Why

In response to one of my blog posts, a reader asked if I had ever considered doing something else besides music (read it in the comments here). I started this blog because I think there’s a story behind all of our pictures of music stands and concert hall panoramas, and we shouldn’t feel bad about taking the bad with the good. Here are the main three reasons I won’t quit, just in case anyone’s wondering.

I love the way I play

I am still so satisfied after a great practice session. I love the motivation I get from seeing a big audition announced, and I love the process of improving myself, and sounding better as a result. I love approaching a concert or solo performance with the goal of making great music, and the feeling of release and reflection when it’s over. I love playing big, small, fast, slow, pretty, loud, and brazen. I love my sound.

I won’t let my story end here

I love what I do too much to let it all burn out here. The level of work I feel I deserve hasn’t come calling yet. The end of all of this can’t be that I won the same show five times, advanced in four auditions, won three of them, was ousted from my dream job, and fizzled out from there. Even though no one notices right now, my story is only over if I let it end. I owe it to the level I’ve achieved to play this out and find the point of all of it.

I’m not finished yet

Bruckner 1-6 and 8, Mahler 4 and 7, Dvorak 7, Tchaik 1-3, Symphonia Domestica and Alpine Symphony: all pieces I haven’t played yet. I want to play more recitals. I want to play standards with my own combo of instruments. I want to play movies on stage, or in the studios. There’s still so much that I want to do, and even talking about it still excites me.

So reader, I’m not quitting because this is who I am. The schedule is hard, and it’s harder still to watch literally everyone I went to school with and everyone I know have everything I never had. As invisible as I am in the city where I studied and now work in, it pales in comparison to how much I love what I do, and what I’m capable of.

I don’t know why I haven’t found the success I’ve asked for yet, or why it hasn’t found me, and maybe it never will. But I could give a shit. I’m gonna play because I want to.