“Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew.” That’s David Brooks writing in the opinion section of the May 31, 2011 New York Times. I agree with most of the article, which concerns the need for college grads to take a much more realistic view of life ahead as contrasted to the New Age-y feel-good-ism of today’s typical commencement addresses.
But I don’t fit that quoted statement. I’m certainly a middle-aged person. Maybe I’m just not sensible. But I wouldn’t go back to that particular time in my life for all the tea in China. It was difficult, exhausting, and frustrating. I was a young musician getting my toes into the professional waters, coming to realize that I did indeed have enough of the Right Stuff to make a successful go of it, but at the same time living in a state of near-existential terror that the whole thing was going to blow up in my face. I kept my necessary expenses down to the barest subsistence levels, thus money was the least of my worries; I always had enough. Frequently I wondered if things were ever going to look up.
Viewing myself of 34 years ago I see that I was doing pretty well, all things considered. I went right into graduate school, with a reasonable assistantship that paid a chunk of my tuition. I had enough piano students to keep me fed. Within two years I would be on the faculty of all three divisions of the SF Conservatory—Prep, Extension, and Collegiate—although until I was about thirty or so I was mostly Prep & Extension with my collegiate participation limited to some secondary piano students. I was managing a reasonably successful playing career at the same time, although I had never been under any delusions that I was going to become the next Murray Perahia or whatnot. Whether I had the talent or not (I don’t think I did or do), I didn’t have the drive that creates a successful full-time performer. I was gigging, taking whatever jobs came up. And they did come up, before long far more than I could handle.
So it was going to be a loose and varied career for me; I was no one-trick pony making a blinkered beeline for my one true heart’s desire. My concerns were survivalist, atavistic even: just make it from one day to the next, one week to the next. I lived by only one rule: don’t do anything outside of music. Otherwise, I saw no reason to pick, choose, or filter. I said Yes whenever I could. And I got a lot of work. Some of it was awful. Some of it was ennobling. Unfortunately, the best stuff paid peanuts (or nothing) and the crap jobs tended to bring home most of the bacon.
I stumbled on and eventually my proper path revealed itself to me: classroom teaching. I hadn’t really thought of that before, having tended to frame everything in piano terms. But once I started teaching eartraining and theory I realized that I had found my calling. I wasn’t all that long before music history/commentary was added to the mix, then I started teaching at Cal. By the time I was about 35 I had the pieces together and the rest has been smooth sailing. The notion of writing didn’t come along until I was 50, but it has provided me with an extra outlet.
Perhaps I could say that David Brooks was right: if I went back to age 22 I could plan for a present in which I am active in areas of music that I hadn’t anticipated back then. But that wouldn’t work; I needed those years of wandering first. The important thing is that I didn’t take the wrong path. Whether that was by plan (which I doubt) or that I just stumbled into it (much more likely), I never want to go back to my 20s. I don’t need to start over. So either I’m not sensible, or I’m one of those folks who stand outside Brooks’ overconfident “nearly every” qualifier.