A Glimpse into the Mind of a Music Student

Back to Boston, and back to work for what should have been the last semester of my program at BU, but will in actuality be the second last. It was a good Christmas and New Year, with plenty of time to see friends and family, and huge amounts of eating. Dad and I went out for what will probably be our yearly nice dinner on "Mom day," and while the food was less than awesome, and while he and I don't really talk about mom much, it's still nice to so something special and (theoretically) eat good food. We more than made up for it in an excellent seafood stew that dad made for Christmas (feast of five fishes rather than seven, but hey, we tried!). E and I drove back to Boston together, and it was nice to have a chance to catch up. She stayed for about a week, and then headed back to Cleveland and Michigan. Since she left, I haven't been doing much. A good friend from Oberlin came to visit last week, and in the process introduced me to his brother who lives about five blocks from me. It's times like these that the world smacks you over the head with how small it is and how interrelated we are. Corny, maybe, but true. When I don't have a schedule to keep, my body/mind shift to a "sleep at 2 or 3am, get up at 11 or 12" plan, which suits me just fine as long as there's nothing I have to do. Sadly, now it's time to start getting back into a more normal routine since class starts next week. The last few days have been spent reviewing lots of 20th Century theory, in hopes that retaking the placement exam on Tuesday will get me out of a class that is almost exactly the same as a class I took, and excelled in, at Oberlin. I loved all of that stuff at the time, it's just that at this point that time was nearly four years ago. Damn that makes me feel old. It feels good to get back into some of the more concrete aspects of being a musician, though this work means that the planning and research for my thesis is getting put off a week or so longer. A couple of performances are coming up in the next couple of months, including a concert in February that I have high hopes will perhaps convince certain circles in Boston that I can actually play the cello. I was not prepared for being pigeonholed here as an academic, in an environment that was supposed to allow me to be both a performer and a researcher. Especially considering the discovery of how little I actually want to be an academic, I've found it increasingly frustrating that I am obviously not on the shortlist of performers, even among people I know. For all that Boston was reported to be "a great place to be an early musician," I am finding that I would probably be better off somewhere else in that respect as well. I have no real ill feelings toward the people I've worked with, for instance I know it's no one's fault that I'm expensive to bring to Florida with my instrument hence not being called back there, and I know it's no one's fault that I just don't get called for gigs. It's just very frustrating to know that while I may not be the very best, I AM a pretty darn good musician, yet I am not seen as one here. Whether in Boston or anywhere else, this will be a problem I need to solve if I am ever going to have hopes of being a professional for the rest of my life. For now, though, I'll focus on the questionably useful hexachordal combinatoriality and twelve-tone analysis necessary to get me out of a repeat semester of theory, and we'll go from there.