whatever you do, don't stop

I'm invincible!!!!

Actually I'm not. However, I am 23, and I don't feel my mortality with any great conviction. Rumor has it that flash floods are bloody dangerous. So I'm a little surprised at how cheerily I drove through one recently.

Whoops, you need context: It rained a lot in N.E.Pennsylvania and New York last night. The highway closed, the water in the area is contaminated, and last night there were flash floods everywhere. This presented me with some scary decisions while trying to get to Clarks Summit to get to BBC and pay my astronomical library fines.

Apparently, flash flooding doesn't always look scary or dangerous. In my case, I knew the water was deep, I knew it was bad, but it didn't click that the radio warnings might really apply to me. Ford Escorts are probably designed to drive through flash floods, right? But everyone was thinking the same thing, even the people driving junkers. It was either make it through a little water, or wait an hour or two to get wherever we're going. Stopping seemed scarier somehow. That's life: the water's rising, but keep on moving because stopping is way scarier. So think with me: if you were at a fork in the road, right leading through deep water and to your destination, and left providing a possible alternate route if you were willing to stop and wait, would you go left, or would you have watched the cars in front of you somehow make it through the water and decide you could make it too? [Subaru drivers: no it's not rhetorical.]

While I drove through, I was thinking, "If something bad happens, I'll feel really stupid." But since I was fine, I guess I'm just cool.

music, hope, sanity, gratitude

The music thing. Bloody, bloody music. If it weren't for McGrew, Beethoven, and Taylor Camerer, I'd have gone stark raving mad. (Indirectly I also owe Steve Shumaker big time.)

Hope is a funny thing. The word hope brings pictures of light bursting through clouds and stuff like that. We like hope. But hope in the wrong thing is a prescription for despair. I've had unrealistic, distracting ambitions for all kinds of things. Usually it just takes me further away from reality than a sane mind belongs. It happened with music. It didn't make me a better musician. Only when I figured out the reality of my relationship with music and my place (so far) has all the distraction and anxiety lifted. I could tell you the story, but it's long, and I have a headache. And this room is hot. I'm starting to sweat..

Sorry. [Yeah, speaking of distractions...] The world does not foster healthy ambitions. The hopes planted in me by my culture have to do with recognition, fame, ego, "proving" myself. To have a healthy stance in pursuing my gifts, like musicianship, I had to go through some real emotional confusion. A new understanding entered my mind as I was reading the score for Beethoven's Sixth [rather, trying to follow along with the music playing]; I realized that recognition and respect are less important than just loving the music. With my ego out of the way, I can clearly see what the music thing all amounts to. For a few years, I won't do anything "cool" - I'll just be laying the founation, enjoying the growth. It will take awhile to be able to read and perform Bach or Metallica. And hey, I might not be great. But the beauty of the thing is it's just a journey of exploration; I escape the burdens of meaningless ambitions. I call this sanity.

McGrew taught me about the freedom that comes from escaping unrealistic ambitions. Beethoven wrote his symphony. Taylor Camerer gave me the score. And Steve Shumaker taught me about sane thinking and living. Thanks yo.

unpublished vents

Sometimes there are things that need to be said, but really shouldn't be published for the whole world to see. So none of you will ever read my "cops are pigs" blog, which I typed in this space, felt better, and deleted. The beauty of the unpublished emotional ventilation blog.