My three year old son refuses to go to bed under a blanket. It all seems well and good until the middle of the night when he's in there freezing. Or he was tonight anyway, fall is starting to set in. I looked in on him tonight, grabbed the blanket he refuses to use when he's awake, and covered him with it. Then he did the most amazing thing, he smiled. In his sleep, he smiled, then snuggled the blanket. That was my moment today. Not every day has one, in fact most don't. Musicians know what I'm talking about. I had my first moment when I was 16.
I was playing Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet at an arts camp in Oklahoma. This was an intense arts camp, we put on four concerts in two weeks. Everybody there was an incredible musician, and the conductors where among the best there were. I remember one, Akiro Endo. He had the most amazing memory I've ever seen. He never once used a score, having memorized it. He could tell the brass to start at measure 247 to rehearse a section that hadn't gone well. The first words he ever said to me were my name. He had memorized the seating chart and knew who I was having never spoken to me before. He wasn't the conductor for the Prokofiev, honestly I don't remember who was, but it's not important. At the end of that performance was my moment. It's hard to explain if you've never had one, but imagine an orgasm without sex, but it involves your entire body and your complete consciousness. You're never quite the same afterwards. I remember being just a little disoriented at the end of the piece, not entirely sure where I was and how I got there.
If you don't play an instrument I highly recommend learning to play something. Anything. You may never have a moment, but then again you might. Like with anything else, some people can and some can't. Some can't and don't know it, but you'll never know if you don't try.
On a completely unrelated topic I've been getting the urge to write again. I used to write all the time when I was a kid. Much like George McFly I never really shared very many of my stories, but the few I did were well received... generally. I remember writing a story in the fifth grade that my teachers like so much they wanted to enter it into some district competition, but needed me to tone down the gore just a bit. I was an odd child. If a child wrote a story like that today they'd be more likely to be institutionalized than praised. That's why we'll probably never see another Edgar Allan Poe. We're all so afraid of everything these days.
I abandoned the rock opera I started last year when the writing muse left me. Probably just as well, it would have gotten me institutionalized as well. I'm thinking of trying something new, publishing the story as I write it via a blog. Create another blog and use it to publish the story. Instant feedback, that is, assuming anybody actually reads it. The idea is to face my fear of others actually reading my work. Most music I've written as well as most stories I've written have never been performed or read by anybody but me. The few times they have been they've always gone over well. You'd think that would help me get over my fear, but it must run pretty deep. Honestly the only reason I can write here is the fact that I'm 90% sure nobody reads it but me, but being on the Internet there's always the chance somebody might. It's a step in the right direction.
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