Full Circle

I had a revelation today, and it was depressing.  You can't live your life as a victim, even if you have been one.  You experience the fall, the pain, and you learn to move on.  While the experience gives you soul, I have found that it is better to move on.  I used my fall as inspiration for a lot of music.  I used those feelings, and then I decided to move on.  Recently I read in a Facebook post that narcissists are victims.  You can't be productive singing the blues for your wounds.  Therefore I teeter back and forth.  When I need emotional resolve and I feel bad, then I remember those experiences.  Then I move on.  When your environment continues to paint you with your falls, it is time to move on.  I am reluctant to write about the South at the moment, because of the controversy with the Confederate flag.  My revelation was that no matter how much I turn a blind eye to my environment and continue to brave a new path of productivity, that environment still is there.  I have ignored it.  I felt twenty-five years is enough time for an environment to change.  I would have hoped that would have meant growth, expansion, and enlightenment.  You hope that things are not the same as they were when you were in high school, but they are.  I was lucky enough to move on from high school.  First it was Chapel Hill, and after four years that was enough.  Then it was Columbia, and after five years it was too much.  I overstayed my visit.  (There is a big story here, but I am bypassing it.)  Then it was Columbus, Ohio.  I was lucky enough to keep challenging myself with new places and experiences, and it paid off.  Never have I been bored or depressed.  Back in high school I would be depressed.  Simply it is because some places will not allow your to grow.  The people that control them will not allow you to be more than they can allow, because they are narrow.  Imagine, a place that can not allow enlightenment.  Instead is fights voraciously for things to remain exactly the same.  That is the American South.  I have experienced bliss in my lifetime, but always it ends.  I can understand trying to make a pleasant situation stay that way, but life on earth evolves.  Also it devolves.  If you are privileged enough to own the rose-colored glasses, maybe this is you.  Maybe if you have fallen, it is the one thing that insists you move on.  You fell for a reason, because there was no place left to go.  I have been told this a few times.  The late Johnny Helms once told me that I did not deserve to find anything better than what they had in Columbia.  He had been to New York, and he had chosen to remain in Columbia so he could eat steak.  It beat starving for a meal in New York searching for jazz fame.  In essence he asked me why I felt I deserved anything more than what I had, and his opinion was I did not.  I should settle for Columbia.  Columbia disintegrated.  The Coordinator of Jazz Studies at USC died of a brain tumor.  I was fortunate because of this to fill in for him for one year as an adjunct faculty member there.  They hired the wrong person, and I told them.  They called it sour grapes, because I wanted the permanent job.  Who wouldn't want a college-level teaching job?  Twenty-five years later in Columbia it has devolved.  It has devolved because the group of professors who created the commercial music program at USC have retired.  Now there is one, and his name is Bert Ligon.  Columbus on the other hand remains steadfast.  Ohio State is a large burgeoning university.  It was when I was there, and it is now.  It has not devolved to my knowledge.  They have made callus and unthoughtful business decisions, but the music remains the same.  It is vital.  I learned more about music in Columbus than anywhere in my whole life.  I didn't learn much in Columbia.  Instead I taught.  With each move I found opportunity and exploited it.  With each move I grasped the opportunities and made them work.  I used them.  I appreciated them.  I made the best of them.  Columbus allowed this.  Columbia did for a while, until I sang, "Sour grapes."  Then I was quelled.  I was quelled romantically and professionally. I did not take it personally, and I moved on.  The South is not a forgiving place.  Her people are proud, selfish, and oppressive.  That is because they want things to remain the same.  The status quo is good enough the way it is, because they are in power.  There is not enough room for another step, so you must fall.  I will not fall again.  I am smart enough to discard my vanity, my ambitions, and my love life and move forward.  Still they are trying to take them away.