Hierarchy of weeds

Being at this damn place for a week and not writing anything leaves a lot to be said, but maybe I can just distill out the good parts. Last week was busy... I spent many hours each day observing and taking part in a whole range of different activities. I got my fill of rehearsals and coachings. I saw a lot of young people playing new music and old men playing old music. As I continue to use these opportunities to find answers and inspiration, I suppose it's worth noting the few things that got to me the most. First, I got to sit in on a few rehearsals with a pianist named Anton Kuerti. At age 71 he is doing the final laps of a long successful career in music. He is one of those few lucky people who has managed to maintain a deep connection and involvement with music while continuously concertizing, recording, and teaching since age 11. As I sat next to him in rehearsal and turned his pages, I had a glimpse into the mind of someone who understands and communicates at least the classical part of the language of music with extraordinary depth and care. Looking at a sheet of music for him must be like looking at page of text written in a language whose content, etymology, dialects, and origin languages you all know intimately. It is a fluency quite beyond my comprehension. If I was one less prone to laziness and indifference it might've been one of those life-changing moments. Even still, it was incredibly powerful.

Second, and nicely correlated, I experienced an unexpectedly moving experience of my own while listening to a rehearsal of Varese's Ionisation. I had been following along with the score in hand when seemingly out of nowhere I felt during the first few opening phrases a meaningful communication, one coherent thought followed by a contrasting one, which somehow touched me. Perhaps after having sat in on a lot of percussion rehearsals by that point, my ears were beginning to get in touch with the language of percussion music. However, I never expected the depth with which this piece, written for almost completely unpitched percussion instruments, suddenly spoke to me. It made me think, no one has to tell you how to understand a language as long as you decide to listen to it as much and as hard as you can. It also made me think how awesome it must be for conductors and musicians to continually discover new meaning in anything they study. I think it also helped that Ionisation is apparently one of the masterworks of the percussion repertoire. That of course begs the question: what is a "masterwork," because I think I started to get to the answer right then and there.

Thus I think all of this sitting and listening and observing has given me several important insights. The amount that I have immersed myself in everything musical and artistic that has been going on here at Banff for the past few weeks, the fact that I have already been at least nominally involved in music for the past 18 years, and the fact that I still find it very exciting and moving indicates to me that if I were to choose a language that I had to speak for the rest of my life it would be music. Everyone who pursues music must already intuitively know this about themselves, but I, as I am wont to do, had to think my way to this conclusion. Furthermore, it now seems clear that much of my lack of true passion for music is due to my lack of fluency. The fact that I went through music school without ever really listening to much other music than what I was working on and what I had to learn for classes might be understandable but is pretty tragic. Newly armed, however, with the confidence that it is very unlikely I will ever get bored by music, the plan seems to me to be that in addition to healing my body and coming to accept and appreciate who I am, I should listen as hard as I can to as much music as possible. It is fortunate that since the confidence I have in my beliefs is always based on so-called evidence, Banff has furnished me plenty of reasons to feel that I am on the right track. Whatever that means. Lord knows none of this answers the question of how I'm going to make a living. But self-actualization always comes before finding a job right?