Losing Wisdom, Losing Patience

Completed on Jul. 13

1.1: It had to happen. There was no pain from having all four of my wisdom teeth, but I got two of them removed to prevent them from future troubles. One from the right side, and another from the left side—both the lower ones. 

1.2: I got the right one removed first. Both lower teeth were laying horizontally, so it wasn’t an easy job. A week later, I got the left one removed. The right one only gave me some minor pain for a couple of days. The left one, however, is still giving me a great deal of pain. 

2.1: After not practicing the flute for about a month, I decided to start practicing it again. First I got my flutes repaired. Shortly after the second tooth removal, I went to the repairshop to pick up my flutes. I tried them out. I felt some teeth missing. 

2.2: The pain did not go away, only multiplied especially after I played. Playing the flute was upsetting the wounds. 

3.1: The pain is definitely something I want to get rid of. However, it was one of the very first times that I understood how the inner-mouth position works while playing the flute. The amount of pain tells me how much I am moving my jaw, and how much tension I am adding. 

3.2: Not just the pain itself, I am practicing everything slowly from the beginning in order to retrieve where I left off. So in a way I am re-learning everything in both physically and emotionally painful ways. 

4.1: Because of the pain, I can’t really practice all day. It only has to be a couple of hours ... no more than three ... Cramming everything into that little amount of hours makes me impatient throughout the practice session. Plus, retrieving takes more time than I expected. 

4.2: Patience is virtue. Patience is genius. Here’s what I have been practicing:

  • Long tone excercise with a metronome and a tuner

  • Scales with different articulations (diaphram, single/double/tripple tongue, reverse)

  • Arpeggios with different articulations

  • Moto perpetual by Paganini with diaphram