Sometimes I do some of my best thinking at night. And by "at night" I mean between the hours of 2 am and 6 am. The middle of the night, really, or Middle Night, as I like to call it. It has more of a poetic and less pathetic ring to it.
So here I am in the Middle Night, after being up for 2 or 3 hours. I spent the time trying to think positive thoughts because I wanted to avoid a repeat of the ginormous black widow spider dream I had the night before. It's my own personal version of the "chase" dream, being stalked by a big, hard-shelled black arachnid with a red hourglass on its forehead...but I digress. The Middle Night is also the time I end up wrestling with my biggest demons, for whatever reason. Perhaps being surrounded by darkness makes the mind, though tired, vivid with imagination. Or maybe it's the fatigue itself that chases away rational thought. Whatever it is, it's annoying. But tonight, for once, my musings were dispassionate and lucid.
These days I am calling myself a "concert organist", well, because I am. I do not currently have a faculty position at a college or conservatory (mostly by choice) and I've retreated from the church music world enough that it just doesn't seem truthful anymore to label myself as a church musician as my primary professional identity. It's also an unconscious yet conscious way to distance myself from the stress of the past 2 years or so. But as a musician, I find it difficult to label myself as anything else but a musician. It's not just a part of who I am, but a guiding force behind my identity. And not just because of the beauty of music itself, but because of what it represents - life. Life in all its ups and downs, in all its beauty and ugliness. Music is an expression of that up and down beauty and ugliness, and music as a process is an expression of the process we call life. At least, that's how I see it.
But here's my revelation. For the past year I've been trying, for the life of me, to figure out how a life that was built on all the "right" principles, with the "right" spirit, and with the obligatory blood, sweat, and tears could be so quickly taken - stolen - from underneath you. It's not as if we weren't all paying attention. But yet, it happened. Perhaps it's happened to you at some point, too. It made me think:
"Well, perhaps you weren't as happy as you thought you were."
"Perhaps it wasn't as good as you thought it was."
And here's the kicker - "Perhaps YOU aren't as good as you thought you were."
Once you start down that road, you begin doubt yourself and everything that makes you what you are. In essence, you erase yourself out of existence. And it's not out of self pity. It's just dispassionate, rational thought, really. Or so you think.
Oh, Nicole, this is so depressing, you say. But hang on, here's the good part. I think that "extraordinary life", that "mountaintop experience", or whatever you call that thing that you strive for - that shining goal in the distance you raise all your standards in expectation of is actually a very fragile thing. It's not a solid fortress built on top of an impenetrable mountainside made from years of study and experience. It's a small, shining, crystalline sphere of hope and imagination floating just above our reach that is as bright as the hottest sun but as fragile as the tiniest, thinnest sliver of ice. It takes the whole of our very souls to keep it suspended in mid air for that period of time for which it lives. But it only takes the clench of one or two or three fists to shatter it to pieces. We could attempt to build an impenetrable wall around it, but that would only shield us from bathing in those beautiful rays. We could only share with those we think of as "safe" enough to get near it, but then it would lose some if its brilliance.
I know there is truth in this, but it's a frustrating truth. Why is something that took so much time and effort to build so freaking fragile? It doesn't seem to make much sense, but I feel in the depth of my soul that it is true. The mistake we make - well, the mistake I made - is that I only saw one very fragile crystalline sphere in my future, when in fact there are an infinite number floating around the ether - floating around our imaginations just waiting to be thought into existence. We just tend to get sidetracked and put on blinders when the one right in front of us starts to form, and then we can't even see the forest of possibilities that still lie around us.
This, of course, does not lessen the pain watching the first one smash to pieces. But it does give me a little hope - more than a little hope - that this very brilliant, very virulent, very overwhelming, very fragile sphere of hope and happiness and imagination can be created. Again. But different, this time.
Now - back to the spiders...
