Right now, I am in a period of transition in my life. Generally, I don’t like that. Generally, I like to control my environment. Some might say over control it. Transitions create a challenge to that control or the illusion of that control.
When I was in music school as an undergraduate, I thought I was pretty smart. In fact, I was told I was smart many times in my life so I believed it. Why wouldn’t I? I also found that if you stick to the plan that someone lays out, most of life’s events unfold as expected. I preferred that to certain things I experienced in my home life where unexpected things happened. It could be hard to predict.
(I am not a “program guy.” That will mean something to some people. I do find aspects of the program to be useful. And that means avoiding bringing other people into your nightmare.
However, if “the program with the secret meetings” means nothing to you, then you will think I’m being vague. I am. You will have to piece it together. But the goal is to avoid blaming other people and also to not “out” people for perceived transgressions. I’m just telling my side so that vagueness is to protect the possibility that I only have one side of the story.)
When I was 19 years old, I was a sophomore at U. Mass-Lowell (then called U. Lowell), in the music school, which was a separate college. The music college was more or less modeled after a conservatory. You studied Solfege, Harmony, Piano, and your instrument. You played in ensembles and you practiced. If you were smart and driven, you practiced a lot. The school primarily produced music teachers as opposed to orchestra players. The schools in Boston were full of people with those aspirations. But we had plenty of serious people trying to do serious things in music too.
At the same time you were doing this, you also were taking liberal arts curriculum. You had psych 101, college writing, etc. In the end, you would have the highest amount of required credit hours because of the ensembles and instrument load, which were extra compared to a normal liberal arts student. That meant you spent a fair amount of time in Durgin Hall with your peers.
During my sophomore year, I had a “come to Jesus” moment when I figured out that there was minimum amount of credits I could take. Why was I taking more than the minimum? I’m not a sucker so I signed up for the minimum. I was still not thinking on my own. I was relying on the idea that if there is a minimum, then there must be a plan. Stick to the plan.
What I didn’t figure out was that, at the minimum, you only stayed in school. You got your financial aid; you stayed on the meal plan; you lived in the dorms. What you don’t do is graduate in 4 years.
Looking back, that’s embarrassing for a “smart” kid. At some point, I did get the clue and increased my credit hours. At the same time, I was realizing that even being smart wasn’t going to fix this problem. I needed to be creative too. I had friends around me who never did things “inside the box” and I really admired them for that. That was completely new to me. I began to completely break down the fact that I always colored inside the lines and began to color outside the lines in some good ways and some bad ways.
I still hadn’t engaged why they did it. They did it because they wanted something. I wasn’t used to thinking that way. What do I want? I had no idea. I almost never expressed myself in that way or any other way.
You might think being a musician was about expressing yourself. Mostly, it isn’t. It is more about mastery of skills that help other people with their expression. You don’t improvise in the orchestra. You play what is written. Interpret it, yes, but the bigger goal is for the ensemble to express something even bigger.
Even in Jazz, which began to take a more dominant place in my musical life, I developed the skills to be a solid member of the rhythm section. That helped me to be in places where I wanted to be, where I got some praise for those skills. I liked that.
Looking back, the only places I really expressed myself were in poetry and song writing. I didn’t expose either of those to large audiences because that is risky too.
During my junior year, I figured some things out. I wanted to finish school so I had to catch up somehow for the courses that I hadn’t taken. And because I didn’t really know where I was going with all this, I took a semester off. I worked for my uncle, with my cousin Jim. I learned a lot there.
I went up to the school once a week to play a group that I thought was cool. I couch-surfed at my friends, mostly Mark, Tom, Paul and Don’s place. They were so cool about it. We didn’t even call it couch surfing but that is what it was. I also took French Conversation and Philosophy at Worcester State College to fix my transcript. That was an adventure because I hadn’t taken anything but French 1 before. Thanks to my grandmother I did ok. She would help me and answer questions and at least try to understand me when I tried to speak French.
It was tough, though. Mostly it was tough because it was all on me to figure out and I wasn’t used to that. That’s how it feels now.
