I’m in curmudgeon mode. I’ve been the village grouse for most of the week. I sit in my rocker by the stove over t’ the General Store, chewing the fat with the other geezers and never missing a beat when it comes to dissing the misbegotten mediocrity of today’s world, its disrespectful kids, its damn-fool silliness, and its shoddy merchandise.
But I’m not really inveighing against anything that hasn’t been around all along, exists in sodden abundance throughout our world, and will continue to persist long after my crankiness and I have wafted off to Valhalla.
My target: mediocrity. I’m tired, fed up, disgusted, sick, and appalled by half-assed and half-baked half-wits and their halfway measures. The enemy of the good is the good enough, as the pundits (mostly a bunch of lukewarm C-minuses themselves) say. Consider:
A recent article in a moderately respected online San Francisco music criticism journal began with a sentence so inept as would warrant a slap on the wrist from even the most superficial and burnt-out inner-city middle school English teacher. A disconnected pronoun went floating about, hither and yon, attempting to pick itself up in the next sentence and thereby compounding the problem, followed by a string of passive verbs and weasel-worded hedging, ending with a sodden thud. I was so distracted by the author’s need to take a basic-level English Comp class that I forgot to pay attention to the article’s actual content.
I have an obviously bright and talented graduate student in two of my Conservatory classes. He could be, and should be, sailing through both. But he’s rapidly scuttling his ship of state, via a lethal combination of not practicing his assignments and skipping classes. It’s one thing to brand yourself as a hopeless jerkoff if that’s what you truly are—although such a pianist may whisper hasta la vista, baby to any notion of a career—but what if you’re a person with a mind and with actual talent? In one of the classes, the guy’s being played under the rug by students with only the barest soupçon of his natural gifts. Ergo, he is talented, he is bright, he is an idiot.
A to-remain-unnamed staffer at my school wound up the target of an intemperate blast from me the other morning when she had the temerity to dismiss some of my recent accomplishments as “luck” and “well, you’re just good at that stuff, aren’t you” without the slightest acknowledgment of the oceans, continents, and Alto Planos of hard work I put into my program notes, articles, onstage lectures, and the like. I’m not just good at that stuff, I raged. My skill results from the application of gallons and gallons of elbow grease, backed up with an attitude that only my best is acceptable. I don’t do mediocrity. Nor am I lucky. There’s nothing lucky about being recognized as a reliable provider of high-class work, as I am. People seek me out and offer me paying assignments because they want high-class stuff.
But why rage against mediocrity? I suppose I could take the stance that whatever the overall level of achievement, there would be a norm that would become defined as mediocre. But that’s precisely the mindset I’m raging against. Mediocre ≠ average. “Mediocre” emits clouds of wishy-washy drizzle, rather than referring to the median or the norm. To describe something as mediocre isn’t even remotely complimentary.
Perhaps my biggest beef with the milksops and barely-good-enoughs of our world is that their lack of drive or pride becomes a rallying cry for the sob sisters and touchy-feely nannies who are grimly determined to excuse every failure, no matter how blatant, as a misfortune. They tut-tut fussily over the homeless instead of calling them bums, winos, druggies, or crackheads as they deserve. They raise irresponsible spoiled brats who grow up into quasi-incompetent adults who have no concept of responsibility or accountability. They excuse and they excuse and they excuse, but they never look failure right in the eye and call it failure, call it incompetence, call it mediocrity. Words like slacker or nincompoop or flop never pass their lips. Oh, no: we must encourage, we must avoid harming anybody’s precious self-esteem.
But there is no excusing one’s way to artistry, to professionalism, to excellence. You can make a solid, well-paying career in music. But you’ve got to be good—really, really, really, really good. And you don’t become good by compromising or by excusing. Mediocrity is not an option, and those who think otherwise are headed straight for a thrilling career selling parakeets at Sammy’s Pet World.