Musical Musings.
Title from Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' song "Same Love"
As a grad student in education, I often feel displaced. I do not have a connection with the arts in my current role which feels strange, after years and hours of being connected. During my first semester, I naively thought that I wanted to be 100% invested in being a student in a field other than music. Higher Education and Student Affairs? Sign me up. All in.
Yet, I realize that during my graduate school search, I found myself mindlessly clicking links on each school’s
ensemble page. I guess even a year ago, contrary to what I said aloud, I wasn’t ready to be “finished” being a musician.
I never intended to so hastily put my oboe on a shelf in the closet, but in the end, when I moved into my new apartment, that’s exactly what I did. I thought about playing it. When the heat kicked on in the fall, I dutifully refilled the little humidifier in its case. Sometimes I even imagined it was lonely, but I consoled myself thinking “at least it’s got an English horn to be lonely with”…it sounds like I jest, but it is actually quite true.
Then, in late December, a gig came up with a jumbled quartet of student affairs musicians (oboe, bassoon, horn and cello). As I expected, playing was two things. The first: a feeling so familiar that it was comforting. The second, the familiarity of frustration: the frustration of not being able to produce the sound I knew I had once been able to, the frustration of spending money on reed supplies, the frustration of not having made a reed in months…and the list, of course, is endless.
In the past few years, I struggled to make music something that I did for just me. I was caught up in the competitiveness of college ensembles and the expectations that came along with them. I so desperately wanted music to feel rewarding…and when it finally did, in the late fall and spring of my senior year, I was beginning to make plans to move away from it.
When I picked up my instrument again, in my carpeted bedroom, on a reed that was probably too old to have been put back in its case to begin with (presumably from May), none of that mattered. I sounded horrible.
So. What. The familiarity of it all encouraged me to keep practicing.
When I was sixteen, music had rescued me from an injury that changed my high school sports career, and I found that I actually had a certain proclivity towards it. All those years of private lessons where I never practiced seriously had been making a difference. It was the first time I felt like I was choosing something that had more meaning than scoring above a 143 in a diving meet, or winning another cheerleading jump contest (which I did do both, and proudly). It had a different type of meaning.
In college, I fought with music for all it was worth. The academic study was intriguing, and it helped that I grasped onto concepts fairly quickly. Playing my instrument was another story. I made myself crazy, and I plodded along. The moments where I knew I loved being a musician were limited to a handful of moments in concerts or elation in a practice room when something finally fell into place. I suspect this is totally normal in a developing musician's life, yet it was so draining.
When my grandmother passed away this January, for the first time in my adult life, I actually knew why I had chosen to be a musician. It began when I chose to play at her funeral. I picked something out that sounded like her, though I did not know it at the time. I was worried about picking something “funeral appropriate”. I consulted with my former oboe professor/mentor, and he recommended the piece that I’d already pulled out of my pile of music the night before. (The relief and affirmation from that conversation is probably another conversation all on it’s own about my, I don’t know, growth into a competent musician).
Before the funeral, the Rabbi asked me what I wanted him to say since he would be introducing me. I didn’t really know. I only articulated I wanted to be the last person to add anything and then I mumbled something like “this is just my way of saying something.”
And it was.
I missed one note in the entire thing, which is probably the least amount of mistakes I’ve made in any musical performance in the past 10 years (granted, it was probably only a two minute long piece, if that). But still, let’s not lose track of the significance. I played well because I was the master of those moments, and I knew it.
I know it is an age-old cliché, but music speaks. In my college admissions essay, I wrote about music rescuing me from my ACL injury. I wrote “for a brief moment, I let the music surround me. It is almost as if it is something tangible, almost as if I could reach out and touch the sound – its timbre, its breath, and its vigor. For there is magic and adrenaline when the conductor lifts his baton…I believe in music. I believe in creating music and being a part of music. I believe that music is not just a lifestyle, but also a way of life…” I lost track of that conviction somewhere in the past four years, and rediscovered it, fleetingly, during the English horn solo in Dvorak 9 and an oboe studio recital last spring.
Recently, in class we were discussing a study that had been done on music majors in terms of identity and “fit” within larger student bodies, and something came up about the “language” that musicians speak. My class joked, but it made sense to me. It means something when you
feel like a Chopin Nocturne, like the first movement of Sibelius’ Second Symphony, or the bassoon solo in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
It is little things, like why I feel in love with Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, a musician/rapper combo from Seattle. His music feels like a mix between spoken word poetry and ballad songs. Ballad songs, which we spent a few weeks picking apart in a History of American Music class—not coincidentally one of my favorite music classes to date (and where the previous Johnson & Larson article from the entry “Musical Metaphor” came from, as well). But more than that, his music has an authenticity to it. Maybe he’s a great performer. Maybe he’s an activist. It doesn’t matter, though, because it is all part of the picture of being an artist.
If you're not familiar with Macklemore, he's known in the mainstream now for his song
Thrift Shop. I also suggest
Same Love (highly recommended: talk about having a magical way with words) or
My Oh My, or the entire album, The Heist).
It is why I took the time to read all of the open letters from the San Francisco Symphony musicians who are on strike. It is why
Nicole Cash’s single paragraph about belonging is not just about fiscal transparency and a better contract, and why
Nadia Tichman’s paragraph about the work never stopping and the process of landing a job in a major orchestra are not just about the unfortunate situation of the strike.
More info, if interested: http://www.musiciansofthesanfranciscosymphony.org/
It is about a livelihood, and expression. I think that is what the arts are supposed to be about. We choose to be artists or to relate to artists because something in us resonates with the practice or the performance, the personality or the person, the message or the thought-process.
I’ve always said that life is about sharing our stories. We are all we have. It is also about giving ourselves away. We are all we have to give. I suppose I give, in part, through music. I’ve missed it. I’d like to get into the habit of giving back.
