thanksgiving feast

Allan and Stephanie threw a wonderful Thanksgiving feast today, and I took the opportunity for five hours to meet as many artists in other disciplines as I could and to learn everything I could from them about their art and involvement in Rochester. It was wonderful that our hosts brought together so many different kinds of artists. The feast was superb, and despite its size came together seamlessly unlike the tiny dinner parties I've struggled to host. The only blotch on the party was the man whose conversation I deserted when he described how he hated the one time he tried cycling in Belgium and then how he couldn't live without TV. Later I unfortunately ran into him again, and he grilled Matt, Christina, Allan, and me with naïve and almost hostile questions. Whatever. I met yet more composers (man those Koreans know how to make fashion statements), and Liz now wants to write a carillon piece! I may well "have to" play a concert of new carillon works next year. What a delightful surprise that Eastman composers are so eager to write for the instrument if I simply offer the opportunity! It's not a standard part of the repertoire, it's not common, it's not well-known... but I suppose what they want is a new medium more than any of those things. They want something to explore. Lucky for me and the carillon world.

But that distasteful man... If I'm amazed at the amount of television my roommates watch, perhaps I'm the one in the wrong. They're well below the national average of 299 minutes per day in the US and 227 in Europe. Why the Icelandic people watch the least TV is beyond me... how much is there to do in Iceland?

Unfortunately I was nearly burnt out by the end of the party (but apparently the bubbliness [which my ECMC colleagues just recently made me aware of in mysef] worked while it lasted -- one composer compared me twice with a girl who had been at the heart of composition department social life in previous years, and it was also awesome to be compared to Jason Price as a performance major in the ECMC), when Allan asked me about San Fran and Belgium. I hardly had the energy to move my mouth anymore, let alone talk about myself. But somehow I perked up when I asked if Stephanie was into Op Art (there were some striking pieces in the house that set off fireworks in my visual cortext). Apparently he has difficulty seeing the effects of Op Art and cited a study finding that musicians are actually not visually inclined (perhaps even less than Joe Schmoe). I was surprised by this, but perhaps should not have been, considering how little interest there is at Eastman in visual arts (nobody to go to the art gallery with, talk about architecture with, blah blah). Then he spoke in shockingly dark terms about the lives of musical prodigies he's known and how most of them ultimately walk away from music. I told him I sometimes wish I'd been a prodigy and not been good at other things so I could have found my path directly and could focus on it now. To my amazement, he said with confidence that most of them would trade places with me any day.

But apparently Eastman has become populated with many more students who got started in music later in their careers, rather than with students whose parents shoved violins under their chins once they learned to walk. When Allan first came to Eastman, he wondered if he'd make it through because people were so focused -- "living in that one speck of dust," he phrased it in his signature sarcastic style. But decades later, he's still here. "You'll make it through," he assured me. "But you'll always have a love-hate relationship with Eastman." We need to talk more.

Yet in the midst of mingling with artists from other disciplines and mostly in older age groups, I noticed that my colleagues hung out with each other. This confused me until I remembered that I'd always been one of them, watching enviously and admiringly as social butterflies made their way effortlessly around the room. How, when, and why did I go from one extreme to the other? Did it just happen this year when I took up promotion of the carillon as a cause and thus justification for meeting anyone and everyone? Did it start because I'm tired of my Eastman colleagues? Did it start because I want to set an example for them? Last night, I sought to assemble the most varied crowd possible for my dinner party, and to my amazement, the groups did not mix: composers, keyboardists, and even within that group, a giggling Asian contingent -- either they aren't comfortable meeting different people or really are satisfied with the limited interactions one can have within one's own crowd, something Allan ranted about with regard to conservatory musicians.

Except that Ryan walked in all alone (I don't even know how he let himself in), tossed a six-pack of Vermont Woodchuck Cider in the fridge, and then dived right out of the kitchen into a crowd of people in which he knew absolutely nobody at all and to whom he certainly wasn't connected through his studies. I never got the chance to introduce him or orient him. He didn't need it, didn't even need to chat with me to start feeling comfortable in new surroundings. Without his presence, the whole point of the party would have been lost for me. I suppose I could have done a better job of introducing people, but I did introduce most everyone as a big group. They just didn't take up the starting offer, which was all I could offer considering the amount of food I was concocting in the kitchen.

David and I found ourselves kindred souls in missing the university setting, and also enthused by and grateful for the presence of Bill Porter, who brings not only musical genius, but intellectual depth and somehow a calming effect, civility, to the department, exemplified by his saving that Thursday EROI morning when the professors had a run-in with the EROI crew. Like me, David wondered if he wouldn't have had this problem at Yale. I recounted Bill's description of the ISM's reluctant and unsure relationship with the university, and we were both a little relieved.

The deeper I dig, the more people I find who feel trapped, who came from infinte lives and found themselves suddenly clamped within four thick walls at Eastman. Even when you find your way out, it's hard to find hope or an outlet outside. It's comforting to know I'm not alone in my frustration. But what good does it do me to know there are others unless I find someone who is fighting the status quo?

At least Bill gave me the right perspective. Even if I cannot receive, I can give (rather than resent). But still, in a place like this, I need a few sympathetic souls. Do I really have to range all over the River Campus and Rochester to find them? And once I find them, can I keep in touch with them?