January 22, 2008

• whenever i listen to wind ensemble music, i’m catapulted back to high school.  it was the last time i seriously played wind-centric music, and there is a lot about it i miss.  for whatever reason, good professional wind ensembles don’t really exist.  nor do strong community ones.  the community wind ensemble is home to the lowest common denominator:  anyone whose aunt bought them a clarinet at a yard sale and gave it to them even though they’ve never played, or anyone who played saxophone in high school 30 years ago but not since.  that’s the crowd of players you’re dealing with.  and as for the pros, i don’t know if it’s a matter of there not being enough good repertoire, or there not being good repertorie because there are no pros, or any repertorie there is being 20th century and therefore unable to attract the dinosaur crowds that attend most classical performances, or some combination.  but so it is. 

  there are good pieces though.  persichetti!  giannini!  holst!  but i forget about them, until one day one pops up in my playlist and i’m transported back in time.

  there’s something about wind music that reaches a different part of my emotional spectrum that orchestral stuff.  it’s this sense of naive yearning.  there’s sadness, but it’s a knowing sadness.  knowing but naive?  yes.  conscious that it’s sheltered, but embracing the shelter.  hopeful even though on some level it knows that hope is pointless.   but it hopes not all hope is. 

  maybe it’s not the music itself so much as what it brings back in me.  i connect it inextricably to a much earlier time in my life, and maybe that’s why it brings back those feelings of so long ago, but through the lens of today.  i look back on myself then as naive, even though i was blissfully unaware at the time.  but there’s a contentment in knowing that i had to grow through that, that it’s shaped who i am and made me a better person, that there are parts of me from that time i will never outgrow — remnants of an earlier age — even though it might be better if i did.

  for better or worse, i live each day trying to prove i’m a worthwhile person.  fearing that i’m not and that i’ll be uncovered!  i didn’t know that’s what i was doing then.  i know it’s what i’m doing now.  and i can’t stop — the feelings of inadequacy will always be with me.  i can say to myself, “this is irrational;” i can try to talk myself out of it.  but it will never work completely — some doubt will still remain and an iota of doubt poisons the well. 

  we all make choices and i’m not complaining about mine.  but it will be interesting if one day, in many years, i look back on myself now and say “wow, i was naive.”  even as i know that i had to go through it.

  • 12:27 am
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