My greatest character fault (that I am aware of; undoubtedly there are others) is that I have a tendency to speak in a matter-of-fact manner about issues that are to others somewhat extraordinary. To add to that failure, I then anticipate that I have won everyone over when, in fact, I may have just left them confused or scared.
As I look at this situation objectively, I can now, after the passage of time, say that I can think of absolutely no reason why anyone should find me or what I say credible. I can hardly imagine, in hindsight, what my poor flute teacher, who was Principal Flute for the MO at the time, for example, was going through. I think, in our own way, each of us was trying to work with the other, without having any understanding of just how wide the gap was. A few months after I started studying with him, he had a near-fatal heart attack. His magnificent sound was compromised, and I don’t think he ever really got it back. After that he seemed somewhat reluctant to schedule lessons with me, and kept sending me off on rabbit trails, as well has having outbursts of what I can now call angry sarcasm at some of the questions I asked. For example, I asked him about his breathing technique on a tricky excerpt. His answer was, “Well, it’s simple. You breathe in, you breathe out.” I much belatedly realized how severely his breath support had been compromised by his health issues. I was, in fact, a poster child for insensitivity in that regard.
And so, I am sure it has been with others with a trained ear. Something that cannot be grasped, something that cannot be controlled, where I seem to be hearing things I am not supposed to be able to grasp (one player ranted and raved because I was singing the ‘inner voices’ to a piece we were listening to. (I still don’t quite get that…:-0)
But at any rate, though, if you meet me in person you will find that I am quite silly and irreverent; in fact, a total opposite of what most anyone would see as a ‘credible musician’. But on the other hand, if you happen to be at all interested, I encourage you to test what I say, rather than just tossing my statements into the trash, so to speak. And in the process, perhaps ask yourself if die zauberflote is so magic that it not only caused a 200M arts organization to come to a grinding halt in order to (as well as for other more obvious reasons) undo damage that was done to me and my three little children, might you then possibly ask yourself if it is impossible that the entire cast of the opera Die Zauberflote has come to life in the 21-st century in Minnesota? For that is at the heart of the mystery of what is happening here…:-)
Le Chant du Rossignol...(song of the nightingale) 