Thursday Thoughts

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.

---

You can support my writing, along with my other creative endeavors, by signing up for monthly donations of $5 or more. Thank you!