Alot Ado About Everything and Nothing At All

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Why I Love and Envy Musicians, But Also Love Myself

I must say, musicians and everything about them fascinate me. From the simple ability to play written music itself, to the sheer miracle of creating musical works of arts with nothing more than the mindset and an idea from a single note. I've had the pleasure of knowing many musicians in my life, from the recreational to the professional. And at every single level, they never cease to astound me. Not only in their technical understanding of such an intangible art, but also in their ability to create an audible masterpiece out of nothing but their brains.

Now, let me set the stage for this article, and in fact my inaugural post on this page, by stating that I am in NO WAY musically inclined. I can play the notes on a select amount of instruments, provided you put them in front of me and give me time to study/prepare. I can sight-read a treble clef, but still have to think about the bass clef (which is ironic, considering my favorite instrument is a bass guitar). But at no point will I ever come up with the next great sonata or movement from my own mind unaided. You will never see me on the Top 10 Charts in ANY category, and I'd be lucky to even be a footnote in any musicians catalog. However, this doesn't change my unending, unyielding, and absolute infatuation with the prowess of true musicians.

As a person who has Asperger's (soft diagnosis), and is FAR too logical for his own good, musicianship is a dream I aspire to but will never obtain. I can most certainly appreciate & understand (on the most rudimentary of levels) the technicality of it. Even the mathematics. However, I lack in the creativity and emotional understanding. These, which many would say are the underlying foundations of what separate good music from bad music, are where I drop the ball. I listen to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Pachelbel (my absolute favorite classical song, as much of a cliché as it is, is Canon in D) bring sounds of entrancement and wonder to me. I can get lost in the lilting arpeggio's and nuances in note choice. But I'll never be able to understand why they went from one to the other. I can ride the waves of melodies they create, but will never fathom why they went from one rolling section to another. And this gets further complicated when you no longer isolate a single instrument & start listening to the majestic chorus of all the instruments working in harmony.

I've had the good fortune in life to get to know several true-blue musicians. From my flute teacher in 6th grade, to my band teacher in the various middle/high schools, to some of my best friends. And no matter how intelligent I feel like I am, I always end up feeling like a neophyte in their presence when we talk about this subject. One of best friends is exactly one of these people. The poor guy has spent countless hours trying to explain to me what, to him is second nature and obvious. But what, to me, is as foreign as speaking a second language.

Now, mind you, I'm no stupid person. I know a lot of things in a lot of areas. Some might say I'm a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. There are several areas in life & knowledge that I'm well-versed in, more so than your average person. And I have a WIDE array of knowledge over several fields. But it doesn't change the fact that at my core, I'm a LOGICAL person. As long as one plus one equals two, I'm on board. Once you start delving into the intangible, I start to lose my footing & find myself on more and more unsure ground. I do great with tangible items, or "cause & effect" types of items, but lose traction quite quickly when you move to intangible items like emotion. From a mathematical sense, I can understand the Circle of Fifths, and how you move from one note to another logically. But only mathematically. Only logically. While I can "feel" the movements when I listen to them, I could never fathom them from within the mire of things that is my mind. I could never come up with those particular stringing of notes together naturally.

And this therein lies my fascination. As I mentioned, one of my best friends (Richard Knight) is so musically-inclined in just this manner. I've long teased him, and even challenged him, about the fact that he can pick up ANY musical instrument and given an hour, could play it as if he was raised taking lessons on it. He has the gift of perfect pitch, a knowledge of music fundamentals that I'll never understand, and can "see" music in a way that I can only dream of. For him, stringing together a series of notes to form a musical movement is no more difficult than any of us stringing together a simple conversational sentence. In fact, to prove this point, I've several times given him a series of individual notes and asked him to put together a few bars of music from only those notes. And he's never failed the challenge. Just like I've challenged him to play XYZ instrument, knowing he's never touched it a day in his life, only to listen to him play it as if he's taken lessons on that instrument for the past decade. However, this same man still can't understand things like For-Each loops, when to use them, or Variable variables. After all, we each have our own unique skillsets.

It's these people, and this creativity in the abstract, that I envy. Not that I don't have my own enviable skills or abilities. But rather because I know I DON'T possess these skills. This would be akin to asking a right-handed person to always write left-handed. Not that it's impossible, but rather that you'll never do it as good, efficiently, or as skilled as a natural left-handed person would. Again, I'm far to logical and dictated for the abstract form that music requires.

Aside from that, I'd say that I'm constrained by my logic in something that is otherwise an emotional skill. Not to say that music based on pure math isn't gorgeous. Just look at solfeggio tones or music by individuals such as Dan Naimen or Marcus Miller (Marcus Miller). So it's well established that music can come from a logical mind. However, I've never been able to grasp the concept. I've long since said that I completely understand the mathematics behind music, but not the emotion.

And therein lies my issue. Being a logical person, intangible concepts such as emotions have always been a challenge for me. Finding out in my adult life that I likely have Asperger's did nothing but validate and solidify that concept. I can appreciate going from one note to another, and why you may/may not do that from a mathematical perspective. However, I'll seemingly never understand the EMOTIONAL evocation for why you might make the choice to go from a B-flat to an F. All the while being able to FEEL and SEE the emotion evoked whenever I listen to individual pieces.

I hear this daily whenever I listen to my playlist filled with everything from Cherry Poppin' Daddies (Cherry Poppin' Daddies) or Lindsey Stirling (Lindsey Stirling). To make matters more complicated, I'm something of a wordsmith. It's just always been a talent. The same friend of mine who I espouse for his musical prowess, which I've challenged to an endless array of musical hoops to jump through, has similarly challenged me to a varied set of lyrical competitions. To the point where, one of my more fond memories was us sitting in a truck stop diner, with the challenge for me to come up with a set of lyrics to no music, in less than 30 minutes. Now, while I don't think those lyrics will ever be submitted to the Musical Hall of Fame, they were nonetheless not that bad & certainly sufficient enough to complete the challenge set before me.

Keep in mind, I cannot stress enough how logical of a person I am. I, by profession, am a technical IT person. You ask me to make you a program in any of 3 dozen languages, I can do so in such an stylish way as to bring a tear to the technical eye. I can code programs, applications, and interfaces in such a way that is not only efficient, but elegant. I can write 10 lines of code to do what it would take others 25, 50, or 100 lines to do. And it all makes complete sense to me. If anything, I struggle to figure out how I'm the only one who sees why this is better than some of the more verbose methods of achieving the same goal. The logic just seems common sense to me. However, I struggle with the abstract creativity my more musically-inclined peers seem born with innately.

I've had the pleasure of knowing another one of my best friends (Bryan Sans) that can barely play an instrument to save his life. He played in the high school band, but that was as far as his instrumental prowess afforded him. However, you put him in front of a computer with Fruity Loops, Audacity, Abelton, or Sound Forge, and he'll make masterpieces that would make you tear up. I can remember countless hours spent in his bedroom at his parent's house playing on things like Hip-Hop DJ & Techno DJ, with both of us building songs off of pre-fabricated sounds presented to us in the application. And while mine were never bad, they never were as good as his. They never evoked the unspoken, unwritten feelings behind the combination of sounds like his did. Mine were merely a stringing together of logical progressions and sounds, whereas his where a master class in finding the emotion in noise and leading you on an internal journey.

Again, don't think this is another sycophant article to lay myself at the feet of the musically-inclined. It's merely a diatribe of someone who envy's the abilities possessed by those so inclined that I don't possess. Someone that can't understand this super power that he doesn't possess, but intrinsically knows the fundamentals behind it. I can easily tell good music from bad music. Across a wide variety of genre's. If you were to look at my playlist, you would see everything from Nina Simone to Cherry Poppin' Daddies to Tom MacDonald to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony to Bruno Mars to Runrig to Wynton Marsalis to Blues Traveler to Josh Groban. I can't think of a genre that I don't have at least a dozen of favorite artists in. From Country, to Rap, to Hip-Hop, to Classical, to Rock, etc. I like it all. And it all fascinates me. Not just the abilities to string together a series of notes in such a way to make a song, but also the ability to put catchy/relevant lyrics to said music.

All of this said, I don't feel "put out" or "deficient" in any fathom. I, like these artists, have my own set of "special skills". I'm fantastic at programming, or other logical concepts. I'm also very skilled at martial arts and the the "flow" of the body. Not to brag, but I'm not a shabby dancer (specifically swing, tap, and ballroom), good at a variety of martial arts, and a veritable handy man for most DYI things. You put me in front of pretty much anything IT-related, and there's not much I can't do, from servers, to firewalls/switches, to workstations, to graphic design, to programming. So I've definitely been blessed with my own skillsets. And by extension, there's not many problems you can put in front of me that I can't figure out (with time). I'm an EXCELLENT problem-solver.

Having said that, I must acknowledge my complete and utter fascination by movies such as Amadeus (Amadeus(film) or Shine (Shine), and the skills exhibited by those these movies portrayed. Of which I'm pretty much incompetent in. Which leads me to the ultimate, albeit long-winded, point of this post. While we may not possess the same skills, talents, affluence, or lifestyle as those we survey & see in life...that doesn't make us destitute or devoid of our own enviable skills.

Due to my profession (IT), I encounter people on an almost daily basis that state they wish they knew as much about my field as I do. And that's no small statement, both in the scope of what they're implying (due to the vast amounts of knowledge I have in my field) nor the sheer implications they're conveying (how skilled I've demonstrated myself to be in this field). It's pretty much the epitomal "grass is greener" type statement. Yet, while they all 'want what I have', that doesn't stop me from being envious of those who have what I don't.

So, if anything, that would be my "lesson' in this article. To appreciate what you have, but not feel like you're lesser of a person for what you don't. Can I devise the next greatest sonata, not at all. But did I leave a mark on society, in some form or fashion, no matter how minute? Certainly. Did I affect people in my profession? Most definitely. Was I any less of a person because I wasn't a musical genius? Not at all.

I feel like everyone these days wants to be the end-all, be-all at absolutely everything they do, and again, that's a fallacious mentality from the get-go. Not to say that there's not those 'Midas' types who just excel at everything they do (look at people like Dwayne The Rock Johnson or Ryan Reynolds or Ashton Kutcher), but they're definitely the outliers. Not the norm. Not that we can't aspire to these heights. But rather, most of us will be masters of a few things, and not of everything. And that's perfectly ok. I'm content knowing that I'm the best I know at what I do. There's certainly those who are better in IT (Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniack) and I aspire to their levels. There's even those better in my secondary/tertiary skills (李连杰 Jet Li, Jackie Chan international, Tony Jaa). But I ALWAYS strive to their levels, regardless if I'll ever achieve it. And I think a lot of us have forgotten about that. We've become so consumed with being the BEST & accepting nothing less for fear of failing, that just being "really good" isn't enough. And while that's a great motivator, it's not a realistic expectation. After all, there WILL. ALWAYS. BE. SOMEONE. BETTER. It's a fact of life and competition. While you may be on top right now, what you don't know is that you're someone else's motivation to supersede you. It is what it is, and that's perfectly ok. Not to say you shouldn't constantly STRIVE to be the best. But rather, you should accept that there are those as motivated and "hungry" as you, and they may use YOU as their role models. So it's natural to expect the teacher to become the student at some point.

In today's highly interconnected world, where our every action or interaction or failure is on broadcast for all to see, we've forgotten that perfection isn't developed overnight. We've forgotten that those we hold on a pedestal for their achievements only got there after repeated failures and an unwavering commitment to their craft. Long before they were regarded as the top of their craft, they failed countless times. Whether it be the countless revisions to code before it was released for public purview, to the failed stunts, broken bones, or flopped movies. Success isn't achieved instantly or overnight. But rather through a never-ending dedication to ones craft and the devotion to constantly keep trying after Every. Single. Failure. I've always loved the quote that Edison said in regards to inventing the light bulb. He said, "I have not failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work". He also said "Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless".

So with that, do I think I'll be the next Billboard artist? No. Do I still play my bass or my flute or my drums on a regular basis? Yes. Do I (much to the dismay of my wife) try to pick up other random musical instruments I know nothing about, like the violin? For sure. Just because I don't understand it today, doesn't mean I won't understand it tomorrow. Just because I'm not "the best", doesn't mean that I'm not the best I can be. It doesn't mean I still don't enjoy my time spent on it. And my failures only serve to note my determination, perseverance, and show me how NOT to do whatever I'm trying to achieve when I fail or struggle. And those are the marks of a successful person. At least in my eyes. Hopefully, in yours as well. May you never give up on that which you strive for or hold important. The only failure is the failure to continue to try and succeed. Once you give up, you'll never succeed. But as long as you keep trying, you'll always have hope at achievement.