I sounded kind of like shit. Then I started sounding better and people started responding a lot more generously. 

As I've said more than once, people often have no clue *what* you're playing, but they'll tip if they like *how* you're playing it. 

Also, I've got a lot of lost time to make up for and I need to get a bit more obsessed with the flute. James Galway had the advantage of not having much else to do, and in his neighborhood, when you were a kid, you kind of had to have some "trademark" thing that you did. He describes this in his first autobiography. For instance, one kid had, as his "thing", that he beat you up. He was good at fighting. That kid probably went on to be a policeman, join the Army, or be a bouncer for bars, all of which are very good career choices now just as they were in 1950s Belfast. Little Jimmy's thing was he played the flute. 

My parents and especially my mom tried to make me have the "thing" of being an artist. Every time I turned around I was being given paper and pens, or those awful "oil pastels" or a paint-by-number or anything. This, in the end, didn't work because I was pushed so hard. Galway's parents were much more clever about it. His dad played the flute, and would make it a challenge for the kids to get to "have a go" and even used to take his flute apart and hide the pieces, and when little Jimmy found 'em, let him only get away with a bit of playing before he was busted. 

At the same time when you've got a father who's out of work a lot and playing Mozart all the time, it's hard not to get interested, and by the age of 10 little Jimmy was entering and winning competitions. He was playing every change he got, plus doing little stream-of-air exercises at the bus stop and such things. You have to get a little bit obsessed. 

I got going for downtown and first thing dropped off a book and 10 lbs of basmati rice in 1-lb bags, in the Japantown little free library. Then I went over to Whole Foods for dried coconut and olive tapenade. It was pretty busy for a Sunday and I was thinking, What a good day for busking. 

I went over to Dai Thanh for the one "Chinese donut" they had left, and ate that over at the park. Then I went to Walmart and shopped with my little list. I had $22 in bills and just a bit over $3 in change and it came to $22 even. 

I wandered back downtown, and snooped around the festival that was being held in the park there. It puzzled me. It was not a music festival; too quiet. Too big for a "health fair" which, sadly, don't seem to be a thing any more. I asked a security guy and he said it was "Pride" and I said that's amazing, I didn't know they held them in this city and I was not joking. 10 years here and this is the first sign I'd seen of one. 

I checked the other two little free libraries on the way home and got a very beat-up copy of "You Can't Go Home Again" by Thomas Wolfe, which I patched up a bit with tape when I got home.