When I was fourteen, I had some fairly serious thoughts about playing clarinet professionally. I read all my father's old music history books (he has a degree in musicology). I listened to hours of classical music on the radio every day. I practiced with some real discipline. And that particular summer, when my father suggested that I go to music camp, I said sure why not?
Man did I ride it high that summer at camp! I was a year younger than the others, so a bit of a wunderkind reputation stuck to me. I was top dog clarinetist in the band. I asked questions in music theory that hinted at some basic knowledge of harmony, which also caused a bit of a stir. Most astonishingly of all, a flutist (really cute) took to waiting outside my practice room door for me, listening. She would wait till I was done, and when I came out, she'd talk to me. Honestly I was so flummoxed with my good luck there, that I squandered it by telling her the fib that I already had a girlfriend back home. At the end of the two weeks, when my father came to pick me up and asked me what I had learned, I was exhilarated. I was also a bit puffed up. But I had plenty to report, and I'm sure that in general he was pleased.
A year went by. I had earned a scholarship for a second round at the camp, and so I went again. Needless to say, the reprise was an unmitigated disaster. Nothing, nothing, nothing was the same. No wunderkind reputation. No cute flutist. No opportunities for showing my blinding erudition in the science of harmony (I didn't feel like paying attention in class). Heck, I didn't even make first chair in the band! So, on the final day of camp, after the final concert, when my father picked me up to take me home in the car, what did I have to report?
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing?!” he asked. “Two weeks at music camp and you learned nothing?”
I should have heard it in his voice right then and there. The consternation. The surprise. It was like that moment in King Lear, when Lear asks Cordelia to amend her answer about how much she loves him: “Nothing will come of nothing” he says. Though of course my situation was hardly so innocent as Cordelia's. Which was also why, unlike Cordelia, I could not be silent, and instead let loose like an armory on fire with a long inventory of complaints. The dorms were unbearably hot. The auditions were rigged. My roommate was a percussionist. No one was friendly to me. The classes were too basic. The food was rot. And there was not enough Mozart.
We were not out of town yet, and my father actually pulled over and stopped the car. Even with the scholarship, he said, my family had paid good money to help me learn something that month. And good people at the camp had taken the time to teach me. What was my problem? So I wasn't first chair in the clarinet section? What difference should that have have made? And so what about any of the rest of my complaints? None of them need to have prevented me from deepening my acquaintance with the classical tradition. My laziness and refusal to learn had been the response of a spoiled child, not that of a thoughtful committed musician.
“Did you even try to enjoy yourself?” he demanded, finally. “Did you even try to learn?”
So here it is the end of the year 2014, and once again most of us find ourselves looking back and wondering where all the time went. What we did with it. Whether we spent it wisely. And as usual for myself, being the imperfect person I am, I can think of plenty of choices I made over the past year that were questionable. Choices comparable to the choices I made that second summer at music camp—choices to sulk and to retire into myself, and to withhold my passion and intelligence from the proper spheres of their application. Times when, instead of just getting to work, I just complained. Times when I allowed myself to despair. Times when I just applied irony to every situation, as if irony were ever truly constructive!
Then I hear my father's words: “Did you ever even try to enjoy yourself? Did you ever even try to learn?” and I have to say no and repent of my mistakes there and say to myself "Well, I hope I can do better this next year."
On the other hand I can also think of times when I did okay. Times when instead of despairing, I just got down to work. Times when I gamely took my chances, despite doubts, because I judged the risk was worth it. Times when I just swallowed my pride and let someone's purposeful injury to me just be, by saying “I am not my ego; my ego is not me.” Times when, in spite of bad news coming in from all corners of the world, I managed to focus on what I could do in local time and space to make it just a little better: maybe by weeding the garden. Or sitting down and making a little music with a friend. Or just finding something to laugh at...
Times in other words, when I think I really did manage to enjoy myself and to learn a little more about the beautiful slippery mystery that is my life. And hey guess what? Those are the moments and experiences that I am proudest of, looking back, and the ones I hope to manage to make happen just a little more often in the coming year. And by the way, I don't expect rapid improvement in these departments. It's hard figuring out how to make enjoyment and learning happen. They don't just happen by themselves. You have to work at them. You have to give up some of your pride.
Best wishes to all of you, my readers, in the year to come! You honor me with the gift of your time. Your attention to my work is truly one of the great satisfactions of my life!
HB
(Next Post January 1st)
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