Professor Emeriti

I'm not sure why I am getting angry.  I don't get angry very often.  I got angry yesterday, and I know why.  I have become a laid back person.  It is easier by far.  The American South, with its newly discovered Confederacy Predicament, still in the year 2015 demands your submission.  The neighborhood in which I live demands my submission frequently.  This week was one requiring my submission.  Emotionally and psychologically what I am doing is not supported.  I feel antagonized.  I have discovered that my musical interests wholly are not supported.  This notion is reinforced each and every time I post a music video of my own creation.  I am using the term "music video" loosely.  What I really mean is a poorly shot video of me playing musical instruments.  It varies from  Hammond organ, to jazz trumpet, to contemporarily classical piano.  When I write about my other interests including cooking and landscaping, people are interested and intrigued.  I guess they can connect.  When I post music videos the ensuing animosity is palpable.  I will admit I do not make preparations.  Having been a professional musician a majority of my life, always I am prepared to perform music.  It is why you prepare.  Years of music study and practice can yield such a thing.  I know and can perform music well enough to be employable when there is opportunity.  Those opportunities are scarce where I am living.  Sour grapes. My interests are not supported, because there are few that are doing what I am doing.  People can't relate.  I have a flurry of Cowtown friends who do relate.  Most of them are professional musicians.  I follow their activities, because I have worked with most of them when I lived in Columbus.  I feel a tangible connection with each and every "Friend" I have on Facebook who are musicians.  Conversely I have one musician friend in Fayetteville.  Instead what I feel is cold and blatant animosity.  I feel this because Fayetteville is a small clique of old money socialites.  I have not made any attempt to make my musical presence known.  There is no point, because I have not made my personal presence known.  If I did, it would be of no consequence, because Fayetteville is a small clique of old money socialites.  When I moved back home to help my mother with our house, repeatedly she would tell me, "You can't start at the top."  Start at the top?  I have been playing piano professionally on ships since 2002.  By far it is the most challenging music job ever I have had.  My collegiate years of study in composition are what allowed me to excel at this job.  The piano music is so poorly arranged and copied, that one needs compositional skills to figure out what to play.  I excel at this.  Previously I completed all course work necessary for the completion of a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Music Composition at The Ohio State University.  While this never was "the top," I was not reliant upon society to dictate my musical success.  I was creative, prosperous, successful, and scholarly, all because this is what I desired.  I created my own musical reality, and one can do this in an academic environment.  It is its purpose.  Academia is a nurturing hypothetical place in which to prepare for real life.  Many are privileged enough to stay there the entirety of their careers.  It is a prized and coveted job being a college teacher.  Many are not good teachers at all.  Then there is this thing called the "Professor Emeritus."  Recently when I out of curiosity looked at the music faculty roster at The University of South Carolina, the professors with whom I interacted while working on a Masters Degree in Jazz and Commercial music now were labeled "Professor Emeritus."  They are pretty old, old enough to have retired from an active teaching load, but they still retained their professorly-like status.  Each name clearly still was on the faculty roster, although no longer were they employed to teach a full course load.  It must be like heaven.  Teaching college really is like heaven, but Professor Emeritus?  Holy @#$% Batman!  Thus begins my nonexistent loathing of the inequality of academia, and the inequality of the American South.  With the emerging presidential race and and the colorful hopeful Republican candidates, and the newly emerging Confederate Predicament as a result of racial unrest in America, clearly it has revealed itself to me that a small clique of old money socialites control the South.  I do not fit in, because I am an artist.  No one seems to get what I do, and if they did it would not be politically correct to support it.  I have not made my presence known.  In other words I have not "come out."  I have not put on my ball gown and paraded in front of other cliquish old money socialites in attempt to sell myself.  I couldn't give a shit.  I pursue music, because it is the vocation I chose.  I trained.  I studied.  I produce, and why in Donald Trump's hair would my status in any way be governed by a small-minded clique of old school money?  It is.  Fully I believe that these people may be capable of understanding art, but that ability by the nature of the American South is subordinate to society.  Art exists only because of society.  Excuse me?  In the height of the Classical Era the nobility was prudent enough to recognize, understand, and appreciate art.  Hence Nikolaus l, Prince Esterhazy employed Papa Haydn.  Fayetteville has Dr. Menno Pennink.  I have on a very small scale pondered the idea of making my musical presence known to the retired Dr. Pennink.  I am a worthy jazz pianist, and I remember they mentioned an interest in jazz music at a Capitol Room concert.  What's the point?  I have no interest in society.  Always since college I have fancied gaining a professorship in a New England music school donning a Harris Tweed jacket and smoking a pipe.  Still the image is appealing to me, but you must make yourself known.  America is a very small place.  It is evidenced by the flounders who have risen from the bottom supporting a Confederate flag.  It is a predicament, one's national heritage versus civil equality.