Instruments
This is Western Coffee—notes on building the creative body. Last time: UFOs. The whole series is here. Please share this email; you can sign up free below.
Not long ago I spent a weekend in what would have been the perfect Airbnb—a midcentury architect’s retreat in the woods of eastern Tennessee—except for a wanting electric stove. Dinner one night was a recipe I hadn’t tried before, in which you brown the skin of some chicken thighs and then use the same pot to construct its gin-based sauce. The stove played dead right until it was red hot; “simmer” was not in the vocabulary; the sauce was a soup. My Samsung range at home, by contrast, was on the cheap end of what I could find at Home Depot a few years ago, but its flame sits on a continuum. The cook controls the heat.
Chefs and athletes and musicians and other creative people tend to have an affinity for the right equipment. The legendary (and legendarily volatile) pianist Vladimir Horowitz traveled with his “baby,” according to a 1978 profile—“a gleaming Steinway concert grand that was a wedding present from the company in 1933.” (Horowitz was a detail person: He required that the scale and amenities of his home be replicated wherever he stayed, and a permanent “Horowitz screw” marked the position of his instrument at Carnegie Hall.)
I was thinking about all this in cycling class on Friday. One of the competitions involved generating your maximum power within a set cadence range—a test of tempo control. Turning the resistance knob to get the most wattage my legs could manage while sticking to 82 or 83 RPM was satisfying for the same reason that gradually shifting gears up a hill on your outdoor bike is, or sitting down to a newly regulated keyboard and playing Bach. Some instruments amplify your ability; others give you greater finesse within your natural range. Some facilitate your control so that you might refine it and make it durable; others challenge it so that you are prepared for the inevitable hiccups.
And to this last point, often the instrument you train on is not the one you can take onstage, as in my last triathlon: a borrowed bike in lieu of my faithful Cervélo. An ocean instead of a pool. Then the pivotal instrument is your mind, and the pivotal training is in not losing it.
Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram, or let’s Peloton together: @leggy_blond.