I took a walk around the neighborhood the other day. And I took my iPod with me. Now I've got basically every CD I've owned since I was 12 on there, whether I listen to it or not. When I was a young chorister I used to dream of being an organist-choirmaster. Blame it on one of my manic dreams.
Or maybe not. Ok, I wasn't destined to be the next Sir John Scott or Gerre Hancock (they're really good organists by the way), but I was actually rather good. Please don't take this as bragging... but I was even good enough to get into the Peabody Conservatory of Music. My own professor had been taught by the great Marie-Claire Alain, who has J.S. Bach, Beethoven and Mozart in her musical training lineage (so by extension, I do too ). During my years at college I was a "Gentleman of the Choir" (yes that was our official title) and suborganist for a well-noted Men & Boys Choir. To this day the organist-choirmaster remains a friend and a hero of mine and I take my old place in the choir stalls any time I visit.
Anyway, the requirements at Peabody were extremely rigorous, and I was doing a full BA degree at Johns Hopkins at the same time. I remember one day I was on one of the practice organs (a miserable excuse of an instrument in a dank, windowless, sealed off room). I was practicing Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, having repeated it maybe twenty times... and in mid-phrase I said "enough".
Within a week I had withdrawn from the program and from that time I considered myself a failure as a musician. No one has since heard me play the organ, and I've probably only given it a try a couple times in private here and there.
<Dork Alert> For those who might be curious, when I quit, I was working on Herbert Howell's Third Rhapsody for Organ; the Prelude, Fugue & Variation and the Fantasie by César Franck (I got to play this on the front Organ in Duke Chapel! ); Litanies by Gaston Litaize; and of course the Bach C Minor Prelude and Fugue (I even almost had it, but it was never quite good enough). Today the scores are boxed up somewhere in the attic, who knows where.
As I was walking a few days ago, I randomly decided to listen to the Messe pour les Paroisses by François Couperin. I used to be able to play the whole thing (it's a little under an hour long). I haven't listened to this music in eight years probably, and there it sat on my iPod. As I walked and listened to the music I used to be able to play I was so profoundly amazed. I was a decent musician. Definately not great admittedly, but good.
I've had a lot of dreams in my lifetime that I've dropped because I couldn't reach some unrealistic expectation. At this stage in my life, I find that my faith in most of my abilities has been pretty much shot. But as I walked and listened, I began to think that I let go of my dreams to easily. I spend more time thinking of excuses for why I can't accomplish something than trying to figure out how I can do it.
Thanks buddy! I needed to hear your story. I am the exact same way. When I get started on something, I get these crazy expectations about how I am going to do this and that, and when the first error or mistake, or when everything seems to go wrong...I give up and don't finish what I was doing. I wanted to become a preacher and a Christian counsellor, but when my homosexuality wouldn't leave me, I lost hope in my dream. After all, who is going to go to a church where the pastor's a homo? But now I see that there ARE Christians that are GLBTs, and that we gays are getting more understanding from those that used to be against gay Christians. So my dream to become a pastor of a So. Baptist church might still come true. I just need to keep on "keeping on" and not give up. I CAN DO IT!
). During my years at college I was a "Gentleman of the Choir" (yes that was our official title) and suborganist for a well-noted Men & Boys Choir. To this day the organist-choirmaster remains a friend and a hero of mine and I take my old place in the choir stalls any time I visit.
); Litanies by Gaston Litaize; and of course the Bach C Minor Prelude and Fugue (I even almost had it, but it was never quite good enough). Today the scores are boxed up somewhere in the attic, who knows where.
