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| So Melanie had this coffee cup that played the Hallelujah chorus (part of it) whenever you tipped it to drink from it. So New Year's morning I wake up and hear this weird music-box sound coming from the kitchen. I finally find that the cup is playing by itself, over and over, just sitting on the shelf in the cabinet. I left it there for a while, figuring it would stop.
(Especially annoying is that one of the phrases ended "do-TE-do"
instead of "do-TI-do" - just like that stupid version of Deck the Halls
that's out there. Is that supposed to make it sound older - by going modal?)
It didn't stop, so we put it in one of the bathrooms, under the sink. You could still hear it, though, so we shut the door to the bathroom and that helped. We expected the battery to run out after constant playing.
Move ahead 36 hours, and it's still going strong. Melanie walks in and says, "It's torture!"
I took it out to the trash in a garbage bag with some other stuff. All the way to the dumpster it's playing away, oblivious to its fate. I threw the bag as hard as I could against the side of the metal dumpster before tossing it in.
It was still playing as I walked away.
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| Home from New Mexico. Hurrah! The trip wasn't too bad, even though we lost 23-0. I never figure the football team's success into an opinion about a marching outing.
I got home at 4 and then slept from 5 pm to 5:30 am. Tomorrow's Christmas! Woo!
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| After presenting my paper on Malcolm Arnold's Fantasy for Bassoon, Louis looked at me and said, "that's the kind of thing you could easily publish."
Holy crap. I'm flying right now.
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| End of the first semester of my master's degree. My double master's, if Andrea will let me do a master's in oboe also. Wow. The way things have turned out since the days at the KT. So much has happened. | | |
| Mellie and I drove up to Lake Tahoe this weekend; I had a gig playing in the orchestra for Michael Crawford (the original Phantom of the Opera). It was a lot of Andrew Lloyd Weber tunes, so over-the-top arrangements of his insipid tunes made up most of the book.
Backstage there were flyers for all of the shows that played that room in the seventies: Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Lawrence Welk, Johnny Mathis, Sonny and Cher, John Denver, Liza Minelli - the biggest acts of the 20th century. And here I was on the same stage.
Halfway through the show, I thought, "I'm going to be a carpenter. This is stupid." It was just a fleeting thought, but one that passes through my mind every time I do a show - I'm just another bassoonist, playing in some thrown-together group. Anybody could have done what I was doing. I was just a convenient musician who didn't turn down the job.
Maybe I should just appreciate the opportunity. I do appreciate it; it's fun to have a reason to travel with Melanie and do something out of the ordinary. But there's something that I can't quite pinpoint, something that always leaves me feeling incomplete after concerts.
What did I really accomplish? I find joy in music, but if you asked me, "Exactly, what it is it that satisfies you musically?" I couldn't give you an answer. It's moments here and there: one day, it may be a recording of "Americans We"; the next it may be writing for accordion and clarinet; a week later it could be early 20's French tunes. Maybe that's the satisfaction: I can bounce from musical interest to musical interest and mentally transfer everything I've learned and thought.
That is the satisfaction. That is exactly what I love about this business - I can go from concert band to jazz to polka to orchestra to pop and back again, and every return to the beginning brings something new and challenging. I can't appreciate it while it's happening, but later I can see what came of each experience. I can look back on my first composition and realize what I've learned and how my writing has improved in the past 12 years. I can compare my first pit orchestra job (Fiddler on the Roof) to the one I just played and recognize what I now take for granted in preparation, listening, and performance.
I bought a flute for Melanie the other day, and I was playing it today. I started at the beginning of our old "Take up the Flute" (do doot do doot) book and played about five pages. I wasn't trying to become James Galway or anything, just doing the simple act of trying to make a nice sound on the instrument. It was very satisfying - not nit-picking every detail of every moment, like I do when playing bassoon - I was just enjoying making simple music for its own sake.
Moments such as those need to make up a larger part of my musical time - which is probably why I bounce from instrument to instrument and style to style. I don't know how other musicians feel about these ideas; honestly, I'm not really interested. I'm embracing my individuality, enjoying what I enjoy, and not doing what I choose not to do. I don't need to be embarrassed because I don't make my own bassoon reeds, or my teacher was a clarinetist, or I've never listened to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Those are the things that make me Eric Fassbender, and I'm rather pleased with him - so why change it?
Reading back through this I see myself bouncing from subject to subject - like I do with my music. Maybe there's some deep psychological reason for all of my vascillating.
Oh well. I'm learning to love what I've been doing naturally for years, and it's nice.
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