Going it Alone

My life's path has been a long series of detours. Some people's lives, most of the people I know in fact, go through fairly regular childhoods, grow up, get married, have kids, have a career, have ups and downs, sorrows, tragedies and great joys. Marriages, births, more marriages, graduations, family life, occasional deviations, grow old, start thinking of retirement, travel, estate planning, and so on. I'm the weirdest person in my acquaintance in terms of how really whacked up my life's pathway has been. Not one aspect of my existence has been "mainstream". I think if there were fairies present at my birth, standing around making wishes and predictions, they must have been drunk on strong liquor and said the type of things one says when one has had too much to drink and loses inhibitions and caution.

I was born to a woman who was an irresponsible teenager, she was quite out of control and I was the result of her date screwing her out behind the school at her high school senior prom one warm May night. In that time and place, if you got pregnant, you got married and she was no exception. That was a disaster. And she ran off when I was 2. A year later, I got committed to a TB sanitorium for four years as a result of a mistaken diagnosis (they thought I had TB of the hip-- and instead, I had a dislocated hip that they held immobile by a cast from my head to my feet so that it would never in my life have the proper muscle alignment). Four years in a sanitorium high on a mountaintop, isolated from the world so as not to spread infection. Mom remarried and came back during that time and when I got out of the hospital, I had a new stepfather and started living in a new family. I never really adjusted socially to public school and my physical handicap also made me different. Kids don't like "different". I think it's a good thing that special needs kids are educated with their non-disabled peers now. It's good for both sides. Non-disabled kids get used to the idea that we're not all physically and mentally and emotionally perfect.

So my life has never followed traditional lines. No marriage, no children. Professional singing career, conducting career. Worked for, and became close friends with, Leonard Bernstein. I loved living in New York. New York is a city that is FILLED to the BRIM with unconventional people. I felt more at home there. You could find a community of just about any type there.

Now in my approaching senior years, I've embarked on a journey of discovery and excitement, learning to know and love and understand rock music and rap. And once again, many aspects of this project I'm having to do alone. There is no such text in music education. This is good and bad. Good because I'm on the cutting edge of a new trend in music education (probably). Bad because I'm on the cutting edge of a new trend in music education (probably). Bad because the marketing strategy will have to be very clever and unusual. Because the wheels of academe grind exceedingly slow. Which is the understatement of the year. To get methods class teachers to buy this text will be a true miracle. Yet, if I don't write this book, I'll never have a happy day in my life again. If I write it and it gets published and flops, I'll never have a happy day in my life again. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.....and so on and so on.

The other lonely aspect of this is that there is virtually NO one in my circle of friends with whom I can share this music. Thank God for social networking like Twitter and MySpace. I'd be completely isolated and out on a limb. I'd probably, in fact, have given up on this by now. I certainly would not have met the rock musicians and rappers that I've met and who are going to be consulting authors -- and, it turns out, composers/performers for the text too. So I feel LESS lonely than I might feel.

I'm going to live rock concerts. I don't intend to do this for very long mainly because I don't have anyone to go with -- and I feel lonely going there with loud, celebrating crowds of YOUNG people (for the most part), just looking out of place. I don't always FEEL out of place. I find rock fans to be very social and friendly. At the U2 concert, I was talking to no less than 8 or 9 people sitting around me by the time the concert ended. Saturday night, I'm going to Penny Road Pub in Barrington, IL to hear Days of the New, a grunge/alternative band from here in Illinois whose music I LOVE to PIECES. I'll be alone there. I hope I can chat with people. I wish I could meet Travis, the frontman/leader of Days/New. He's autistic, however, and doesn't want to interact much with people. So I don't know if I'll get to meet him. Their music is like a lot of grunge: very lush harmony, slow harmonic rhythms, mixed or odd meters. His lyrics are not so uncompromisingly despairing and wretched as Alice in Chains's lyrics.

I guess my biggest disappointment is that I'm going to hear my beloved Alice in Chains on March 20 and although I bought 5 tickets, hoping to entice students to come with me, it turns out there is a big jazz & steel band concert at School that same night -- an unexpected addition to the concert calendar -- and so I may not have anyone to go with me. The show is sold out and there are no seats in that place (Aragon Ballroom). I cannot physically tolerate standing up for longer than about 30 minutes so I'm not sure how I will survive. I was going to sell all my tickets and not go. But.....I cannot miss this opportunity to see and hear them. I feel emotionally tied to them and I am vested in their success and want to support them. James Hetfield, in a Metallica documentary, said that he couldn't care less if people buy the CD's: he appreciates MORE that they take the time and trouble to come and see them perform live. I was quite surprised by that statement of James's and I thought of that when I found out the Aragon has no seats and I thought of not going.

So.....although I've met lovely rock musicians on Twitter and MySpace and I'm sort of an "angel" to the band at our university who is letting me observe their rehearsals and get involved generally in their music and their career, it still feels as though I keep walking this lonely road. It may be a loneliness of my own choice. That is always a possibility. But I cannot help it. I am so passionate about this project and this music. I must see it through to its conclusion, no matter at what personal emotional cost. Rock on! \.../