It's Only a Paper Moon

I interviewed for the position at the Kemper Art Museum. It pays only slightly better than the crappy job I just got, thought they do offer more hours and the promise of not sucking. However, it’s really more of a gig than a job. There are no benefits and most of the employees are students. More importantly, after the holidays the hours would drop dramatically—almost to the point of nonexistence, which is what my current job guarantees. So they’ll probably decide next week, but even if I work there I’ll still be job-hunting for the end of January! I can’t… escape… the job hunt.

So that’s the low-down on the museum. I was rather crestfallen driving home from the interview. I’ll still take it over my present situation, of course… but… crap, dude. Nothing changes.

For quite a while now I’ve been pursuing the museum angle, thinking that it would get my foot in the door with arts administration and maybe somewhere down the line I could organize events. Maybe no one really cares about museums anyway, but working in that environment is better than most. Maybe I could find myself in a comfortable, long-term position with a museum someday. Maybe even Nelson-Atkins… except they are never hiring for “real” jobs.

Maybe there is nothing for someone like me to do.

I was talking with a freshman girl who worked there, getting her point of view. Just being on campus, stopping into a coffee shop where tons of students were studying or meeting, then going into the museum to talk to one of them... it was interesting to see the campus and the surrounding area through the eyes of a young student again.

Coincidentally, I had posted a photo album on Facebook the night before. 58 pictures of my last couple years at Truman, my undergraduate college. Most of the pictures were group photos of alcoholic influence—you know, the “glory days.” I titled it Forever Young, including the lyrics to the Bob Dylan song of the same title. To me, it was a bittersweet and poignant combination.

As I slid farther down the slippery slope of wistful nostalgia, I eventually posed some rather existential questions on Facebook. Do you suppose that old friends whom you haven't seen in years still care as much as you might? If you never tell their stories, are they really anything more than mere fond memories? People part ways and life goes on, so at what point do they forget? After enough time elapses, do we still matter? I can’t help but doubt anyone else is nearly as reflective about this stuff as I am.

I recently told Herr Vogler that everything that happened at Truman was “inconsequential,” which initially offended him because he thought I was being patently dismissive of the value of our education and experiences. What I really meant was, “Nobody I knew from Truman still sits around and thinks about the stuff I did there. It’s all long forgotten. It all seemed to matter at the time, but nobody cares anymore.” That is to say, “Who cares about a recital I had five years ago? Nobody. It’s inconsequential.”

Amanda once told me that past accomplishments aren’t meaningless just because they are in the past. Actually, I’m paraphrasing here, but that was the gist of it.

Some people I know are supposedly going to try to throw together an organization of fellow disillusioned musicians in the St. Louis area, the objective being to hopefully make some money off of our craft, or at the very least put on the occasional concert as a creative outlet. I think many of us are culturally starved. Maybe something will come of it, maybe it will fall apart like every other endeavor.

If you’re looking for transitional material in this post, you won’t find it. It’ll make sense in the end, though.

Lately, for various reasons my thoughts have been drifting to the annual Jazz Fest at Truman. Not being a member of Phi Mu Alpha or a jazz musician, I never had to lift a finger to help with any of it. I was just a spectator, which made it all seem different somehow. Also, jazz has maintained its luster for me simply because I never had any training in it. There’s an element of “freshness” there, and I still love it. Jazz was never part of the required curriculum, but it was admittedly much more respected at Truman than most universities. At Truman, jazz was at least considered “legit.”

Anyway, I was thinking of one specific performance. I can’t remember the guest trumpet player’s name, but it was at the Days Inn right on the outskirts of town. Sublime. I suppose Jazz Fest always gave me a hint of performance envy, which somehow only added to the appeal. Then again, attending any concert these days would probably instill in me a sweet-and-sour blend of delight and remorse, garnished off with a slice of lime. It’s not that I crave the spotlight (though I would certainly like recognition for my craft), rather that I crave the cycle of hard work and release, the buildup to an event, after which you feel satisfaction and relief. It’s that cycle that I became addicted to as an undergrad. So you see, I have all the personality flaws of an orchestral musician and none of the skills. (That was a joke.)

Maybe I should just get my piano chops back, maybe eventually teach lessons on the side, but it’s not as simple as just coming up with the idea to do so. Trust me.

Rewind a bit further. Halloween night, after handing out candy, I went to the casino in search of some supposed Halloween show. It turned out to be in some nightclub where the dress code was strictly enforced (how do you enforce a dress code on Halloween?). So I just wandered around and looked at people’s costumes and thought about how Dean and I tried to make something out of Kansas City and how it differed from Kirksville. I was trying to grasp the elusive and indefinable sense of glamour we used to have with our outlook. I thought, “Maybe we never really had it right. Maybe back then we just had more hope.”

I realize that this has been a very disjoint essay of thoughts, but that’s how it’s been for me all day: it barely makes any sense at all. But the point I’m building up to is this:

Maybe self-delusion really is the best way to go through life.

Heck, it works for some of my old professors. Heck, it works for over 90% of the humans I’ve ever met! Sure, in the grand scheme of things our accomplishments are insignificant, but if you kick over an anthill you still piss off the ants! Getting a choral piece performed is nice, and in that moment it was worth the hard work, so does it really matter if anyone in the audience cares about the performance a month later? I’m reminded of countless times I heard the question posed by whomever was the weary musician sitting in the student lounge of the music building at BGSU at the time: “Why do we do it? Why do we devote our lives to practicing and preparing for a concert that nobody really even cares about?”

Maybe nothing was inconsequential after all. Maybe everything mattered and still matters. Maybe everyone still holds those moments close whenever they do happen to reminisce.

I just want to do something with my craft, but honestly my skills have gone to crap. I can compose, but perform? I’m hardly a musician. Come on. If I ever even was a very good performer, which I doubt I ever was, I am certainly not a performer at all now. Dr. McKamie can attest to my intuitive sense of idiomatic nuance, but that is classified under potential skill. I never learned jazz, either. And I only ever did the bare minimum of conducting. There’s too much to music for anyone to be expected to do it all, but I barely feel like a musician most days.

In concerts and friendships past, what still matters? How do we get that back? People move on and forget. Does that mean that it no longer matters? And why am I the only one ever asking these questions? I know I’m not the only one out there thirsty for more than just a means to an end. Meanwhile, the more space Father Time puts between me and my friends, the sadder it gets to look at those photos of “good old days,” thinking how much has changed and how seldom the people in the pictures must think about it all.

I should probably proofread this, but I doubt it matters. Waka.

So maybe self-delusion really is the way to go. Indeed, there is hope in this insanity… wedged between cynicism and surrealism…

It’s only a paper moon
Hanging over a cardboard sea,
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me…