What's Worse, the Confederate Flag or Southern Weddings?

I don't like Charleston very much.  A friend of mine from my Columbia days, a bass player, is playing jazz piano there five nights  a week.  Now is he on the faculty at the College of Charleston teaching jazz.  I guess I should be impressed by that, but contrarily it is surreal.  Pianist John Emche once was the Coordinator of Jazz Studies at USC in Columbia.  I was his Graduate Teaching Associate for two years.  The friend of mine from my Columbia days playing jazz piano five nights a week in Charleston became Dr. Emche's GTA when I graduated.  He is a bass player.  It seems there is more work for pianists.  I am a pianist, but I don't identify with it.  Several jazz pianists have died in recent years.  Mark Flugge, of Columbus, Ohio, took his own life after years of frustration dealing with a cochlear tumor.  A man I did not know, Tommy Gill, was also a jazz pianist in Charleston.  He died last year at the age of 49.  Dr. John Emche died of a brain tumor shortly after I graduated from USC with a Masters degree in jazz and commercial music.  For good reason I have blocked this period of my history from my memory.  I choose not to remember Columbia, because it brings me pain.  There are several reasons why it brings me pain, but I have moved on.  The pain upon acknowledgment still is there, so I must write about it.  It involves  neither the friend of mine playing jazz piano five nights a week in Charleston, nor Dr. Emche.  In a fringe kind of way it does involve Tommy Gill, although I did not know him.  Upon having encountered his untimely death and thus his existence, I was forced to acknowledge my own presence in the Columbia jazz scene in the late l980's.  I choose not to remember it.  I choose not to remember it, because.... Drum roll please!  I choose not to remember it, because ultimately in Columbia I became a failure.  At least that still is how it seems.  It is how I feel, because no one associated with my presence there, except for one extremely good jazz scholar friend, knows me now.  As I peer back in time at my existence then, still it seeks to define me.  That is because those memories still live in someone's mind.  She, like me, chooses not to remember that period of time.  The hazard of neither of us allowing those memories is they stay the same.  I have moved on.  That small window of time no longer defines me in any way.  I have moved on.  I had to move on.  My failure may or may not have been at my behest.  I was disappointed, and as a young, immature, motivated man I took it badly.  The bait was laid, I nibbled on the bait, and then the trap fell shut.  I was on the outside.  The life I had in Columbia for over three years, a privileged life of musical success, was taken from me.  I did not get the college teaching job I had been filling in for as an adjunct faculty member.  Instead it was given to an Eastman graduate with L.A. studio experience.  It was the wrong choice.  It is easy to know you are qualified for a position when you experienced it both as a student and a teacher.  I gave my soul to my academic discipline of teaching jazz and commercial music, and I was an excellent educator.  A Music Education degree from UNC-Chapel Hill assured that.  What I wasn't was a music star.  Never did I want to be such a thing.  I knew it was not realistic.  While jazz musicians then did merit both respect and acclaim, I had no intention of moving to New York to walk the streets in search of playing work.  Instead I recorded some of my original fusion music using the then fifteen-year-old jazz saxophonist Chris Potter.  For him the rest is history.  For me it ruined my life.  Suddenly this small amount of new found fame became my goal, and not by my choice.  Performing at Storyville in New Orleans was an unpleasant trip.  I was a college professor chaperoning a band.  Winning was pleasant as was having my picture taken with Doc Severenson.  That night a nightmare began.  My new role was to be music star, and I didn't want it.  Unknowingly I adopted it in an attempt to win back my relationship, which ended badly.  My clout, my talent, and my intellect all were compromised for a shallow attempt to be a music star.  I failed at this task.  I did not fail being an influential jazz educator.  I did not fail as a jazz instrumentalist.  I failed, because the opportunities that were given to me to allow me to succeed at which I was good were taken away.  One was a job teaching jazz and commercial music at the college level.  The others were opportunities to perform.   Suddenly I was in the same melting pot of wanna be musicians as everyone else.  This humble pie was forced down my throat by a vindictive, angry, and disappointed ex.  It was convenient.  Out I went, and in she came.  The tables turned, the power exchanged, and I fell from grace like a dead horse.  The interesting thing is I do not define myself in any way with this period of time.  For others it remains the same.  Reading Tommy Gill's obituary reminded me that once I held the position of young southern jazz enthusiast.  I was replaced, so I moved on.  When a certain set of circumstances attempt to define you by denying you opportunity, you go elsewhere.  I never wanted to be a music star.  I feigned it, because I was hurt and single.  Mistakenly I thought that by becoming successful in this new arena I would reclaim my glory as a jazz educator.  It was a solecism, and it ruined my life.  Suddenly after six years of collegiate study I began to think my musical value was determined by society.  Society had the right to judge my work.  This society took musical refuge in beach music being played at their wedding receptions.  I moved on.  I went to OSU, and again I studied composition at the doctoral level.  It was the best thing I ever did.  I clung to my old ideals for a while, until I learned to do something more.  I played in a soul/rock band.  I wrote music for the orchestra.  Later I played in a Hip/Hop band, and it was the most enjoyable two years of my life.  With a fair amount of tenacity, I abandoned my jazz teaching ideals and expanded my musical horizon.  I learned to improvise on the trumpet.  I learned to produce music in my home studio.  Eventually I was able to dissect my musical soul from my short-lived jazz fame.  Yes, I produced what probably was Chris Potter's first studio effort, but jazz is dead in America.  It seems jazz abandoned me, so as a musical visionary I moved on.  I circumnavigated the shallow musical sentiments of the South's society, and became enlightened.  No one deserves to suffer forever for being successful.