Where You're At

I’m old enough now to have figured some things out, and I can see younger people shooting themselves in the foot from time to time. If I indirectly, politely, tactfully suggest a probably more fruitful strategy, they have a reason why it’s not going to work, or why they shouldn’t do it. I say, fine, and continue to be friends and not bug them. But I also silently resolve to keep track and see where they’re at in ten or twenty years, and whether the goals they say they’re pursuing by the strategies they’re employing are getting achieved.

In one case, a friend who wants to be a composer insists on composing for ensembles that don’t exist and on composing music that is far too difficult (she says) for the players she might have access to. These are unique groups: vibraharp, cello, and two saxophones; solo harp [not an ensemble, but still she has to a) find a player b) consult with a harpist (she doesn’t know any) who can tell her whether the music she’s writing is playable].

My advice, if I were asked, and I haven’t been, so I keep to myself, would be to write for groups that exist and that she has access to, get her composing chops going that way, and, when she has some clout as a composer and musicians want to play her work, bring out the more exotic creations. At this point, she can’t even organize a rehearsal at the union because she has one piece for the vibes, saxes, and cello group—how is she going to entice professional musicians to come down for a half hour and play through one piece? She has also enrolled in a graduate composition program but is already planning to transfer out because there is so much music history involved, and she wants training in composition, not music history. I asked her if she’d found a program elsewhere that suits her specific need, and she said, not so far—at least, not in the area, and she doesn’t want to move. She wants to be able to teach in the future, but I doubt that teaching and getting a degree without much academic substance are compatible. I doubt that she can find any credible institution to get a master’s degree where she takes nearly all composition courses. Most teaching positions that I’m aware of call for a utility person who can teach not only composition but music history, musicianship, basic harmony and theory, etc. Very few institutions can afford someone who does nothing but compose, and they can get the big names. But, she is determined. In ten or twenty years, we’ll know whether she was right.

With another friend, those twenty years—and more—have passed, and the results seem to be in. Twenty years ago, she talked a lot about books she was going to publish, articles she was going to write. Her recurrent theme was, “I’m really happy about getting back to writing.” Yet, whenever I took stock of how she occupied her time, it seemed to be with politicking around the school where she was teaching, or palling with friends, or planning this and that gardening project, etc., etc.. To this day (25 years later) I’m not aware of anything she has published. At one time or another, she thought about getting into a teaching position that would be somewhat more lucrative, but it never happened, and she remains at the institution where I first met and knew her for a very, very bright, very funny, intellectual omnivore.

And there’s myself, of course: when I got out of graduate school, I was going to be a critic/scholar. However, I got bored with that pretty quickly. Then I was going to be a novelist. I took writing courses, went to workshops, wrote five or six unpublishable books, tried to find an agent, and finally decided that I wasn’t making any money, and (most important) I wasn’t enjoying the act of writing any more. In fact, a friend sent one of my books to his agent in New York. The agent wrote back that I should be writing more like the author of the Black Dahlia. I had read several of his books, but they were so horrifically and appallingly violent that I couldn’t see trying to come up with incidents and descriptions like that myself. I would have become a joyless monster.

So, it was back to the default value: music. I don’t make any money at that, but I enjoy it, and my charts are getting some minor reputation (perhaps for their weirdness, perhaps for some originality) among the musicians I have access to. It’s forty years since grad school, which was a different world.

Perhaps the lesson here, applying it to my examples is, plans change, goals evolve, people drift toward their joys one way or another. I much prefer that way of talking about it to the rather cold formulation that one sinks to one’s level and stops there. (Incidentally, that rather supercilious and pretentious way of describing others came from an unknown dance teacher at an unknown community music school. She would have been her own best example, but I don’t think she was referring to herself.)