In Grade 12, my English teacher made us memorize the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet, which was a perfectly normal assignment. On the test, we had to write out the soliloquy. Perfectly reasonable, right? Except that he was also marking us on whether we had memorized the exact punctuation! This was really surprising, since he also taught Drama, so I figured he would appreciate that the punctuation is not that relevant. As long as you know the words and understand their meaning and emotional arc, it doesn't matter if there's a period or a comma or a semi-colon or a colon or a dash between "To be or not to be" and "that is the question".
I stopped music when I came to the realization that I was never expressing myself artistically or creatively through that medium. I know other people do, but it doesn't work that way for me. When I worked on music - and I did have to practice and work extremely hard just to be competent - it was like memorizing the punctuation in Shakespeare. The more I worked the more I knew about music, the more familiar I was with the mechanics of the piece, the better I could play the piece, the more it became something my fingers could do automatically without involving my brain, but it was never artistic or creative. It never had soul, just like memorizing the punctuation in Shakespeare isn't going to give your performance soul.
Now I'm quite good at learning new things. I can pick up a book and learn fingerings and/or embouchure, then pick up an instrument and practice relentlessly, and with hard work I will eventually be able to play all the notes as written. But that doesn't make me a musician any more than a voice synthesizer reciting Shakespeare is an actor. I can learn knowledge and technical skills, but I can't fake having soul. I had to leave the church for that reason, and I also had to stop being a musician for that reason.
This always reminds me of this commercial. She wanted to be a gymnast, she was too tall, so she ended up being a pole vaulter. So impossible is nothing? No...being a gymnast was impossible because she was too tall. You can't set out to do one thing, fail, end up doing a completely different thing, and declare success on that basis. I can't go around saying "I always wanted to be a musician but I don't have the soul for it, so I ended up being a translator. See, you can do anything you put your mind to!" Not that people should be castigated when their original plans don't work out so they switch directions to something more suitable, but you can't use that situation to illustrate the idea that impossible is nothing.
2 comments:
I was the same way with music. I could work hard and learn to play a piece. But it was just a mechanical exercise, a test of whether or not I could get my fingers to do what my brain was telling them to. Still, I enjoyed it.
I wish people wouldn't say "nothing is impossible". It's so clearly not true.
Music is enjoyable, sure - it's like magic trick I can do. Abracadabra and voila, Pachelbel's Canon. And sometimes I can pull improvised harmony out of thin air, but most of the time (to push the analogy to its limit) it falls out of my sleeve and comes clattering to the floor at the most inopportune moment. At any rate, David Copperfield I'm clearly not, and impossible continues to persist in being something over in my corner of the world.
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