Irony
I’ve been writing for this blog for a few months now. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve actually been a journal-er, (not a journalist), for probably eight or nine years off and on.
I was talking to Jenn about music school the other night and it reminded me of the very first thing I ever wrote in a journal all those years ago. It’s amusing to me that I wrote about the following story to remind myself of the ironies that come up in life. As if I would ever forget. Buckle up kids, this is going to be a long ride.
I went to OU for music school my first two years in college. Even though I was a music education major, not, I repeat NOT a music performance major, I still had to take trumpet lessons and act like I really cared about things like embouchures, (how you form your lips) and mouthpieces and warm-up studies and all manner of academic hoo-hah. And all of us trumpet-playing music majors knew each other, obviously. There weren’t that many of us and we all studied with the same teacher, went to each others’ recitals, saw each other in classes, etc.
Now, I can honestly say I really liked about a handful of people I met in my whole music school experience. But there was one guy we all hated- an upperclassman named Ravi S. Rajan. Why did we hate him? Imagine the most pompous, arrogant, know-it-all, suck-up you’ve ever met in your life. Now give him a trumpet and an almost mystical sway over any music faculty with the power to give him a grade and you’ve just imagined someone only half as annoying as Ravi was.
To be fair, Ravi pretty much left me alone. I guess he saved his playing advice for people who weren’t lost causes. But I heard stories from my brothers in arms involving his doling out unasked-for criticism of tone and technique as if he was their guru teacher and not just a student with a couple years on us. And sure, he was a pretty good player and all, but what was so maddening was how the faculty held him up as some sort of great example, like some sort of golden calf. In their eyes he could do no wrong, which is why it was a given that any ensemble he auditioned for, he was in. He certainly had all of them fooled because the only thing we underclassmen learned from him was how to be an asshole. But I digress. Suffice it to say that Ravi was the Golden Boy of Trumpetland.
It was towards the end of my second year. I had probably already decided that I would be leaving that rotten school situation and was just coasting through the rest of the year. The time had come for Ravi’s big senior recital, where you play one of the two or three trumpet concerto chestnuts by Hummel, Haydn and then some contrasting piece and then a final showstopper of a piece before the audience, (usually comprised of other trumpet students), goes home having heard nothing they hadn’t heard hundreds of times before.
Well, Ravi’s recital was different. It felt like one of those gala Hollywood movie premieres. All the big names from the music department were there—faculty and staff and students. There was even a visiting Frenchman expert lecturer there, apparently tipped off that this was to be an evening of music-making of the highest order. And it certainly was well thought-out. To most people, that senior recital was an absolute chore, but Ravi planned it with some flair. Instead of the routine piano accompaniment for all the pieces, Ravi went ahead and paid a string quartet to play a fairly rare Eric Ewazen piece. So, the stage was set to show the true excellence that was possible after four years of training, given a student with such remarkable aptitude and God-given ability as Ravi.
The first piece went well, but from that point on, it was one of the most surreal hours I’ve ever known. Now is the point in my tale when his story turns a little Shakespearean.
Coming out of that horn were some of the most horrifically bad and yet, terrifyingly funny sounds I’ve ever heard come from an instrument wielded by someone this side of sixth grade band class. It was as if he hadn’t been working on those pieces over and over and over for the last semester or even for the last year. There were all sorts of dry-mouthed piccolo trumpet poots and squeaks that in my head today, sound like Harry Dunne on the toilet in Dumb and Dumber.
Oh, it was awful! In music school, you come to expect a certain level of performance at these things where, at the absolute least, the performer has all the notes under their fingers. Beyond that, as a student, you get to where you listen for musical expression and more sophisticated things like that. But not this night. There was nothing sophisticated about what I was hearing. It was all I could do to keep from laughing and crying: laughing at the absurd sounds and the teleological quenching of my jealousy for that kid, but crying at the revelation of my hard heart and my pleasure at the unbearable-ness of the awkward embarrassment. I remember watching the visiting Frenchman’s reaction with every botched passage and note. He winced and frowned like he was taking heavy gunfire.
And through it all, remarkably, Ravi acted cool and calm and unaffected, as if he couldn’t hear the sound of several dead composers rolling in their graves. During each extended rest, he stood there stone-faced, nose in the air like any good orchestral musician should.
…
And as I laid in bed that night, sleepless and excited at this newly discovered concept of justice in the universe, I realized that the recital probably put on display exactly what Ravi had practiced the most in his years there—maintaining airs. Amidst that utter failure of technique, that utter failure of musicality, that utter failure…he maintained the air that nothing was wrong. He had become an accomplished actor.
I was talking to Jenn about music school the other night and it reminded me of the very first thing I ever wrote in a journal all those years ago. It’s amusing to me that I wrote about the following story to remind myself of the ironies that come up in life. As if I would ever forget. Buckle up kids, this is going to be a long ride.
I went to OU for music school my first two years in college. Even though I was a music education major, not, I repeat NOT a music performance major, I still had to take trumpet lessons and act like I really cared about things like embouchures, (how you form your lips) and mouthpieces and warm-up studies and all manner of academic hoo-hah. And all of us trumpet-playing music majors knew each other, obviously. There weren’t that many of us and we all studied with the same teacher, went to each others’ recitals, saw each other in classes, etc.
Now, I can honestly say I really liked about a handful of people I met in my whole music school experience. But there was one guy we all hated- an upperclassman named Ravi S. Rajan. Why did we hate him? Imagine the most pompous, arrogant, know-it-all, suck-up you’ve ever met in your life. Now give him a trumpet and an almost mystical sway over any music faculty with the power to give him a grade and you’ve just imagined someone only half as annoying as Ravi was.
To be fair, Ravi pretty much left me alone. I guess he saved his playing advice for people who weren’t lost causes. But I heard stories from my brothers in arms involving his doling out unasked-for criticism of tone and technique as if he was their guru teacher and not just a student with a couple years on us. And sure, he was a pretty good player and all, but what was so maddening was how the faculty held him up as some sort of great example, like some sort of golden calf. In their eyes he could do no wrong, which is why it was a given that any ensemble he auditioned for, he was in. He certainly had all of them fooled because the only thing we underclassmen learned from him was how to be an asshole. But I digress. Suffice it to say that Ravi was the Golden Boy of Trumpetland.
It was towards the end of my second year. I had probably already decided that I would be leaving that rotten school situation and was just coasting through the rest of the year. The time had come for Ravi’s big senior recital, where you play one of the two or three trumpet concerto chestnuts by Hummel, Haydn and then some contrasting piece and then a final showstopper of a piece before the audience, (usually comprised of other trumpet students), goes home having heard nothing they hadn’t heard hundreds of times before.
Well, Ravi’s recital was different. It felt like one of those gala Hollywood movie premieres. All the big names from the music department were there—faculty and staff and students. There was even a visiting Frenchman expert lecturer there, apparently tipped off that this was to be an evening of music-making of the highest order. And it certainly was well thought-out. To most people, that senior recital was an absolute chore, but Ravi planned it with some flair. Instead of the routine piano accompaniment for all the pieces, Ravi went ahead and paid a string quartet to play a fairly rare Eric Ewazen piece. So, the stage was set to show the true excellence that was possible after four years of training, given a student with such remarkable aptitude and God-given ability as Ravi.
The first piece went well, but from that point on, it was one of the most surreal hours I’ve ever known. Now is the point in my tale when his story turns a little Shakespearean.
Coming out of that horn were some of the most horrifically bad and yet, terrifyingly funny sounds I’ve ever heard come from an instrument wielded by someone this side of sixth grade band class. It was as if he hadn’t been working on those pieces over and over and over for the last semester or even for the last year. There were all sorts of dry-mouthed piccolo trumpet poots and squeaks that in my head today, sound like Harry Dunne on the toilet in Dumb and Dumber.
Oh, it was awful! In music school, you come to expect a certain level of performance at these things where, at the absolute least, the performer has all the notes under their fingers. Beyond that, as a student, you get to where you listen for musical expression and more sophisticated things like that. But not this night. There was nothing sophisticated about what I was hearing. It was all I could do to keep from laughing and crying: laughing at the absurd sounds and the teleological quenching of my jealousy for that kid, but crying at the revelation of my hard heart and my pleasure at the unbearable-ness of the awkward embarrassment. I remember watching the visiting Frenchman’s reaction with every botched passage and note. He winced and frowned like he was taking heavy gunfire.
And through it all, remarkably, Ravi acted cool and calm and unaffected, as if he couldn’t hear the sound of several dead composers rolling in their graves. During each extended rest, he stood there stone-faced, nose in the air like any good orchestral musician should.
…
And as I laid in bed that night, sleepless and excited at this newly discovered concept of justice in the universe, I realized that the recital probably put on display exactly what Ravi had practiced the most in his years there—maintaining airs. Amidst that utter failure of technique, that utter failure of musicality, that utter failure…he maintained the air that nothing was wrong. He had become an accomplished actor.
posted by Mike @ 12:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home