Such Ones As Us

Upon my return from living in France for two months, I found it difficult to answer even the most basic questions, questions that I probably could have seen coming, questions like, “how was your trip?” and “how are you settling back in?” I remembered phrases like “it was great!” and “it was awesome!” but when it came time to elaborate thereupon, I wandered off into strange territory that neither I nor my interrogator could have seen coming.

I was freestyling, baby. Anything that came to mind was fair game: no anecdote too insignificant, no generalization too unexamined, no statement too grandiose. I was philosophizing, thinking out loud, journaling at my conversation partner. In truth, I had no idea how I was settling back in, and only an inkling as to how my trip had been.

I decided that my brain was mush and in need of organizing, lest I continue to leave my friends and acquaintances bewildered and slightly worried. I took out a small piece of paper and scrawled out the title, Modes of Being. Underneath, I made the following list:

• Animal Ellen
• Society Ellen
• Cosmic Ellen

Animal Ellen was the part of me that needed food and water and sometimes felt scared. Society Ellen was the part of me that played a role that made some kind of sense to the people around me. Cosmic Ellen was the part of me that wasn’t really “me” at all, the part that directly experiences the universe and sometimes has thoughts about life.

The plan was that, at any given point in the day, I could determine which of these modes was appropriate for the situation, and could summon it to the fore. If I felt sleepy, Animal Ellen could take a nap. If someone asked about my trip to France, Cosmic Ellen could take a seat and let Society Ellen do the talking. Come to think of it, Cosmic Ellen could pretty much just stay seated.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Society Ellen had a breakdown the day after establishing these delineations. We’re talking full on panic mode. I assumed I had made false distinctions and that I should instead try to be a whole, “authentic” person, thereby not putting so much pressure on Society Ellen. She obviously couldn’t handle it.

As the weeks went by, I slowly regained my ability to talk to people. Granted, I received fewer and fewer questions about my trip, but I managed to navigate the occasional query with my dignity still intact.

It wasn’t until yesterday, after having been home for more than a month, that I realized that Society Ellen’s mini-meltdown was not due to her being an imaginary prop. She was as real as anything else. No, it was due to the fact that she’d been out of commission for two months, and was a little rusty.

I didn’t need her when I was in France. I mean, I still made it a habit to wear clothes in public and not go around destroying other people’s personal property, but as far as answering for myself and making communicable sense of my existence, I was off the hook. In a foreign land, you are fulfilling your place in the world simply by being out of place. It is assumed that your life at home must look very different, and there’s no expectation that you should try to bring that life with you. In fact, a respectable traveler is one who leaves home behind and is willing to truly inhabit a different way of life, even a different persona. When else can you shed Society You?

When it came to probing questions about my life and plans and career and purpose and dreams and intentions, people generally left me alone, but more importantly, I had decided to leave myself alone. I could have easily spent those two months holding my own feet to the fire, “taking the opportunity” to take stock of my life and figure it all out, but I somehow had the good sense to know (call it being 38) that that was a recipe for crumbling if there ever was one, and I did not want to have a breakdown overseas.

I made it my sole aim to simply be in Paris. At the end of each day, I asked myself, “was I in Paris today?” If the answer was yes, Animal Ellen could sleep well, and Cosmic Ellen could dream. Society Ellen tried to bully me a couple of times, riddling me with questions like, “what are you doing here?” and “what’s your plan, Stan?” But I gave her the hand because she wasn’t even really supposed to be there.

I will be mulling over what my time in France meant to me for a good while, but for now, it feels supremely important to realize just how much time, attention, and energy I had been giving Society Ellen before the trip, and how I’d deemed Animal Ellen a nuisance and Cosmic Ellen a luxury. After all, Society Ellen adds value, Animal Ellen is an inconvenient fact, and Cosmic Ellen adds and subtracts nothing. Post-France, however, I can see that Society Ellen is expendable, Animal Ellen is an unthinkable gift, and Cosmic Ellen is eternal.

I can see that you’re getting worried again. Let me clarify that, when I say expendable, I do not mean disposable. I mean it in the following sense, the Oxford’s English sense: of little significance when compared to an overall purpose, and therefore able to be abandoned.

After spending most of the day nursing an acute sense of failure, it suddenly occurred to me that I had only the vaguest idea of what it was I was failing at. Initial investigations into the subject pointed to some pretty grandiose visions, so naturally I assumed that if I could just get my expectations out in the open, we could all have a good laugh and I could go home. I began listing them as they came to me. I, Ellen, expect myself to:

• Develop a deep understanding of the human condition
• Learn about what various cultures, religions, and philosophers have made of it
• Note the physical and material effects those ideas had/are having on the world
• Read all the books, see all the art, listen to all the music, and learn about the ideas and cultures that birthed them
• Really see the culture I grew up in (20th-21st century American/Pacific Northwest/Seventh-day Adventist/Suzuki method/classical music), understand what contributed to it historically, and recognize how I have been shaped by it
• Fully synthesize/digest/process all of the above information, hold it in my heart and mind, and respond sensitively and creatively and in a way that only I can or will.

This should sound impossible, if not for any one human, then at least specifically for me. I’ve read books which pertain to these topics, but my brain seems incapable of retaining such information. I could not tell you today what the main takeaways of those books were, so to think that I could amass the amount of knowledge described above is laughable.

Yet I must confess that, when I read over the list, I get really excited. The impossibility of it doesn’t scare me off, for some reason. One can imagine that all artists, philosophers, and scientists have felt similarly called out beyond themselves. They stretched and gave us the world we have today.

I’d expected to discover that my expectations had been heaped upon me by society, and that simply naming them would rob them of their power over me. I thought I would look at them and say, “Ha! Patriarchy much?” Or, “Ha! Puritanical work ethic much?” But instead, I discovered that I quite like my expectations for myself. I am beginning to wonder if they might actually be desires, not expectations.

What is funny about all of this is that something like 0.5% of my daily life is spent pursuing these goals, so I’m not actually failing because I’m not actually trying. Maybe the desire is to understand, to synthesize, to respond, and the expectation is to try. I do think I might have picked that one up somewhere.

The meaning and mattering of music is a slippery thing. Now you see it, now you don’t. When you see it, there could be nothing more magnificent. When you don’t see it (and you’re a professed musician), it is mildly discomfiting at best.

I’m not sure how common it is to lose heart in this way. It’s not something we talk about. In fact, there are many subjects considered to be taboo in musician circles, a whole slew of topics swept under the rug of We Should Be So Grateful. I do know of a couple of musicians who have voiced their discomfort with the idea of performing for some of the most privileged people in our society when we are faced with so many urgent crises of climate, hunger, violence, and all manner of suffering that humans absolutely could do something about.

For whatever reason (personal shortcomings, obviously), that particular darkness hasn’t come for me. No, my recurring dark night of the soul is the dreadful feeling that we musicians are mere participants in a system that makes busy people even busier.

Maybe that sounds crazy to you. Outrageous, even. Or maybe you think it’s a huge bummer and I should keep such negative thoughts to myself. Or maybe you disagree with me and would like to insist that music does more than just make you busier, and that you actually do enjoy concerts and don’t see them as yet another obligation in your calendar. But there’s no need to talk me off the ledge. As uncomfortable as this feeling is, I don’t view it as a thought to be expunged or educated into something more palatable. I think it’s trying to tell me something.

Ten years ago, when I first started organizing the Classical Incarnations series, I would get mad (Ellen mad) at musicians who offered to “fill time” on the program. The series was (and still is!) a free monthly event in a bar in which classical musicians from all over the city–symphony musicians, college students and professors, church musicians, freelancers, etc.–volunteered to perform a variety of music under the classical umbrella, which is quite large. Each musician or group of musicians would perform for 5-15 minutes, then the next group would take the stage. Sometimes there was a theme for the evening, sometimes not, but there was one constant: the musicians chose their own repertoire.

One of the many unintended yet beautiful things baked into this structure was the love the musicians felt for the music they presented. There was no expectation that you would perform entire works–just the movements you couldn’t wait to share. The audience could feel the sincerity. Because the series depended on people volunteering their time, we would occasionally come up a little short on the program, and musicians would say things like, “I’d like to play the 3rd and 4th movements of this sonata, but if you need to fill time I could also do the first two movements,” to which I would respond, in the manner of Batman slapping Robin, “Nobody needs to have their time filled!” I felt that our audience’s time was sacred, and that if we were going to lure them into our event, we’d better play something we cared about. This, it turns out, was counter-cultural.

To me, this is what is so dispiriting about most classical music programming. It fills in blanks. Here’s how it usually works: an organization decides that they are going to produce a certain number of concerts at this specific venue per year, and each one will be approximately this long, will be arranged like so, and will involve this size ensemble. Then the time is filled accordingly.

I wish there could be a more art-driven approach, as in: I really love this piece of music and can’t wait to share it with my community, so how can I present it in a way that brings them into the fullness of the experience? What time of day, and in what venue? Should we talk about it first, or print a program for people to read? Should we open with another piece that will help prepare them for the experience? Should we keep the program bite-sized, considering the complexity and newness of the art? How can we re-create the conditions necessary for the spark I just experienced myself?

Such an approach would be built on love–love for the music, love for the audience–which seems to be the key to meaning and mattering. But what I really find so delicious and invigorating about this approach also happens to be the reason why no institution could ever adopt it: when you aren’t feeling particularly inspired, you step aside, sit down, and shut up. At least until you have something to say.

“Without truth, without concepts, reality disintegrates into a noisy heap.”

Byung-Chul Han in Saving Beauty

Possible reasons why I’m in such a good mood today:

1. I started taking vitamin D three days ago on a whim and it has finally built up in my system enough to enhance my mood significantly. (Totally unscientific, I did not even bother to google that)
2. The skies are cloudy and gray, which puts me in the mind of my Oregonian youth.
3. I accidentally didn’t leave the house for almost two days straight.
4. I sobbed, wept, and whimpered last night.
5. I opened a letter yesterday that said my health insurance would cost approximately twice as much as I was anticipating during my sabbatical year, leading me to sit in stunned silence on the couch and repeat, à la Gob Bluth, “I’ve made a huge mistake.” (Totally unrelated to the crying, ahem)
6. I drank too much wine last night. (Totally unrelated to the health insurance thing, ahem)
7. I drank too much coffee this morning. (Totally unrelated to the wine thing, ahem)

In other words, nothing really makes that much sense. I should be feeling terrible, but instead I feel calm, light, free, optimistic, pleased, inspired…happy. I’ve felt this way all day, and so far, no crash. I can think of no explanation. There clearly isn’t one. Even the most desperate influencer wouldn’t try to sell those 7 reasons as a recipe for happiness (surely!). No, this is a feeling that can only be noticed and appreciated, not attributed. As Kurt Vonnegut taught me to do shortly after he died in 2007, I can only stop and say, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

If I’m the only person responsible for my own happiness, well, I’ve got some questions.

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One of my all-time favorite books is called Synonyms, Antonyms, and Prepositions (you’re welcome, Jeff!) and was written in 1896 by James C. Fernald, although I have the edition that was revised and expanded in 1947. In alphabetical order, Fernald thoroughly explores the shades of meaning embedded within everyday (in 1896) words and their supposed synonyms. To read an entry is to realize things you already knew but never could have said, as well as to learn about bygone usages and lineages of present-day implications. You instantly feel smarter and dumber.

Take, for instance, Fernald’s entry for Abhor. As with each word, he lists the synonyms first: abominate, despise, detest, dislike, displease, hate, loathe, nauseate, scorn, shun. He then works them into such brilliant paragraphs as these, reprinted here without permission. (Please–I would be so lucky to get in trouble for this.)

Abhor is stronger than despise, implying a shuddering recoil, especially a moral recoil. Detest expresses indignation, with something of contempt. Loathe implies disgust, physical or moral. We abhor a traitor, despise a coward, detest a liar. We dislike, or are displeased by, an uncivil person. We abhor cruelty, hate tyranny. We loathe a reptile or a flatterer. We abhor Milton’s heroic Satan, but we cannot despise him. We scorn what we hold in contempt; we shun what we dislike and do not want to meet; we abominate what we intensely loathe. If something disgusts us, makes us feel sick, it nauseates us.

To hate, in its strict sense, is to regard with such extreme aversion as to feel a desire to destroy or injure the object of hatred; properly employed it should be the strongest word for the expression of aversion, but it is often loosely used with no stronger meaning than to dislike, as well as for any other of the above words.

-Funk & Wagnalls Standard Handbook of Synonyms, Antonyms, and Prepositions by James C. Fernald

So yeah, people have been using “hate” incorrectly for at least a century. I don’t know what can be done in these hyperbolic times, but it makes you wonder what would happen if we all just took it down a notch to abhor.

According to the Myers-Briggs test I took when I was seventeen years old, I am equal parts thinking and feeling. This doesn’t mean what I think it means, but let me tell you what I feel it means.

The principal drama of my inner life seems to be the tug-of-war between my desire to burn it all the the ground and my inkling that perhaps I ought to first hear the establishment out. My strong gut feelings are almost constantly kept in check by my sense of responsibility to the amount of information that is available to me. Of course, the amount of information available to me is astronomical, but that’s never stopped me from feeling beholden to it.

On one hand, I recognize that my creative output is a natural outcome of this inner turmoil. Many of my projects (the Mozart Festival, So Hot Right Now, even Backyard Violinist) began with a synthesis of vast amounts of information–limitations, inspirations, conversations, and observations–which eventually led to a single idea that “answered” all of it. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if my equal opportunity stance towards traditions, conventions, norms, advice, opinions, and suggestions only amounts to a whole lot of fool-suffering.

My gut says (quite often) that it’s time for a new way of doing things. My brain responds by saying that, if I ever want my work to be taken seriously, I need to first understand the system I’m throwing off. My gut counters by kicking and screaming. My brain settles the dispute by agreeing to do nothing. For now. Again.

But the most vehement of all the warring voices in my head is the one that assures me that the way things are done is just the way things have been done. That voice has guided me, however gingerly, throughout my entire life. It tends to win out. It’s just that I can’t seem to shake this little dog who’s trailing behind me and barking, “Hear them out! Learn their best practices! You could be wrong! What do you know, anyway?”

I’ve always thought I needed to either get rid of the dog or let it lead the way, but I’m starting to wonder if the dog might have to come along with me forever. If that’s the case, maybe it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to occasionally glance at whatever the dog is yapping at, perhaps even bending down to scratch its head and say, “thanks, little guy,” as long as I stand all the way back up and continue walking toward the horizon.

When doing the right thing isn’t even all that difficult, just do the right thing.

Life is full of gray areas and conundrums, and each of us is endowed with our own charming cocktail of weaknesses, failings, and blind spots, and sometimes doing the right thing requires heroic strength, courage, and sacrifice. But there are other times when it is obvious what we should do, and all it requires is that we briefly wiggle one toe outside of our comfort zone.

For all those times, just do it. She said to herself.

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I’ve decided that my sabbatical begins this week, but I’m still going to work, which seems to be confusing people. To me, it makes sense: if it’s possible to go on vacation and never truly leave work behind, I imagine it’s possible spend an entire sabbatical year scurrying around in the same mental ruts I’d hoped to exit. I can easily see myself remaining calendar-obsessed, task-oriented, ambiguously pressured to produce, and in near-constant mental rehearsal for future events.

Taking a year away from paid employment does not equal the cessation of necessity. There will always be tasks and appointments associated with the work I choose to do, owning a car and a house, having pets, being in relationship with family, friends, and community, and having a physical body. Taking a year away from my job gives me the opportunity to change the way I relate to these tasks, but it doesn’t guarantee that I will, which is why I’ve decided to take the training wheels off early and get used to thinking in a new way. Namely, to be more like the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs and less like Pac-Man.

My m.o. is to chomp through tasks like Pac-Man. It is like a fun game for me. But I’ve heard about the importance of resting, so sometimes I stop chomping and just sit on the couch, jaw ajar, not chomping but ready to chomp, thinking thoughts like, “Whatever you do, don’t chomp!” This is not what they call deep resting.

I would like to be more like the fabled Goose. I’ve always thought of that story as a warning against greed and general human folly, specifically the exploitation of a precious resource, but perhaps it could just as easily be about exploiting ourselves. While we wouldn’t do anything so dramatic as cutting ourselves wide open, we are prone to frequent over-extraction of our own energy to the point of depletion.

I am realizing that I am both the slave master and the slave, the greedy men and the gold-laying goose. But I could never fault the goose for taking a rest, for taking her time, because I know that there are mysterious processes at work inside of her that I can’t see. I could never fault the goose for stepping out into the open air, maybe even taking a swim, after years of being cooped up in a stuffy barn with artificial light, formulated foods, and steroid injections. (Note: if you’re just tuning into this metaphor, I am the evil factory owner, not my employer.) I could never fault her for preening her feathers, blinking at the setting sun, and taking a nap. I understand that what she is doing while not doing anything is magical.

By the way, these golden eggs I plan to lay? I’m not talking about my magnum opus here. I’m talking about scooping the litter box. I’m talking about composing an email. I’m talking about making dinner. All of these tasks live inside of me already, right alongside my magnum opus, ready or not ready to come into the world. They are not an endless army of dots to chomp through on my way to nowhere.

“No one could fault the goose,” I say to myself as I take a deep breath and look up at the clouds; as I decide that a certain task can wait until tomorrow; as I peek out the factory door at the natural world that awaits me. It might not be as safe, but it is surely my home.

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I’m at a point in my life. That much is obvious. Anyone who knows that I am taking a sabbatical from my job next year probably gathered as much. But what point am I at, exactly, and how did I get here?

Well, I’ll tell you. I am at a point in my life where I just want to see if it’s possible for me to live truly and honestly every day. To live fully, even. To live simply and generously, and at a human’s pace. To feel alive to my work, and to feel greater than it. To put 100% in and get as much out. To sink deeply into my contentment without fearing complacency. To shine as brightly as I want, to stand as tall as I am, and to take up as much space as I deserve.

I’m not saying I’m gonna do it. I just want to see if it’s possible.

As for how I got here, I suppose that would be a long story, one I’d rather write once I come out the other side of my little experiment, assuming I am victorious. But the short version is that I’ve tasted this life so many times over the years that I can no longer dismiss it as wishful thinking. That, and the curiosity is killing me.

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I’m trying this new thing where I write some thoughts here every Thursday. This may be the first and last time it actually happens. For the last thirteen years, this blog has felt like the one place in the world where I can truly do whatever I want. I don’t have to conform to any particular expectations, don’t have to write about music, don’t have to write something that makes sense to everybody. It doesn’t have to be serious. It doesn’t have to be funny. It can be very long or very short. I can write once a year or once a week.

This is my happiest place, and I’m rarely here. That’s dumb.

My favorite thought today, the one I would most like to believe, is that everything is working out just exactly as it should, even when I make a stupid mistake, or someone lets me down, or I’m having a frustratingly unproductive day or week, or I can’t see a way out. This is been true before. The best example is a story that I guess I can’t really tell with all the pertinent details (ok so I guess I can’t do whatever I want), but the gist is that I found myself in a situation several years ago in which I needed to buy a violin, which, as a professional musician, is basically impossible. It’s one of the most ludicrous things in the industry; an instrument fine enough for the concert stage is unaffordable for those expected to buy them.

Even though I didn’t have the money, nor could I secure a loan large enough, I still went violin shopping up and down the east coast, hoping for a miracle. No miracles occurred, and what was even more discouraging, I didn’t like any of the instruments I tried. I spent my free time in those days shaking my fist at the universe and crying into my pillow.

Then, while in Albuquerque for a friend’s wedding, I visited the famed Robertson & Sons Violin Shop and instantly fell in love with a German fiddle from the late 1700s. But I still couldn’t buy it, so I had to leave my beloved violin behind in New Mexico. Less than a month later, a miracle did happen and I was able to bring my baby home.

Now here’s the thing: if the miracle had occurred a year earlier than it did and I’d had adequate funds available to me, there is a very good chance I would have settled for one of the east coast instruments that I didn’t really even like. And yet, if you’d come along during that year when I felt hopeless and ragey and told me not to worry because everything was working out exactly as it should…I probably would have literally growled at you.

I’m not espousing a philosophy of “everything eventually works out for everybody” because it obviously doesn’t, and I’ve long since unsubscribed to the idea that there is a Being behind it all who is consciously pulling the strings according to a master plan, but I do find it helpful–on days when I can’t find my foot pedal, or I can’t seem to get my act together, or my plans go up in smoke–to think that, perhaps, everything is working out just exactly as it should.

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