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| Photo borrowed from blog at Thirty One Bits |
I had a gig this past weekend (WOOHOO break out the
champagne a WORKING MUSICIAN! Too bad champagne gives me a headache, unless you
buy Veuve-Cliquot … on a side note, does anyone have one of those cool plastic
refrigerator boxes that those bottles come in? I’ve been coveting one of those
for a while). We were playing Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony, the best
one, honestly. It gets quite loud several times and I was playing fourth horn,
which means that I was sitting next to the timpani. I think nothing of this.
The timpanist, who has obviously had people complain about his volume levels
before, engaged me to say that he was sorry because he was going to have some
really loud notes and he wasn’t sure what I was going to do. “Maybe we can get
a music stand to stick in between or something.” I said it wasn’t a big deal
and he shouldn’t worry, which was the truth. I play one of the loudest
instruments in the orchestra. I’ve had my hearing tested fairly recently and
it’s fine. I’m not concerned. I like loud. I like excitement. I’m a brass
player. I chose to be a musician. If I didn’t want to deal with LOUD, I
wouldn’t have picked ORCHESTRAL MUSICIAN as a career path. At the very least, I
would not have picked the back row.
My mom has
a saying. “It’s the whole pig farm thing – you can’t move into a house next
door to a pig farm and then complain about the smell.” Right? The world seems
to have gotten upside down about which things they should try to change and
which things they shouldn’t. There are a BUTTLOAD of things in the world that
need to change. Legitimate issues that could really use our attention, such as
starving children in Kenya, women who have virtually no rights in parts of the
middle east, gay people having to go into hiding in Russia lest children might
SEE them, possible runs on the banks in Cyprus because their government is
thinking about just taking their money. People seem way more interested in focusing on
things that aren’t going to change, such as institutions, people other than
themselves, and things that have already happened.
At the forefront of the news
headlines, we have a new Pope! I’m pretty excited about this guy because he seems
like a real character. He’s already made a break for it and escaped his
security detail so that he could not go out and party, but go to church. I find
that immensely entertaining. Sneaking out to go to church. When you’re the
Pope. Anyways, it seems that many people are upset about this new Pope because
he is conservative and believes in the doctrine of the Catholic church (i.e. doesn’t
think there should be female priests, isn’t going to vote for gay marriage,
celebrates Mariahimmelfahrt – that’s my favorite Catholic holiday (in German) –
because how much fun is that to say? In English it’s just Mary’s Assumption,
not so exciting).
So… the
Pope believes in the doctrine of the religion he is supposed to be the head
honcho of. I’m sorry, I don’t see a problem. Do I think women should be
priests? I don’t know. Do I think gay marriage should be legal? YES. Guess
what. I’M NOT CATHOLIC! If you don’t like the tenets of the church, LEAVE! I
was brought up in a Methodist church. I didn’t like it. I stopped going to that
one too!!! There are a host of religions out there to choose from. So why would
you pick one that you don’t agree with, and then expect it to change to meet
your needs? Pig farm. Next thing you know people are going to start saying
Buddha needs to be portrayed as thinner because he’s setting a bad dietary
example. Or maybe we should get the Hindi to remove the extra limbs from their
deities so as not to exclude amputees.
People have
this way of wanting to be a part of something and not wanting what goes along
with it. They want what their neighbor has but with special treatment. Suzie
wants to play on the boys’ football team instead of the girls’ one, but she
wants her own bus to the away games because the boys smell bad. Nick wants to
live in an apartment with other people so he doesn’t have to pay as much, but
doesn’t ever want to have to clean the bathroom because he’s just too good for
that. Becky wants to have a full-time job and make money over the summer, but
she thinks she should be able to take off whenever she wants without notice because
summers are for hanging out with friends!
These are
strange times we live in here in America. Everyone feels entitled to his slice
of something. I’m not exactly sure what that something is… There are things out
there that aren’t a matter of majority rules. If you are not forced to be in a
particular situation, and you CHOOSE to stay in it, don’t expect the situation
to mold itself to your needs. That just isn’t how life works. When was the last
time you saw a penguin fly to the desert and expect the ocean to flood it so it
could swim around? Please. I think the real reason that people pretend they
want to change situations they have chosen to be in is because people like to
complain. I have a saying of my own, “People don’t want to try and change things
that could actually change, because then they would have to do real work.”
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