I have decided to begin a blog to track my upcoming life adventure. Currently I am sitting at home, as my cat Super eats the remaining flecks of Grape Nuts from my cereal bowl. I am taking the day off from work, and enjoying it immensely. In an hour or so I will leave to go to Brooklyn to record with Michael Arenella's Dreamland Orchestra, a band I have been playing with off and on since I moved to NYC in 2002, almost 9 years ago. Come the end of June it will be 9 years.
So here is the premise (or in other words, here is my life...). I am 34 years old, a musician (I play piano and compose), and I am about to become a father. In some exact amount of days, hours, minutes I am going to become the father of a little girl. I have no idea how many days, hours, minutes I have remaining before that moment comes. In fact, I could get a call in the middle of the recording session today and have to run out. But that probably won't happen. Nicole (my wife) isn't due until June 2nd, so I theoretically have a couple of weeks left. According to a doctor's theory made in September 2010. Very few people give birth on their due date. It is not something you can plan around.
However, there are some things I can plan around right now. For instance, I can plan around the fact that I have accepted a teaching assistant position at Arizona State University in the fall, and that my first orientation day is August 11th. Which means I can plan around having to leave my current job, move out of my apartment, sell my car, try to find an apartment long distance, travel 2500 miles, move my stuff 2500 miles, and all with a new born baby girl somewhere around 2 months old. That I can plan around.
Faure's nocturne #1, is where I am right now. Slightly nervous, unsettled, searching, echoing. I though that writing a blog would be a way I could share this experience with others and myself, and look back on years from now to appreciate the fact that I succeeded in this little adventure. We'll see how that goes.
There are those who say that we are crazy to initiate such upheaval at this moment in our lives, and I am one of them. However, there are times when you realize that you are on the wrong path, and I am dealing with the fact that I have become intrenched in a job which doesn't speak to me or allow me to excel at the things I do best. It all started out well enough. I was ready to leave New York City in 2005, and not even that sad about it. New York is great, I love this city, but I moved here for a world that doesn't exist anymore. The world of Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespy, the world of working to pay the bills and staying up all night at jam sessions and jazz clubs, the world of black and white and Harlem.
Working class, struggle, emotional release...yada yada yada. Oh man, it is not here any more. I lived in Harlem for a time, the first few months after moving from Boston. I loved it. Around the corner for St. Nick's pub, fried fish down the street, and Aunt Dot's amazing home cooking. 2 months of bliss. And then you could maybe say I lost it. You realize very quickly in New York that things aren't easy. It is not easy to get from one place to the next quickly, especially when you think that all the burroughs are one city. This place is HUGE. And expensive. My dream of living a poor existence didn't seem to gel with any of my social circles, and I was done by 2005, ready to leave and start again somewhere else. Out of the blue I got this job offer from Sony Music, to make ringtones. Polyphonic ringtones. Like this:
I might have made that one. Midi style.
The job was great for a few years until, as you can imagine, technology caught up, and no longer were midi versions of song necessary. Increased phone memory and faster download speeds meant that people could download the ACTUAL SONG. Yeah, the dream was over, but me and my fellow polyphonic engineers somehow still had jobs. We were doing other stuff. I was project managing, and enjoying it. Life was fine. I still sat in a room with 5 other people: Kurt, the electro-pop artist Kap10Kurt (http://kap10kurt.com/), Hiromi the concert pianist, Brian the hard-rock vocalist, Jeff the mandolinist and sketch-comedy guy, and Robert the reggae guitarist and mench. I complained, but in reality I was able to do my work, still play in bands and write music even at the office. But things started to change. I made the mistake of excelling at project management, so that I was moved from Kurt's team to the operations team. They moved my desk out of the back room. I was out with everyone else. I started getting busy busy busy and having more stress at work dealing with people who wanted this job to be a career and their full passions, as opposed to my nice detached group in the back room. I would come home stressed and annoyed with people, and started to feel the pressure to make this my life's commitment. I was told that I would be getting a raise and a new title. That was 2009. I did finally get a raise and a new title - last Thursday. A 2.5% raise.
But a raise it was. But alas, it really has nothing to do with this resent for me. I am going back to school because I am no longer afraid to do what I love for fear that I might fail. I thought that is what I was doing for all of these years. And in a way I was, however I always kept one foot on dry land as they say. Never jumped in all the way. Never trusted myself enough. It has taken me years to realize that I am worthy of living in this world, of providing for myself and giving to others, and that I have something valuable to give. I can truly thank all of the experiences I have had in New York for that realization. Whether it was my experience with Sunroom, or Asiko, or the Rhapsody Players, or almost playing 2 off-broadway shows, or recording, or thriving in a corporate structured environments such as Sony, I now finally believe that I can succeed at my passion. I know that I am not the greatest musician alive, but I also know that with my myriad of skills, yes, I said myriad, I will be fine.I hope to have the time to reflect on these and other experiences while I write about this adventure. It is a quiet night...
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