Tag Archives: personal history

everyday observations

Lean-To

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Here is some of my journaling from today: I got worked up in rehearsal. I always get worked up at rehearsals. I start out okay, if I’m lucky. Then I start losing myself. My true self. Then my fighting, venting, passive-aggressive self begins to take over. Then it’s over. It’s just a question of how rapid the descent.
I guess it’s hard for me to think about the future when I am secretly (even to myself) ruminating over past events. I would obviously like to be able to plan future events. It would be more fun to have an idea of how my life might blossom and grow, or even just scheduling a nice vacation trip. I guess I feel lucky to make it one day at a time due to the burden weighing on me from unresolved relation(ships).

I’m back. Actually the rehearsal was a positive experience for me. I started out in quite a different place than my usual work/musician mindset. And there’s really only one possible explanation. Self discovery. I know for a fact that my self-awareness and wisdom directly affect music-making. It ain’t no theory.

originally published on 3/19/08

hypotheses and philosophies

Binders

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I’ve known musicians who conclude that in order to be happy and fulfilled, they must find more meaning in life than simply excelling at music-making. Although I have explored many other facets of life, in my heart I never really left the womb of music. I have even suggested to people that everything they do should be in the service of their music, philosophically speaking.
I guess today at the bookstore I found a chink in that armor/cocoon. There really must be more to life than music. There is obviously more for 99% of people in the world. Maybe it would have to be a birth of sorts for me – and just as difficult and shocking to my system. Maybe that is one of the main loops I get stuck in: I try to expand my cello-oriented perspective, find it too daunting and alien, and soon fall back to where I started. When I peruse my blog entries, I see how often I have felt like I cannot grow or progress from a place of dissatisfaction, no matter what steps I take. This could explain why.

originally published on 6/20/08

everyday observations

Untowards

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A friend of mine points out that I am highly judgmental of myself and others. It ends up making me extreme in my reactions and opinions. And neurotic. And impatient. It is all reflective of the ways in which I judge the world. I judge it by speed (impatient) and quality (snobby) and whether it serves me well (self-obsessed). But it all comes back to constant overseeing judgmentalness. It is my endless hamster wheel. Round and round. Back and forth. It is so comfortable and familiar, I couldn’t even imagine getting off the ride, the merry-go-round, the miserable-go-round. But I could. It could happen. I could stop long enough to step off onto the real ground, the real universe. I think I do step off (almost inadvertently) at times. Do I know when that takes place? I think so. I feel different then.

originally published on 3/23/07

hypotheses and philosophies

The Limit

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Wow. What is it about home that sucks it out of me? What residual crap am I dealing with that has nothing whatsoever to do with my present life? Because I really am at a loss to discover what could be the instigator of my numbness. As soon as I got off the plane in Ft Myers I felt it beginning. By the time I got home I was ready to collapse into my useless routine. There is nothing remotely cruddy enough about my life here that would explain this reaction.

In fact, I did some fantastic reading, writing and soul-searching on the plane ride from Detroit. You wanna see some? But wait, before I do that, let me just say that my growth and emergence from whom I have been to whom I could be is inevitably going to be slow and incremental. So I would be wise to cut myself a little slack. Okay, here’s the quotation:

Wisdom is seemingly a cure for what I frequently consider neuroses. The seeking of wisdom. The imparting of it. Wisdom may not be a static state of being. It must find expression. I like to be static, to find defining characteristics of myself, others, or situations, and label them or pinpoint them. But what if it is in the striving for this clarification that truth and beauty lie? Not to mention serenity and open-endedness? It feels like a paradox: motion, generosity of spirit, and active inquiry may be the pathway to inner calmness and balance. Maybe it is akin to yin and yang – one without the other is a spiral downward. Passion and reason, as Gibran says. He continuously attributes his higher sense of wisdom to observing the menial day-to-day lives of the villagers of Orphalese (The Prophet). Give and take. A giver needs a receiver and vice versa. What use is wisdom without confusion, and how can the confused strive towards anything without learned guidance?

I guess one of the sources of my neurotic behavior is my need to find equality and fairness in the world. But maybe that is a flawed aspiration in the first place. That would lead to a stasis and eventual deterioration. For how does one determine the superior philosophy to use as the benchmark for a good life? Whatever and whoever are eliminated will end up being squashed, discounting any equality.

originally published on 12/8/07

everyday observations

Lancet

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I’m funny. I don’t think things affect me. Ha! Just ’cause I don’t keel over with a seizure or aneurysm has nothing to do with whether I have escaped scot-free from an abuse, either self or other-inflicted. Maybe I’m not the most sensitively created being in the universe. But each small act I engage in has at least an equal repercussion on who and what I am in the ensuing hours and days. I’m glad I googled scot-free, because that’s precisely not how I end up after any sort of indiscretion.

Another wonderful truth is that I cannot separate different parts of myself from eachother. I am one organism, and each part is linked to the rest. I guess the question becomes, to what degree are these things linked? Well, that depends how deep you look.

originally published on 2/3/08

hypotheses and philosophies

Bar None

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I am only as able to relish life’s offerings as my level of openness permits. I cannot pick and choose what I will open myself up to or what I will bar from my life. Everything is dependent on an overarching quantity and quality of trust. I don’t like this aspect of life? Then I don’t get to enjoy this other thing that I yearn for, because they are at equal levels of intensity. Tough luck. So much for Utopia. If you think you’re going to find your Utopia, achieve your nirvana, think again. Because any amount of intense joy and pleasure invariably opens the gates to an equivalent amount of annoyance, displeasure and sorrow. Sorry buddy. You have to take the good with the bad, as the saying goes.

The icky things I’ve chosen to bar from my immediate existence should be bothersome enough to be worth what I’m giving up on the sunnier side of the spectrum. That’s a tough call, but at least I should try to be more conscious of my capacity to make that decision.

originally published on 7/12/08

hypotheses and philosophies

Gargantuan

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I am a victim. I behave like a victim. One aspect of that is turning the victimization in on oneself. Those feelings have to go somewhere. You try not to let them loose on others, so who’s left but your little self?

Maybe that is one odd thing we are never taught – how to release all those pent up feelings of hurt and frustration. It doesn’t fit very neatly into society. You almost have to reinvent society to fit your needs. It’s kind of like starting from scratch. You wake up and you say, “I am not going to continue following this path that is so ill-suited to my own happiness. But since this is the path laid out before me, I’m going to have to step off into the abyss and take this one moment as if I am a newborn baby. I shall be absolutely clueless as to how things are arranged in this world and how I’m expected to act. And just do this moment by moment until I find I am forging a brand new path.” That is the precise opposite of a victim – one who determines his own destiny. It is also the opposite of a victimizer/abuser. Neither sides of that particular coin are making choices of their own. Their lives are waking nightmares, recirculating past events with no expectation of awakening to the beauties of the now.

originally published on 10/10/08

reflections within

Lycopene

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There is a wealth of information brewing inside me on the subject of love. I was wishing I could put it all into words as I perused the journal section at Barnes & Noble. A blank page is a very alluring thing to me. I of course have little formal training in the written arts, apart from a good English teacher I had in high school.
It’s an odd sensation to know you could write volumes on a subject, but then feel stuck for putting down even one coherent sentence. What occurred to me at B&N is that I cannot keep these ideas and feelings inside me for the rest of my life and expect it to have been a fruitful one. They are profuse enough that it becomes a ridiculous notion not to make some kind of use of the sum of their parts.

originally published on 10/1/07

reflections within

Caricature

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I am stubborn. But I can only see it clearly when some part of it falls away. Like my insistence that the way I like to play the cello is the only and best way, for me at least. Something happened recently, though I’m not sure what, that has changed that locked-in point of view. There are a number of possible external events which could have combined to cause it, or perhaps it’s an internal emotional or biochemical thing.
Whatever it is, I now have been granted the freedom to make headway in various areas of my playing which have been weak. What is so nice is to see the difference between stubbornness and strength of character. In my case, being stubborn prevented me from seeing options which were rather close at hand, if only I had not boxed myself into what may have been a necessary cubicle. A safety net, perhaps.

Strength of character is something very different. Maybe it’s kind of the opposite. Being able to perceive and appreciate a myriad of viewpoints. And being unstuck.

originally published on 12/27/07

reflections within

Why

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What made me so vulnerable in college? What makes me vulnerable now, to this day? What makes me weak, powerless to think my own thoughts and take my own steps? Isn’t there a reason why I am always second-guessing myself?
I am now coming to know the reasons. But should I tell you, o reader? Can I actually be forthcoming, if only here in this odd un-place? I would like someone to know. This seems safe on the surface.

Is it possible I have been beaten down into submission all along the way? But, of course, always with a smile, or a candy, or a dollar bill. Not in the more obviously harmful ways I was later exposed to and was by then defenseless against. Isn’t it time I told the story of how I came to be such that I am? How I ended up impotent. And speechless. And rich with melancholy.

originally published on 3/18/08