The Chasm of Classical Music

Before Garage Band, before karaoke, and before iTunes there was a thing called a "Working Musician."  Working Musicians did all the things a computer does for us today.  These were things of integrity.  Talent was required.  So was knowledge.  Being a working musician had it merits.  It provided a living.  Today working musicians are soldiers.  Soldiers.  To be a working musician you must either go through basic training or Officer's Training School.  Okay.  Perhaps that is comparable to a collegiate music degree.  Other working musicians are academicians.  To become an academician today a doctorate is required.  They hand these out  at a cost.  If you are passionate and have the money, it would seem you can get a doctorate.  I almost have a doctorate, but I find myself different than the doctors of music around me.  

Coming home.  The most brutal thing about "Coming Home" for me are the wet dreams.   They are surprising.  So are the nightmares.  The short stories and complete novels to which I am privy to remember from sleep are a welcome diversion from the brutal reality of music in Fayetteville.  This is not so for the established local musical community.  They seem hungry.  They seem aggressive.  They seem to thrive on the seeds of music dropped for them.  It is surprising, and I do not connect with any of it.  I remember Methodist University, when it was Methodist College.  I remember both its voice and keyboard professors.  I played with and learned from both of these individuals.  Like my father they were a musical spine of Fayetteville, North Carolina.  Today we have an "Arts Council," which is the envy of the state.  The introduction of every concert I attend in the -Ville consists of a devout invocation of our Arts Council.  Like the former professors of voice and keyboards at Methodist College, I knew the Arts Council.  I knew its history, and I knew its diversions.  Now we have a Botanical Garden.  A Botanical Garden is a private country club built in the name of botany, which sponsors musical academicians among others.  It's a clique.  The Arts Council of Fayetteville is the envy of the state because...... "Drum roll please?  Who is chopped?"  The Arts Council of Fayetteville is the envy of the state, because they are rich.  They are the people who built the Botanical Garden.  In their later years realizing you can't pull a U-Haul behind a hearse, affluent Fayettevillians decided to become patrons of the arts.  That included upgrading a second rate symphony orchestra to a position of personal demagoguery.  Like Tom Quaintance, the artistic director of the Cape Fear Regional Theater, artistic leaders in the city of Fayetteville really are not free to administer as they please.  There is this beast of our Arts Council to consider, and they have the money.  

Okay.  The Court of Esterhazy also had affluence.  They were patrons of music, and Papa Haydn had no trouble working for them.  I am not an opponent of working for the affluent.  What I am a staunch opponent of is the abstracting of art for the purposes of patronage.  I don't mean abstraction in terms of Pablo Picasso or the Abstract Expressionists.  This style of visual abstraction in art is important and vital to the evolution of mankind.  So is the Avant Garde in jazz music.  In ways they are the same.  I am a staunch opponent of the abstraction of honest expression and content of art into Musica Reservata.  Defined often in contradictory ways Musica Reservata can be considered music for the elite few.  Also it can be defined as music which acknowledges the public's opinion more than it does the authors intent.  This is what we have today, and it is alarming.  

Okay.  I almost have a doctorate in musical composition.  That means I must have an undergraduate degree of some sort.  Mine is in music education from UNC-Chapel Hill.  This institution until recently was a reputable purveyor of academic knowledge, until  athletic contributions became more important.  Graduating from UNC-Chapel was the single most difficult thing ever I have achieved.  It was that difficult.  While the education component of the music ed. degree was a bust, the remaining curriculum of music was intense and demanding.  Seventy percent of music majors dropped out in their first semester not being able to pass Music Theory 101.  Luckily I had been playing the piano for twelve years, and George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" was in my repertoire at the time.  I made it through Music Theory 101 and the rest.  I emerged an educated musician worthy of becoming a "Working Musician."  Many who pursue a doctorate degree choose to go  through the masters degree.  I did not.  I earned a Masters in Jazz and Commercial Music from USC-Columbia.  You may never have heard of this acronym, but you have heard of the Gamecocks.  This graduate program at USC was groundbreaking.  I wrote jingles, something that is not in fashion today.  I played commercial jobs on keyboards, I played jazz on the trumpet, and I learned how to arrange for various ensembles.  I wrote music including that for my first recording featuring Chris Potter, "Crystal Raindrops."  My doctoral studies began at OSU where my USC advisor John Emche matriculated.  He turned out well, so I figured Columbus would be a fruitful musical city.  I was right.  I began at OSU writing familiar jazz-oriented work.  After a few years I was told by my advisor, Dr. Thomas H. Wells, (also the advisor for Dr. Keith Dippre, Chairman of the Department of Music at Methodist University) that I would have to follow the same compositional path as the rest of the doctoral students.  This meant putting my jazz sensibilities on hold and opening an avenue to the Second Viennese School.  Needless to say years later I know  I am talking about.  I write serious piano music influenced by these gentlemen, and Aaron Copland, Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, Charles Ives.  These piano composition bridge the contemporary gap between America's jazz heritage and European classical music.  They are groundbreaking, and upon discovery I also will be affluent.  This is a bit difficult to stomach in the presence of the Fayetteville Arts Council.  One would think they are the only court in the book.  That is the way it seems around here.  As I attend their concerts and support the local musicians, a wider chasm is created between my musical sensibilities and theirs.  
Music to them it seems is some magical, mystical, empowering thing selfishly that seeks to exclude those not in their group.  Is it possible that those other than doctors can understand and appreciate music?  It is the first ever I have heard of it, and to my knowledge that point of view only exists in Fayettenam.  If one did examine  education in Cumberland County, it would be obvious why this chasm exists.  It should not.  Music is given of God, and it is natural in every human being.  Both Suzuki and Kodaly understand this and seek to connect with this musical inclination early in the years of child development.  It should be.  Classical music, including Beethoven, is not mysticism.  One only has to understand it and Heir Beethoven to reap its rewards.  Shouting, "Bravo" at the conclusion of a mediocre performance of his Triple Concerto shows only your ass.   This is an example of Musica Reservata, music reserved for the few who seek to exclude themselves from those around them.  "The Chasm of Classical Music," America's newest great divide of hypocrisy, is evil and unmerited.  Like suffrage, slavery, and civil liberty music never was intended to oppress or exclude the poor, and yet it does in Fayetteville.  The petulant Greek gods and goddesses who have nothing better to do with their money entertain themselves with an art form meant for better.  

The Fallen Hero of Cruise Ship Music

Never I thought much about it when I rang up Carnival and asked them for a piano job.  Never I thought much about it until I locked in to play my first production show on the Destiny.  It was "Nightclub Express," and after sitting down behind the keyboard in the orchestra Pit I was instructed to place an ear bud in my ear.  "We are playing along with tracks, and this will help you hear the click track."  I began to think about the piano job then.  Over the course of the next twelve years, I thought about this piano job frequently.  I had to, because it was the only way of ensuring my job security.  It became the most difficult and challenging musical endeavor of my career.  I got better at it, mostly from thinking about it a lot.  As it turns out my doctoral composition studies are what ensured my job security.  Preparing music for performance was second nature to me now, and that craft was required almost one hundred percent of the time as a cruise ship pianist.  The other requirements were valid still (playing in various styles, playing in all twelve keys, improvisation, and accompaniment), but fixing the piano music was paramount for my success.  You see the odds were loaded against me.  For some reason the piano music on ships is a metaphor for the pop music of today.  It has no clue.  It bears no resemblance to prepared classical or commercial music of a professional nature.  There was no Berkeley course in music notation.  (which is straight forward and authoritative)  The piano music was an after thought of a cruise ship arranger whose paramount responsibility was writing and recording these tracks with which we were required to play along.  So be it.  With determination, diligence, and talent (of which the least was required) I managed to keep the job never getting fired.  The closest I got to getting fired was getting into an argument with a mess attendant at five thirty a.m. over my tank top styled shirt.  She spoke only broken Spanglish, and it never dawned on my my bare arm pits were a threat to her job security.  Funny how the cruise ship business works.  I grew as a musician and a politician working as a cruise ship pianist.  I figured out which fights to champion, and which fights to ignore.  I was humiliated, berated, and against discriminated, but over time and with an ever increasing salary I made peace with the cruise ship piano gig.  As it turns out returning home was more of the challenge, and I have not been as successful.  I will be so cliche to say, "You can't go home."  What the fuck does this mean?  I didn't know, but I now know this.  Of course I can go home.  That a simple matter of logistics is.  The reason why YOU can't go home, or supposedly no one can go home is......   Drum roll please.  Who is chopped?   The reason why we can't go home, is because the place we grew up never changes.  The people who were there when you were there are the same.  They are the same.  Their lives are the same, as when you were there.  They did not grow.  They did not go off to school.  They did not marry.  They are exactly the same as when you were there AS A CHILD.  Asking these people to reacquaint themselves with you as an adult....   Well.  You get the picture.  Above all your parents and family fall into this category.  They do not grow.  Amazingly they expect you to stay just the same as you always have been, a child, needing to be disciplined.  In my lifetime I have not experienced a vigil of change.  I have lived in four different cities, and I have visited ports all over the globe.  This is one perk of working on a cruise ship as a pianist.  You have enough off time to see the places your visit, rather than slaving in a restaurant eighteen hours a day.  These are not the things about which I want to write.  Instead I want to document and understand the challenges of returning HOME.  "Isn't there some place you can do your music?"  "There is a music minister job open at St. Turd Knocks church."  "The academic music community here is very small-minded."  "We have the most envied Arts Council in the state."  (probably the country)  "Can't you play the pipe organ?"  "What are you doing these days?"  When I answer I am cooking for my mother and tending to our yard, the response overwhelmingly is sentimental.  "We think that is wonderful!"  Perhaps for my mother this is wonderful.  She does not reiterate it, unless I instigate a quick review of most of my accomplishments on the home front.  I have renovated our yard.  (which is much larger that most of the yards in our neighborhood)  I transformed our front yard from a desolate, moss-laden, dirt pool into a picturesque grass covered meadow.  There are two live oak trees, incidentally which are much more alive because of my maintenance.  Their roots have been covered with rich soil, and they have been mulched.  Once the downspout run-off was diverted with a simple plastic pipe and scenic drainage ditch of river pebbles, the centipede sod took well to the newly fertilized dirt.  A call to the city's arborists created a speckled spectrum of sunlight throughout the day to nurture the new grass.  I was successful, at least for now.  Again, this is not about what I want to write.  "This is my son."  I am fifty-two years old, soon to be fifty-three in a few days, and my daily conversation to people other than my mother consists of, "Hello. How are you?" ("Won't you please bring me a latte, Taylor the Latte Boy?"  [sic]  I have one friend.  I have one sister and one brother-in-law.  I see the one friend more than I see the sister and brother-in-law, because they are overwhelmed with their working lives.  I am not employed in a secure wage-earning job like a cruise ship pianist.  Each day I must bear the guilt of knowing I am not working doing what I know best.  I know quite a few musical things, including emulating Miles Davis, composing like Aaron Copland, and arranging music like Quincy Jones.  "Isn't there somewhere where you can do your music?"  This question while simple severs my last sane nerve.  I have done well balancing the charade of "coming home."  My intellect as a doctoral level composer is what has allowed me to survive in this position.  I cannot say I have thrived, but comparatively speaking to the other members of St. John's Episcopal Church, I am a saint.  "We think that is wonderful...."  (cooking for my mother, especially she she stumbled over our downspout extension and broke her wrist.)  I embraced the yard, because it was familiar to me.  I had worked in the yard as a youth, and it gave me peace.  At times it still does, but not with newly encroaching fall.  Now instead of nurturing new growth, I am observing the loss of yet another bevy of things in my life.  My musical life is gone, and now so will by my newly planted sod.  If I think enough, I can ascertain hopefully the sod will return in the Spring newly energized by the coming warm weather.  Perhaps this experience will not be like the other losses I continue to amass in my small life.  It seems life is a matter of gaining and losing.  After three years home I am tired of having to greet strangers as my mother's son.  I long for conversation that is familiar, challenging, and erotic.  I have no women friends, and thus I have no conversation with anyone that strengthens my skills as a mate.  (They are solid)  I live an existence devoid of any human interaction common to most people, and I survive.  I survive because I can remember it.  

Sunny Point Shenanigans

I can't say if I would be proud being American.  I'm American, but I'm not.  I'm not a terrorist.  I'm not an extremist.  I'm not a fatalist. I shouldn't be monitored by the Militia Watchdog.  I am just a typical American disillusioned with our country.  There is not much of which to be proud.  The medical establishment has become corrupt, and a majority of it abuses the poor.  Congress is a joke as is the 2016 Presidential Campaign.  No one running has the capability to lead America out of her problems.  America has become a facade.  America has become a masquerade.  America is a joke.  The joke has been created by computers.  Reality has been sequestered for years, and I am doubtful she ever will return.  The graven images the country seems to worship all are manifestations of foreign interests.  If we had remained true to American ideals, still we would be America and American.  These ideals have been replaced with cheap knock offs like sugar on top of shit.  "The Voice."  -a joke.  "The Rest of Them." -more jokes.  Foreign interests are laughing as they run America.  Americans are suffering.  Is a coup in order?  Will America have another revolution like the Russians or the French?  Are we an Animal Farm?  The answer must be, "Yes," but we as a people are in no way prepared for such a task.  There are guns, but there is no vision.  There is no realization that the majority of Americans simply are slaves of the rich.  We are afraid for our lives and our security.  While Sunny Point feeds the rich and bleeds North Carolina dry, Appalachians sit around mindlessly strumming on our banjos.  Twenty million tons of supplies headed for the wars in the Middle East, wars that have nothing to do with the American people and their well being?  It's a joke.  We are a joke.  The Presidential Campaign is a joke.  Obama is not joke, but he is leaving.  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her political influence to hawk her husband's speaking engagements.  They grew rich, and she did not do her job.  Consequently she is not qualified to lead this country.  If she had honed her wares of diplomacy as did Dame Medeleine Albright while acting as America's Secretary of State, then possibly there may exist pebble of qualification.  To elect Hillary president based upon her job performance as America's Secretary of State?  All we can say as a country is the snipe hunt of Benghazi.  Benghazi.  Benghazi, and the Clinton's have grown wealthy.  This does not the mark of a great president make.  She is flip like Oprah.  Would Oprah make a good president?  She would make a much better president than Hillary Clinton, because her record of professional achievement has been in the public eye.  Where is Oprah, and why is she not running for president?  It is too great a task or retool America.  I have given up.  While I am not a terrorist, an extremist, or a militia member, I cannot help but re-enter my childhood.  I watched Sunrise theater, and now I remember how our lives were lived on the edge of our own demise.  There is no humanity.  There is no security.  We are forced to live lives of extremism, because also like reality, God has been sequestered.  

Medical Contractors

You don't blog for a while, and your bacon ends up looking like a giant vagina.  Hillary Clinton is on the Benghazi hit list.  ISIS  mercilessly slaughters a hundred protestors in Turkey.  The Prez is eying his executive power in lieu of much needed  but unattainable gun legislation.  We should follow Australia's model.  It is time for the senseless massacres to stop.  Since we as a nation are too timid to acknowledge the true assailants to our mental health, we must do something.  It is ironic a nation that championed an "American Dream" has become a nation of fascist corporate CEO's.  I think they should all burn in hell, as they will.  The war train steams on underground at Fort Bragg, but it no longer is powered by steam.  Instead deadly homosexual rays are killing us with radiation.  I can't see.  I can't hear.  I can't feel.  My eyesight is manipulated on a daily basis by un unknown agitator.  The small frequency of visible light in our electromagnetic spectrum is being modulated from down under.  Not from Aussie-land but from?  The Navy's low frequency radio communications?  I watch as the colors in the day change in front of my eyes as this modulation distorts reality.  Too much electricity in the air, especially of the low frequency, eventually will kill the planet.  We are well on our way.  The arctic caps are melting.  We are cooking the earth.  We are cooking our on brains into senseless genocide.  Never before has America had a problem with citizens shooting themselves with no motive.  Senseless hypothetical mass murder.  Even there is no enemy.  "I don't have a girlfriend!  Blame the community college students!"  These people are watching a movie.  "Kill them!"  She is talking on television and is too happy.  "Kill her!"  We live in unprecedented times.  Chaos has ensued.  Anarchy has begun, and yet still we as a nation are too timid to recognize and acknowledge our true assailants.  We would rather treat their victims.