In a recent oboe masterclass at wlu, the great Alex Klein introduced this heirarchy, where the technical aspects of playing the oboe must be met first, but cannot be fulfilled without artistry. Similarly artistry cannot be complete without an overlying philosophy, which cannot exist in a performer without a sense of self, which (he argues) is primarily endowed by one’s community.

I was not brought up in the context of a religious congregation, or an ethnic community. My family is not large or close-knit. I felt alienated from my meathead peers in school and my fellow Chathamite musicians were only remote acquaintances and didn’t have a huge impact, as ‘communities’ are wont to do, on my sense of self or philosophy. Thank god.

So what?

So, while I ostensibly have an extremely strong sense of self, my bullheaded opining and moderate artistic talent being exemplars of such, in reality I find myself entwining the needs of people (particularly women, particularly women I love) so tightly into my own that mine are lost. Would having been raised in the context of a ‘community’ have changed this? Possibly. Possibly not. It probably doesn’t matter. What worries me is that my sense of self, apart from this trait, is defined by a lot of things that are NOT self. Oboe. Atheism. Liberalism. Feminism.

This scares me. Am I losing my ‘self’? Am I only just finding my ‘self’? What will happen to everything that means everything to me once it is lost, or found?

I feel like this hierarchy is an assertion that my life is missing a coigne that would allow my true self and my artistry to be complete, or at least allow their completeness to be expressed. This isn’t to say that I’d automatically take the word of the best oboe player in the world to be truth – although he is certainly a very intelligent and enlightened man – but I know that something is off, something is missing. Something is stopping me from being ME.

We met as co-workers, and though our friendship began slowly (Jason is notoriously and admittedly hesitant to embrace new people as close friends), our trio has become an epic fanfare of mutual admiration and love, and one of the most important circles of friendship of my life.

Jason is the kind of person who, at the same party, will declare me five-sixths gay (intended, and taken, as a great compliment), before announcing to a table full of women I’ve never met that I love vagina. In his bubbly and wiggly way, he constantly dares me to question my small-town repressed hangups, my snobbery and narrow-mindedness, by showing that watching Oprah may not necessarily be a co-optation of evil corporate America, but can be a genuine appreciation of the human condition. That truly loving music need not (or MUST not) involve thought and analysis. Perhaps most of all, that the past is no more than the past, and that the way you love is the biggest part of who you are. Jason’s love radiates from each photo he takes, each declaration of admiration for a musician or actor or friend. I wish I could love as much as he does.

My dear Sophia challenges me perhaps more than any friend I’ve ever had. It’s not a challenge to be her friend, at all – it’s just that she sees right through me. My usual tactics of decimating a debate opponent with precise vocabulary and a refined æsthetic simply won’t do, because she possesses them too, knows all the tricks, damn her. She is accepting and funny, and beautifully in love with her partner. I admire her for her intelligence and reasonableness, both of which she employs with calmness, caution, and most of all, deadly precision. I cherish Sophia’s friendship and conversation, and await with longing her return to Canada.

The best thing about Sophia and Jason, though, is that the three of us have found an ability to combine Power-Rangerishly into a dynamic trio for whom it is as easy to pounce on an argument one of us finds ridiculous as it is to support each other through uncertain times. Though more than ten thousand kilometres lie between us, our triangle still feels as solid as it did when we could make a slow day at the Box Office sound like a data-entry powerhouse with our furious posting. We have discussed such intimacies as cook books, sleeping with co-workers, sinus infections, corset piercings, repression, depression, and anal sex. Each time I learn what they think, how they live and love, I feel lucky to be privy to the information.

These are for keeps, these two.

Even smaller than that, though, are moments that reveal humanity to itself.

In my limited travels, I find myself experiencing worlds of mirth, envy, judgment, within the infinitesimal span of a moment. Deciding, in a froth of hyperbole, that the person wearing silver pants and an orange vest must certainly have the worst taste of anyone I’ve ever met. Marvelling at the blueness of the sky, or the sheer misery of rain and -1 degree temperatures in the last week of March. Admiring the statuesque pride of a hound on the subway, its short sleek fur the tan-grey of dry soil. Finding irony in listening to Mozart while walking through the Eaton Centre.

More to the point, experiencing moments where I can see the sheer insanity, inanity, illogic, beauty, pain, history, of a person’s life. Hearing the unreasonable thing someone says while arguing with their partner on the subway, or pitying some morbidly obese person, or wondering what life has been like for the man whose cap just fails to cover surgery scars and skin grafts.

These moments mean worlds to me, but they never last. Most of them I forget or ignore; the vigilance of city life, trepidation about what could be, or regret about what was, usurping so much appreciation for what simply is.

In my first few experiences of Toronto, the sheer numbers of people struck me. Not for their own sake – but the idea that each person, each driver of a vehicle on the 401, each person crammed into a subway car, or begging for change, or selling street meat, has this history-driven energy that pulsates and permeates everything that surrounds them. The clothes they’re wearing, the fight they had with their teenager the night before, the engagement ring in their pocket waiting to be offered, the corporate account they are in danger of losing. All these things affect everything, everyone.

That I forgot to eat breakfast affects my ability to properly edit a piece of music, the resulting mistake of which goes by a lazy teacher through to a student whose brain, at a particular moment, chooses to pick up an incorrect tidbit of theoretical information, resulting in later confusion and frustration, thus stymying a potential performer or audience member from understanding what it is they (and I) love. Fossil fuels are made up of organic material that, millions of years ago, collected energy from the sun and used it to build cells, before being trapped in wait for us to figure out how to extract its potential for profit. These two routes are related in that they are all made up of moments, circuitously connected through chance, or fate, or will, or karma, or whatever.

The routes have no termina, need no resolution. Moments go on occurring forever, as they always have – the only thing that changes is the way we decide to measure them and remember them.

Life is suffering.
The cause of suffering is desire or attachment.
There can be an end to suffering.
The path to the cessation of suffering (i.e. the Eightfold Path).

It is hard to talk about love. It is hard to love. Maybe it’s harder to be loved.

Those of you (I sometimes think there are only two people who ever read this blog anyway, which is ok) who know me and have had protracted discussions about pretty much anything with me are aware that I am a bit cerebral. I’m also passionate and stubborn to the point of pig-headedness. I also have a hard time integrating my attachment to truth with the human need to feel.

I was cerebral from a very young age. There is an interpretation of my past that leads to the conclusion that, typical of a child of an addict, I grew up far faster than I ought to have done, and taught myself to suppress what I needed in favour of what my addicted parent(s) needed. I became good at music and school, good at talking to girls, good at reasoning out people’s (other people’s) problems, and good at ignoring, forgetting, or refusing to acknowledge my own suffering and emotional needs.

As an adult, this seems to manifest itself in, among other things, an almost obsessive attachment to how my partner feels, a fiery anger toward religious thought, and a bullish need to prove that I Am Correct. These latter make it quite reasonable for people to think me arrogant and intolerant. The former makes it hard for me to turn inward and allow my partner to be sensitive to how I myself feel, however much she wants and tries to.

Anyone who has, indeed, gotten into a protracted religious (or political, or musical) argument with me also knows that if I get backed into a wall, I get upset about it and doggedly insist that I am still right. I thus fall victim to the same fallacy of which I accuse religious fanatics (and moderate believers). This is infinitely frustrating to me, especially because intellectually I recognize that if I could let go of my obsession with truth and correctness, I would be a lot better off.

The bottom line is that I want to love. I love love. Love is music, love is food, and sex, and washing dishes together on a sunny day, and watching The Office during a blizzard, and knowing and acknowledging defeat in an argument. I do love. I just won’t fucking relax and let myself do it without thinking about it and evaluating and codifying and quantifying it. It’s a very stressful way to comport myself.

This terrifies me. I have never devoted myself 100% to anything in my life – yes, I am particularly passionate about some things, but when it comes to pragmatically applying myself to them (as opposed to giving them lip-service), I find it very difficult. I read novels and talk to individuals who are so absorbed in one thing, or one person, or one idea, that it consumes their entire being. In a way, the way that wants to be the principal oboist of some major symphony, I envy those characters for their audacity and dedication, and by and large these oboists are the ones who win jobs. But I also, I think, pity these people. People whose lives revolve around oboe such that they don’t know anything about politics, or linguistics, or pop culture, or sports, or math, or whatever.

I am a chronic dabbler and have liked it that way – thinking about what I may lose in order to do what I love, to do what I MUST do, is not easy. Most of my life, I admit, has been pretty easy in terms of career. I was good at school without having to exert strenuous effort; I found an affinity for the oboe that let me get away with not practising; things typically seem just to fall into my lap. I’ve been anticipating the end of this trend for some time, but I suppose anticipating it does not equal being prepared for it.

For all my posturing, for all my reading and philosophizing and teaching and condescending, it seems that I still have just as much to learn as anyone else. How I deal with this disillusion, I suppose, will define the next chapter of my life. Wish me luck.

Yet somehow I still manage to be (or to appear to be) good at my job. My bosses constantly praise my efficiency and accuracy, I’ve recently been promoted, and they let me leave early pretty much any time I need to in order to teach, go to gigs or rehearsals or concerts, or for no good reason whatsoever.

It makes me wonder why people do jobs that they hate and are bad at. It’s probably arrogant of me to say so, since everyone needs to pay the rent.. but I don’t know if I believe that not everyone can do a job they love. It’s easy for me to say this, being someone who is still young enough to be actively pursuing a career he loves, but I can only imagine the misery and defeat born of working eight hours a day in a shitty office filled with people you dislike and duties that do nothing to stimulate the mind or heart. I find it bad enough working eight hours a day in a decent office filled with people toward whom I am ambivalent and duties that are at best fascinating and at worst bemusing.

I imagine most people have to find a way either to love their job or at least to tolerate it. I’ve met people who work in an office all day at a job in which they have nothing personal invested, and they go home and forget about it on the way to the dance club. Then again, I’ve also met musicians (invariably boring musicians) who think of what they do simply as a job, a way to pay the bills. What dreadful ways to go about a life.

The details, while potentially epic in their beauty or horror, ultimately all mean the same thing: life continues.

As an adult, all those assumptions are rightly proved to be utter shit. Your Parents, the often-painful lesson teaches, are just people. Just “me”, as far as they know. Their choices are as likely selfish as selfless, the course of your life directed by decisions made without your input, without your well-being in mind, certainly even years or decades before your birth. The individual neuroses one imagines would make someone a terrible spouse or parent turn out to do exactly that, unbeknownst (until too late) to the new victim.

A fun weekend at Grandma’s turns out to have been a stint in rehab for mom. That wonderful Christmas where a previously barren tree erupts with gifts turns out to have come from an uncle who fronted the money for your presents until your mom could pay him back. The painting suddenly hanging on the wall turns out to be covering a fist-shaped hole. An apparent lack of outward affection in your grandparents turns out to bely a tacit, stoic, and fierce love for each other, their victimized and victimizing daughter, and perhaps most of all their grandchildren.

On the other hand, in the same way that we learn that our families’ decisions are made largely without us in mind, they eventually learn that they don’t know as much about you as they thought. The same silence that makes a son hate his father makes it impossible for his father to know it. An aunt calls to offer her shoulder and is coldly turned down. Or, worse, a naïve and doting son begins adulthood feeling betrayed and abandoned by his parents but won’t swallow his pride and address it.

I watch enough television to be aware that nothing turns out the way we expect, and that hating your parents and eventually recanting is a fairly standard aspect of “growing up”. I roll my eyes at how cliché the whole thing is. In part, I dread what may happen when I someday start a family – will I inadvertently make the same mistakes my parents did? What new and horrible mistakes will I make in raising my children? In trying to avoid having a son who hates me as I have my father, will I upset some natural Freudian process?

You may say I’m far too young, or far too far away from such a thing, to be worrying about it now. But I think about these things.

Seriously. Why does EVERY American political scandal (and some Canadian) have to have “-gate” affixed to the end? It’s Lazy Journalism. I’d be the first one to assert that American politics have been barreling down pretty much the same path with few deviations for fifty years, but is it really necessary to compare every scandal to Watergate? Yes, it was a huge political controversy. Sure, I suppose it paved the way for X-Files-worthy paranoia (perhaps not unjustly). But to blithely use “-gate” as a suffix to entitle any scandal to epic proportions by making it sound like Watergate.. it’s shameful.

I think the advantages of skimming outweigh the pitfalls. For one, I get a general idea of the tone and subject matter of a piece – and form an opinion of it – rather quickly. After skimming ten or so pages of a novel I have a pretty good idea of whether or not I’ll bother to finish it. It has also done me quite well in school. I’m a big-picture sort of person, and being able to sense the tone of a piece in a short period of time (not to mention understanding exam questions and recalling a logical, if not necessarily textbook-verbatim, answer) has saved my lazy ass many times. Similarly, now that I have discovered StumbleUpon, I decide what blogs I’ll bookmark after a few seconds of taking in the design, tone, and a bit of the content.

I don’t pretend to think that I am weeding out only material that i genuinely will not enjoy; I’m sure I am avoiding through sheer laziness a lot of amazing writing and thinking. I also start a lot of books and lose interest, which is both a symptom of being raised in front of Nintendo and a pitifully mainstream behaviour. Even with books I don’t skim, I have many times missed key points (I seem to remember having to re-read the Battle of Hogwarts chapter in Deathly Hallows because I had skimmed over the deaths of two key characters). It also catches up to me in my editing work, since if I skim over an error it means I haven’t really been doing my job properly.

All in all, it’s like so many aspects of my life – perpetually present, guilt-inducing, but ultimately manageable. If, as an author, blogger, or member of the non-skimming public, this insults you, then I encourage you to start skimming. Details be damned.