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.