Being Good Is It’s Own Reward
I had a pretty interesting dream last night. It’s fading rapidly (as dreams do) so I’m probably only going to grab the highlights. I was going to see a concert (I think I was backstage listening, actually…). One of my old undergrad music school classmates (who I had a bit of a rivalry with, at least in my own mind) was there playing bass trombone. (It was oddly enough an amalgam of my old college classmate and my next door neighbor from back when I was a kid… It was kinda switching between the two. This guy was actually was of a tenor trombone player in college but of course he was never an amalgam of my next door neighbor either. Dreams are quite often wacky.)
This wind ensemble (orchestra? group?) was playing some really grand piece by Borodin. (For some reason I remember the composer’s name, but I don’t really know any of Borodin’s music so I don’t know why it was Borodin…). I remember that J*** had a solo and he really played it well. Beautifully, in fact. I was genuinely moved. I went up to him afterwards and told him (and the rest of the section) how much I enjoyed their playing. This was a bit of a leap for me, because I was always highly competitive back in college and it was tough for me to be sincerely complimentary about anyone’s playing.
What’s the point of all this? I give the details of the dream only as preface. They’re secondary to the overriding feeling that this dream left me with and probably don’t make much sense on the surface. The feeling I’m left with is that being good is it’s own reward. It’s not about getting the gigs or getting paid or anything like that. The reason you practice, the reason that you strive to be better is simply about excellence. It’s about going out there and making beautiful music. Or perhaps I should say “excellent music”, because of course it’s not always beautiful. Sometimes it’s funky, sometimes it swings, sometimes it’s beautiful and sometimes it’s all of the above. Maybe it’s just that you go out and are skillful. You go out and do something really really well. You’re a bad-ass at it. And it doesn’t matter if you have the gigs or are getting the gigs or even if there are gigs out there. You practice so that you can be good. Being good is it’s own reward.
Like I said I don’t know why this dream left me with this impression. There were other aspects of it that are (so faded now I can’t recall) that probaby reinforced the feeling. I just remember thinking that it would be cool to be good at the trombone again. To just feel that sensation of being skilled at something again. To know that I can walk into any situation that I’m called on to play in and nail it. I used to be a pretty good trombone player. I had grand visions of being the top freelance trombone player in NYC. Visions of being the first call guy with all the gigs. Except that the gigs aren’t there. I know that had I achieved this it would be illusory at best. The guys that are doing “all the gigs” are settling for an ever shrinking pie made up of lower and lower quality gigs. It got to be downright depressing.
As I think of it now maybe one of the things that brought this dream/feeling on was the lesson I taught yesterday. My student was so excited to be playing these things that we’ve been working on. She was excited by her new skills. It brought me alive seeing that excitement. I saw in her this innocent desire to just be good at the bass. It wasn’t about getting good so that she could get some gig. It was just about being good. I guess I got caught up in that with her.
So, I just wanted to get this down while it was still in my head. It’s the type of thing that I used to write in my journals and I don’t know why I’m putting it out here now. I guess I’m putting it out there into the universe with the hope that I’ll remember it better if I can easily refer back to it. By somehow making this public I’ll be more inclined to act on this new feeling and incorporate it in some way into my ever evolving world view. We’ll see how it goes.