A Narrow Line

I had a passenger with me on my drive to school last week. A small stone had gotten wedged in my tire tread, and it cheerfully tikka-tikka-tak-tak-taked along as I drove. With the window down my little stone echoed off of the architecture and other cars on the road, soloing its heart out. I’m grateful I caught this stone’s 15 minutes of fame, and was a bit sad when the stone finally became dislodged as I navigated the traffic in Watertown.

It’s easy to set up one’s life as “me versus the world.” There’s inner strength to be found in opposition, but is this a good kind of strength?

I’m brought back this morning to the writing of James Carse, specifically Finite and Infinite Games and The Religious Case Against Belief. One of the themes explored in these books is opposition, the “them” in “us versus them.” You can’t have an us without a them, and if you’re concerned with protecting your own self or group or whatever there’s no choice but to draw a wall around what’s yours. Everything outside that wall is the other.

How does conflict end when those are the conditions? If you need the opposition to maintain identity, there’s no way to remove the opposition. This is self-sabotage.

I create opposition in my mind every day. That driver, those kids. Either one of my “kind of people” or one of “those people.” I know I do it, and while I catch myself sometimes, I’m sure there’s a lot I don’t even clue into. I wonder what would happen if all those walls came down at once. Would I be strong and secure? Would I need to be?

We have precious little control over what life brings to us, but all the control in the world in how we handle it. It’s one of those things one hears over and over in life, and while it might be self-evident, there’s the small matter of assuming control. This process is not the easiest.

The few of you who followed me over from Tinctoris know that I write a little electronic music sometimes. For those of you who didn’t, I write a little electronic music sometimes. I put out an album in 2005, Travelog, which people seemed to enjoy.

Now I offer you my second album Ten Directions, which is available now. You can get it on iTunes or Amazon.com.

It’s similar to Travelog, complete with lots of layered complex sounds. Think of each piece as traveling through a landscape. I hope you enjoy it, and would love to hear what you think.

The old is good not just because it is past,
nor the new supreme because we live with it.
Your task it is, amid the confusion, rush, and noise
to grasp the lasting, calm, and meaningful,
And finding it anew, to hold and treasure it.

— Paul Hindemith, Sonata for alto horn in E-flat

Spring Break is humming by. I’ll be back in the trenches soon enough, and am enjoying the relative calm of the days. Working, playing music, reading, napping. I’ve been steadily finishing up digitizing my CD collection, and have been enjoying the quiet thrill of hearing a piece of music for the first time in years. So many old friends, in a new home.

It’s been years since I put the horn down. I was rather good at one point, so they say. I got my undergraduate degree in horn performance and played principal horn in various school orchestras. I did it rather dramatic fashion, ending my music studies and moving across the country to fling myself into a new career. I didn’t even pack my horn when I moved. Clean break.

The last time I went back to Oregon I grabbed my two horns from the storage unit. They’ve sat undisturbed for the most part, though I took them out now and then and tooted on them. But I’ve always stopped short of picking it up again. I started guitar 5 years ago now and am able to strum fairly well. My voice isn’t bad and it’s great fun to sing and play for my own amusement.

But there’s always been the curl of the horn, gleaming in the corner, saying “you can put me down, but you’re not going to get rid of me. I’m more a part of you than you are ready to admit.” And it’s right. Ever since that fateful day when I decided I was too lazy to wait in the long line to play saxophone, the horn and I have linked our fates.

In my life, in the past years, I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m all about, what the point is, if there is one. A spiritual quest? Who knows. For some almost cruel reason, something is pushing me towards the 16 feet of metal I left behind. But while the horn is the same, the hornist is a very different man.

Horn playing, especially solo horn, is not for the faint of heart. My teacher in college told me on my first lesson, with a thousand-yard stare, that the horn “is really hard.” I remember the fatalism that crept into my visage, the almost recklessness in my attitude that came by walking the line between a glorious sound and a train wreck. The horn is about talent and skill coupled with a healthy dose of luck and a teaspoon of bravado. So let me throw down the gloves and say: I’m taking the horn up again. I’m going to get my tone back, figure out where the heck it fits in in my life now, and go from there. No problem.

I’m technically on Spring Break this week, but between one thing and another it’s almost busier than usual. Still, the change of the usual flow is welcome. If only the rain would lift.

I’m bound for a job fair this evening. I’m a few months from graduation and it’s not a bad idea to see what’s out there. Pulling out my old business cards this morning I realized that only my name was still current. A trip to the store and a bit of design work and I’ve got some transition cards.

Taking a cue from my hastily printed cards, I’ll make this break a transition for myself as well, moving from one thing (or one set of things) to another.

As the weather warms, everything comes to life. I’ve got the image of the city as a huge organism, with individuals as cells. As soon as the cold is shaken off, we travel the pathways of the cities in greater number and frequency. Bicycles and pedestrians proliferate. We fill the empty parks and greenbelts, and we all breath easier as the city inhales and becomes flushed with new energy.

The end of the Winter term is so close I can practically taste it. It’s been overwhelming cumulatively, a ton of bits adding up to a crush of activity. A few weeks of rest is on the ticket.

By rest, I mostly mean that I can program without being interrupted by classes for a few weeks. Prior to starting school, I had a few years of routine built up, and sliding back into that for a while will be a treat. There’s a fairly large pile of work to do, and I look forward to it.

Here in metro Boston we’re recovering from some serious flooding. The has come out after the storm passed, and it seems that Spring is moving in with inevitability. There’s a feeling of doors opening, as there always is with me in this season.