I’ve re-engineered my website. If you’ve ever visited before, I hope you like the changes. Perhaps re-engineering is an overstatement; I installed a different template from Squarespace and have spent the better part of a day figuring out how to customize the design.
I did this for a very important reason: because I had the day off of work, and after practing my viola part for an upcoming ESO concert full of Harry Potter music, and biking on the machine downstairs for a bit, I felt like it.
A lot has happened - is happening - with me and the family these days, so it’s hard to know or decide where to start when staring at a blank document to fill knowing firstly that it’s entirely my choice even to include a blog within my website and secondly that whatever I write will just … be there for the world to see, and to judge.
There’s a lot of judgment going around - in the world, big and small, not necessarily or only in my own particular neighborhood - and I guess there always was and there always will be, as we individually attempt to make the most out of our lives in service of the common good, as I believe it should ultimately be, and as we look around while doing so we can’t help but notice differences in the choices other people make in contrast with our own. Did I do the right thing? Am I good at this? Should I have gone there? Should I have said that? Why’d they do that? What’s their problem? Am I annoying them? Is it something else? Can I help make it better? Will I only make things worse? Should I mind my own business? Is it worth it? What’s the right call?
And then there’s the litany of sub-choices, that inevitably someone somewhere else is figuring out how to do better, faster, stronger, smarter than you, and it’s a horrible rabbit hole of paranoia and self-destructive obsession and concern to even begin to worry about that parallel edition in this or another universe. In truth, those others have no bearing on my daily experience. At least they shouldn’t have.
But that’s the point: it’s up to me. Make the most of my moment, my moments, choose what feels right, what feels positive, helpful, impactful, useful, beneficial. Let me be different from the other, find another path, another method, another color, another shape; otherwise what’s my excuse for being? Let’s add color to the world: find a crack in the surface and fill it with gold.
Mitt Romney voted to convict. I believe him when he describes how he actually struggled with it. He knew he’d be attacked for it, but he also knows there are more important things in life than political loyalty. His faith and self-respect were strong enough to make a difference to him, for him. He’s an inspiration, religious or not. He’s a whistleblower: he’s seen something that just wasn’t ok, and he called foul.
In an orchestra, autocratic policies don’t ruin the planet, but morale can be shaken when artistic or administrative weaknesses outweigh the institution's collective strengths. When focus fails and careless exhaustion takes over, and there’s no right time to address it because we’ve just got to get through the rest of the program, our souls are chipped a little. Like a couple of my teeth - dammit, how did that happen? I can't even remember what happened, when it happened, but the impact will be with me forever.
We from so many different backgrounds, having taken so many different paths to get here where now we stand (and sit!) together, with such different perspectives and life experience(s) accumulated along the way, can on our best days feed each other with novel experimentation and open-minded efforts at working with and for each other. On our worst, we’re 56 iso-booths of misery facing the same direction but traveling a la carte, mutually self-obsessed, unaware of the potential energy inherent in our collective presence. When it’s dark, all it takes is a look, a smile, a nod, a wink, a readjustment of posture or a crane of the neck, to bring a little bright to the table, to the stage. Remember this! He says with an eyebrow. Come with me! She says with the tilt of her head.
And then it works.
When we’re in it together, we’re a team of teams, a complicated, flexible machinery crafting, shaping, hesitating, driving. My life in a string quartet was formative. I learned to listen, I listened to learn. We talked, we argued, we posited, we supposed. We argued some more, and we convinced, and we rejected. We played our hearts out, and we demanded that of each other. It was all on us, at a microscopic level - no conductor to blame, or to rely on. No section to hide within, or to commiserate with when that one lick just wouldn’t stick.
As a sub in an orchestra, you’re desperate to make a good showing, to fit in, to not fuck it up. As a new hire, pretty much the same, except you have in your recent memory the experience of playing a good audition, good enough that at least a dozen or so of your new colleagues liked you enough to say ‘join us!’ As the tenure review deadline approaches, self-doubt however unreasonable threatens to overwhelm everything. When the affirmative announcement’s made, you’re thrilled it’s finally settled, feigning eternal confidence in the “inevitable” outcome as you receive the warm congratulations.
And then the real work begins. And that’s where I’m at now. So we’re here now, it’s forever. Now that they’re committed to me, what am I committing to them? What can I contribute, daily, monthly, seasonally, to keep making it all better than before, and to keep my spirit thriving?