a reasonable life

While washing dishes the other day, my mind drifted over to a memory of an orchestra tour I was on, very long ago. I think this was in '81. It was with the LSU Orchestra, and I took all of my per diem money before we even left and spent it on a copy of Godel Escher Bach. I had very little to no food on the tour. Remembering this I thought, "What an idiot I was! What a fool." I starved on the tour, sitting on a bus hungry, even though I had all these great ideas to read about.

But on reflection, I wouldn't change what I did if I could. I have to live as reasonably as I can at my current stage of life, managing my time and other resources carefully, but I've never thought much of it. As my friend Greg Barnett said, if you do everything reasonably in a life spent pursuing music, all you'll ever become is a reasonably good musician. I've always wanted to be unreasonably good, so a reasonable life was out for me. I developed a certain mad, off-the-wall way of living, and wanted to be possessed by musical inspiration - I wanted my personality to be made complete by a total union of my soul with music, with all the tools and talents at my command. Unreasonable? Yes. Impossible? Well, actually, yes.

Impossible for a young man soon to be saddled with the necessity to work little low-wage jobs to pay the rent and bills. Impossible to realize the ambition of composing, orchestrating, synthesizing, improvising, concertizing. I kept practicing with what little time I had, and I slowly made some progress, but it was maddeningly difficult to work a full-time job and keep up whatever instrumental talent I could muster. It became even more difficult, as I became a husband and then a father.

Many more practical musicians limit their ambitions to a realizable goal, which is fine, but, sometimes, some of these more practical people, well, they smell funny. There's a psychic odor coming off of some of them, and I don't know how else to describe it. Maybe they circumscribed themselves by making their dream too small. Maybe, by taking on a regimen designed to give them mastery, they somehow extinguished inspiration. Maybe they fit themselves too well into the academic environment that paid their bills. Perhaps, by finding a musical job that paid the bills, they grew into those expectations and found themselves unable to rise above their circumstances.

I think I'm describing some of the academic musicians in this exploration of what it is I mean. I genuinely admire many self-employed professional musicians.

I've rarely been unhappy about not being a pro. I've never fallen out of love with music, and inspiration is available to me nearly every day. I've begun improvising at the keyboard, and a whole new world is opening up for me. Simple, beautiful music is coming out of my improv sessions, something that had always escaped me in the past.

So back to that young man on the tour bus. I wouldn't change a thing if I could.

More about unreasonable living, and mistakes made, later. Oh, and huge striving.