I was listening to a radio program the other day that discussed the appeal of country music. I have to admit there was a point in my life that I couldn’t stand, nor even acknowledge that country music was even music. I have since tempered my thoughts and I think that WNYC’s Radio Lab had a really interesting take on it. Radio lab is a program that takes a scientific (sometimes social scientific) look at “mind issues.” As they began to discuss all of it seemed to make sense. They theorized that country music in the United States started to become popular around the time in American History in which the American economy moved from Agrarian to Urban. More than half the country no longer lived in the country…they lived in the city and the life they knew on the farm was somehow simpler. Though I know it can be argued that life on the farm was much tougher, the tough times, it seems could be ploughed in the fields and covered with freshly upturned soil. They went on to talk about how the music, not the words in the music, spoke to the listener in a manner that was longing for the days of old. They used the term Crying Steel to describe the hollow, lonely sound of the steel guitar echoing as if to mourn the time gone by. As largely agrarian societies move towards the urban, they find commonality with American Country Music and identify with it.
The other day I was talking to a recent graduate from College and we were talking about how her future was going to pan out. I had mentioned that life would never be the same again for her. Those of us that have moved past college very well understand that concept. Life really DID change after graduation. Bills are one thing that come to mind as does honest responsibility. I remembered when I was at my first job as a teacher, I was commenting to a colleague that I missed college because I didn’t HAVE to be at school every day. I could choose to miss a class mostly without consequence if I felt I needed to.
I was discussing a certain video that a group of me and my friends created mostly because we were bored. It was KUXA and the NBG nightly news. I’ll never forget the opening sequence. I was sitting at my desk, the announcer on the radio announces Mozart’s Divertamento No. 2, (I happen to not like that song) the phone rings. I answer and say “I’ll be right there” and we head off to the “studio” to start our talk show “A Chat With Joe” reporting live from New York City. It was silly, but what was even better was that we were stopped by the police in the filming of the opening sequence. I SO badly wanted to begin filming as the police cars arrived complete with lights flashing. I was hoping we would be able to get a “COPS” skit out of it, but alas someone convinced me otherwise. My friend was trying to come up with the words to describe why it was so fun, and I said “it’s because we were playing” and that we rarely get the opportunity these days to play as adults. Somehow, after 6th grade we started “hanging out” instead of playing and if you ask me they weren’t the same thing. Those series of nights that we filmed, we as a group were playing and since we started “hanging out” life hasn’t been the same.
I was looking for some video of music on youtube of various pieces of music and ran across this video of a father and his three sons singing a capella (actually it started off with guitar and then they ditched it for four part harmony.) I was telling someone yesterday that I wished that I had a couple buddies that would just sit around and sing for fun. Now there have been times when I have been around the guys in choir and we’d break out in spontaneous song, but it was never frequent enough to get a good vibe out of it. (though I have to say singing “the Lion Sleeps Tonight” was always fun while traveling from performance to bus on tour)
I remember those sing alongs on the bus on the way to contest or to festival in high school (choir geeks) and how much fun it was to just sing because we wanted to. I’m not sure when singing turned into something serious for me. Don’t get me wrong. Singing is fun for me, but in the hanging out sort of fun, not the playing sort of fun. These days, the stakes are so high for me and singing that I’m amazed that I haven’t been paralyzed by fear when I perform.
Finally, I read an article about two 18 year olds who graduated from high school and rowed in a canoe from Minneapolis to the Hudson Bay in 49 days by themselves. I’m amazed at the sense of adventure and tenacity of people who can drop modern life for the experience. I don’t have much more to say about it other than when I think of when I was 18, I know I couldn’t have psychologically embarked on a journey like that. You can read the article here. It’s a pretty good read, I highly recommend it.
We’re all aware of the cliché of the teacher who made the tremendous impact on the student’s life. Upon hearing of my High School Choir director’s retirement, I decided to probe both my feelings on the subject and the impact of those most influential to me.
I had never wanted to become a teacher. Teachers get paid so little, they have to present information to students who don’t want to learn, and there is a nefarious group of students that enjoy trying to undermine the process and trip the teacher up.
I entered college with the true intent of going straight through to get my doctorate and be a professor (in choral conducting). What I discovered sometime before I graduated, was that I was not nearly as inspirational as my professors were. My love for music was encouraged by the passion and wholly “religious” experiences I had under some of the most passionate and emotionally intelligent people I’ve ever met.
At 23 years old, I had a lot to be desired in the “inspiration” category. Though I had experienced some deep personal loss, I hadn’t yet learned how to express myself in a manner that would actually inspire people. So, I went out to teach hoping I’d find my voice. What I found was that I was presented with a set of situations that I had no prior experience that would help me deal with the problems that come with teaching. The scarey thing, when I think about it, is that parents know this. The parents come armed with the knowledge that you don’t know how to defend yourself and they take advantage of it. I was young, and didn’t understand how to deal with people conspiring for my failure. I didn’t understand the power struggle that goes on in a school district. The worst part about it is that it is only one or two parents. In my case one happened to be on the School Board. I refused to play favorites with my students and her daughter was a talented singer. I think it started when I made everyone audition for a solo and chose someone I thought deserved a chance at singing a solo even though she wasn’t the best for the spot. Sometimes in music, as a teacher, it’s more important to expose people to different situations than it is to pick the very best singer. Anyway, Mom threatened me, I called in the NEA lawyers, and that was the end of my teaching career.
Broken and worn, I moved back to Minot wondering if I was meant to do any of it. Ultimately, if conductors are good, they eventually have to take on the role of teacher whether they acknowledge it or not. What was I missing? To be honest I think I was missing the very thing that made me a good musician.
I remember one time that my voice teacher’s wife told me “Joe, the best musicians aren’t afraid to show themselves and their emotions to their audience, this performance shows you understand that, thank you” What I would readily take to the stage, I didn’t to my students. Perhaps it was the sophomoric manner in which all of them approached music that made it all the more difficult. It’s almost as if you’re afraid they’re going to make fun of you that you decide not to do it.
I wrote a letter to a friend about a year ago and later published it as a blog that partly addresses this idea.
“Never miss an opportunity to inspire” This was a big one.I’ve always been afraid to emote inspiration.I was afraid to inspire because the students didn’t love music as much as I do.In the meantime, I degraded my very personal faith.To me, when I listen to music, God is speaking to my soul.By denying my opportunity to inspire the students, I lost something.I missed the opportunity to teach people how much I love music, and perhaps inspire them to love it also.Nobody I know that is great is afraid of inspiring others.Effective leaders and teachers inspire their students and followers to come to a new understanding of what is presented to them.In order to do that, I have to share my ideas.I have to share my feelings. I have to be in tune with what my heart is telling me.
It seems like a simple answer, but we, just in normal society, don’t allow ourselves to “be out there” as a friend of mine recently put it. Why not? When I look at all of the teachers that have inspired me they showed parts of themselves to me that I KNOW my friends didn’t all see. My high school choir director just recently retired. I haven’t seen him in over a year, now, but even years after I had him as a teacher, he was still encouraging me. The last time he asked me, “do you think you’ll ever teach again?” he went on to explain that he was going to retire soon and that the position at WHS was going to be open soon. I think I’m more flattered that he asked me.
I had a lunch with a famous conductor by the name of Eph Ehly one time. It was my first year teaching and I was introduced to him by the teacher at St. Mary’s High School. She brought me to lunch with him, I’m sure, as an attempt to lure me into the group of people that love teaching. It was obvious that Dr. Ehly loved teaching because his passion was apparent as soon as he opened his mouth. The first thing he did, when he met me was to find something in common with me. “Williston you say? My brother used to manage the Family Thrift Center there” Dr. Ehly has a HUGE family and one just happened to get assigned to be the manager at FTC. At any rate, Dr. Ehly looked at me and handed me advice that I believe to be quite the gift. He said to me “You should have three books open at all times. You should have a book for pure entertainment, a book for your studies, and a book that addresses your spirit” This was a man handing out profound advice to a perfect stranger. I could have made fun, or could have totally blown him off. That wasn’t Dr. Ehly’s concern, however. He knew his advice was valid and suddenly it’s the duty of the student to take or leave that bit of knowledge.
Dr. Ehly wrote a book entitled “Hogey’s Journey” which is a fictional account of his life combining his and his fathers experiences in life. I haven’t read the book, however the title of the first chapter is so telling of what kind of man he is. “Every waking moment is an adventure in living“ It’s apparent that he’s excited about life. It’s apparent that he wants others to know it as well. I admire Dr. Ehly’s ability to infect others with his zeal for life, music, and humanity. In my mind, I wasn’t ready for that kind of life, yet. I didn’t have it within me to inspire others, therefore I was meant to be a student, for a while longer, anyway.
One quote that I often hear bandied about especially in the Music department is “Those who can, do..and those who can’t, teach” This statement is perhaps the most misguided statement regarding teaching that I have ever heard. This statement assumes that, in my case, the best part about music is performing it. Undoubtedly, I know people who feel this way, but I sure don’t. Although, I have to admit that singing Beethoven’s 9th with the Austin Symphony to a sold out crowd was pretty exciting.
Even at that, THAT moment wasn’t the best moment for me with the ninth. The first orchestral rehearsal, for me, is always fun. I get to “see” things I’ve never heard before because I finally see fingers moving and bows moving that I wouldn’t have noticed just by listening to the music. I even get to hear the music out of balance because I’m standing behind the Horn section. Rehearsals are my favorite. When Paul Salamunovich used an analogy of an airplane landing gracefully on a runway (notice the graceful lift before the wheels touch the runway) in front of the Minot Chamber Chorale, he was appealing to my imagination. When I describe Lauridsen’s Dirait-on to people, I like to use the imagery of leaves falling off trees in my line of sight and falling in love. One leaf falls, blurs my vision and before I can follow it to the ground, another has gained my attention. When falling in love, before I can complete a thought, i’m interrupted by another. With that statement, it’s an appeal to the emotions of someone who’s ever fallen giddily in love that inspires. It’s moments like these that I don’t get from performance. I’m not inspired by the idea that I have to perform and not make any mistakes. The idea that “those who can, do; and those that can’t, teach” diminishes the knowledge and the inspiration that got me here in the first place.
One great thing about music is that we almost always ask “who did you study with?” The tradition of musicians is one that recognizes the teacher’s role in the development of the musician. When musicians stand on stage, they have to often present their background to the audience and when I read the same names over and over with the quality of performance in mind, the teachers gain a reputation. Some of the best music educators in history are more known for the quality of student they produced than they are for anything they did themselves regarding performance. Some that come to mind are Julius Hereford (taught my voice teacher AND Eph Ehly among many others) and Nadia Boulanger (numerous very influential musicians including Aaron Copland and Virgil Thompson…and my voice teacher) These people havesuch an infectious love and respect for music that they have to share it with everyone. Whether they’re interested or not.
The idea that I was afraid to show how much I enjoy music and what it means to me sounds like a foolish relegation to a 20 something still worried about what people thought. I remember being in high school and not necessarily trying to advertise that I liked to sing, or even in college that my major was voice and not instrumental. Somehow in the music world being a singer has gotten a bad reputation of having substandard musicians. I can understand that at some very basic level it can be true, but I’m beyond that. I’ve also gotten beyond the idea that being a teacher means that you’re a frustrated performer, too.
If you weren’t worth listening to as a teacher, you wouldn’t have people traveling in your footsteps. We’ve all stood on the shoulders of those that came before us and most often the title of the person eventually essentially means “Teacher”
I have been writing in journals for as long as I have been listening to classical music.I blogged last May about my first discoveries in classical music, a discovery that would change the course of my life.What I didn’t discuss was the driving force that made me begin the quest in the first place, the events that drove me towards my inward journey to eventually make me who I am today.
When I was in the 8th grade, my parents decided to end their near 30 year marriage and it seemed as if my world fell apart.There was talk of us moving to Fargo and I remembered being afraid to lose (what I thought was a lot) everything I had in Williston.The following summer, I began to journal and listen to Mozart Symphony 40 (story about has long since been told so if you’re curious and not familiar with it, read back to some of my May or June 2007 blogs)
That year marked the end of the dreamer in me and ushered in a new era of optimism.You see, I look back and when I was a little kid, I used to take a pencil or chopstick and stand in front of the TV and conduct along with Leonard Bernstein or Aaron Copland on PBS while I watched their concerts from Lincoln Center.I was a dreamer.I had goals and dreams without a single thought as to how I’d accomplish them.To me, everything was possible.When my parents divorced, there was a sudden realization that everything bad is possible, too, and it swept my consciousness.It didn’t destroy my spirit, though.I just began being hopeful for everything.
Even when my mother died when I was 19, I didn’t lose hope.Perhaps it was because I was experiencing a life where all kinds of possibilities were still available to me.I was still discovering new music and never grew tired of the hours I’d spend listening to the far horizon.In the five or so years since I had discovered classical music, I had amassed some 100+ CD’s.My collection is a reflection of music history as I was discovering it; not just a collection of a bunch of one or two composers supplemented with an eclectic mix of pop music. That said, I wonder if it wasn’t always the want, some day, to perform these pieces that fed my optimism.I found new music all the time that I wanted to listen to and put into my collection as a reference for my endeavors.
What I (at the time) believed to be a failure at teaching truly broke my spirit.I had worked so hard in college to find myself, two years later, back in Minot defeated and unsure if I had made the right choice in the first place.My life was racing at the speed of a train and it crashed to a sudden halt.As by suspended animation, my dreams and hopes gave way to complacency.There were, decidedly, reasons I stayed in Minot.I thought I was happy, and I was accomplishing things.I was still growing as a musician while I was in the college choir, though the lessons were not from the musician’s side, but from how to conduct.I found myself after rehearsals asking Dr. Bowles why he chose to do certain things, why he chose the pieces he did, and how to solve certain vocal difficulties I had.They were the kinds of questions that college students don’t think to ask.In 2003, I took the director’s position at a very musically inclined church and fumbled through my first year but truly found my stride within the last 3 or so years.
I began, in Minot, what I would consider my “realist” phase.I was no longer the eternal optimist, and was far removed from the dreamer that I was when I was so young.I stopped going out with friends, partly because all of my friends had moved by then, but I didn’t accept new ones into my life either. I accepted that what I had might be all I could get. I lost myself, I freely admit, for at least 7 years.
I blogged once about the impending Metamorphosis that I was about to encounter and how ugly it was going to be.It was only ugly to me….not to anyone else.I’ve struggled this last year.I was unemployed and I don’t even want to think about my credit rating.I was alone, away from those I care about, and a virtual island to myself.I honestly thought I was going to be kicked out of Chorus Austin in December when I missed the first orchestral rehearsal for Messiah.I received a pleading email from the conductor asking if I was still a part of the choir.I thought about that incident and realized how much I contribute to my section.Apparently, the section was lost on a couple of occasions and the rehearsal actually had to stop to fix some tenor entrances.I’ve always been the “steady” guy.When something goes wrong in the section, I focus in and bring everyone else around me to rally to success.When I wasn’t there that night, those that stood around me had nobody to rely on and they became unsure of themselves and fell apart.Choristers know this feeling…suddenly our crutch is gone even though we can figure it out ourselves, we’re so unsure and feel so exposed that we’d rather stop singing than make a mistake. This is the first I’ve even acknowledged the incident. I’ve since redeemed myself with my work on St. Paul.I was a very unknown entity when they made me their section leader, and now, nobody questions whether or not I should.
My friend Sara and I had a conversation maybe a week or two ago.Sara was my best friend for a number of years (though the last 7 years I have had sparse contact with her).She commented that I sounded like the Joe she used to know…the one from High School and College.She told me that I sounded excited and happy and I was funny again.I didn’t think I wasn’t when I was in Minot, but now that I look back, she’s right.I remember sending an email out (when the internet was NEW) to all my friends entitled Margarrrrrrita magic.I sent it out under a series of emails entitled “A Chat with Joe…reporting live from New York CITy” based on a character we created in High School (when I was known as Jeaux)Margarrrrrrita magic was funny and I wish I had that email so that I could share it, but there was a part in which I explained how to pronounce Margarrrita….you say Margarrrrrr (quadruple at least roll on the ‘r’) and when you get to the ‘I’ jump at least an octave and a half and back to ‘ta’ in your normal voice.I heard back from at least 10 of my friends saying they tried it and everyone thought they were stupid because they were in a computer lab when they did it. (nobody owned computers back then) And I can’t forget the “yarrow bidarrow and the search for tomorrow” bit which I may or may not share…it depends on whether or not I can work it into a blog.
For a long time, I’ve believed that I didn’t have it in me to be the kind of conductor that I thought I needed to be to be effective.All of my conductors have been so very inspirational.It’s as if they never left the dreamer stage in life.
I’m writing this on Saturday but know I won’t post it until at least Monday.I’m marking the 13th year since my mother died.(June 6th 1995) To my mom:I love you.I miss you terribly, but I think I’m Okay, now.I didn’t get depressed this year because I’m so very happy.I’m me again.
I was inspired to write this blog by two songs, both written by American modern composer Eric Whitacre.The first is entitled “Cloudburst” originally written in Spanish by Mexican poet Octavio Paz.
“We must sleep with open eyes,
We must dream with our hands,
We must dream the dream of a river seeking its course,
Of the sun dreaming its worlds,
We must dream aloud,
We must sing till the song puts forth roots,
Trunk, branches, birds, stars,
We must find the lost word,
And remember what the blood,
The tides, the earth, and the body say,
And return to the point of departure.”
Sara’s right.I am the person I used to be. I’m excited about life, I have plans and goals that I can’t wait to achieve.I’ve even made some real connections with friends from the past and am making new lifelong friends. But she’s wrong about one thing.I’m not the optimist she got to know and care about.I’ve come full circle.I’m the dreamer behind the optimist.My train is speeding at the rate of color and God help it if light can catch up.
The other is merely symbolic of the life I came to know in the last 7 years which has come to an end.I’m rounding out my first season with Chorus Austin with two appearances with the Austin Symphony, two on TV, one radio performance and a total of 13 concerts.I’ve metamorphosed and am rarin to try out the new(old) me who is wiser, more experienced, and better than ever.The title of the blog is to say goodbye to “Minot Joe” and say Welcome back to “Jeaux”
I’d like to dedicate your reading of this poem(because it is really a serious poem) to the late Patrick Cybulski, who stood next to me in the MSU choir for at least a year maybe two.I don’t remember.He was a talented singer who was very much a wandering soul.I could be wrong but I believe he was 24.I’d also like to dedicate it to my mother and any of your family members who have passed.They’ll always be remembered.
“I thank You God for most this amazing
Day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
And a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes
covered with freshly upturned soil. They went on to talk about how the music, not the words in the music, spoke to the listener in a manner that was longing for the days of old. They used the term Crying Steel to describe the hollow, lonely sound of the steel guitar echoing as if to mourn the time gone by. As largely agrarian societies move towards the urban, they find commonality with American Country Music and identify with it.
