Jack of All Trades

I was watching one of the bowl games last week and while I was listening to the commentary one of the guys said something to the effect of "Yeah, I was a bit of an all around position player, a jack of all trades." Lou Holtz quickly fired in the jab (which I don't think anyone else but me noticed): "Yeah, but a master of none."

I think people often, and willingly, forget the second half of the saying. It's easy to tout yourself as a "jack of all trades" or a Renaissance person....wait, sorry I can't possibly equate the two, a Renaissance person is master of everything they do. Michelangelo was the original Renaissance Man. My grandpa was one: though he never was able to get all of his ideas out, he was a musician, a painter, a teacher, an engineer. I still haven't finished going through his notebooks.

I used to loathe, back when I was a jerk, being called that because I really only had one trade back then: violin. My day went as such: School, homework, violin, bed, with very few deviations. Friday was my off day, but sometimes I still practiced. Saturdays? solid 9-6 day of music. Sundays I still put in my time, and there was a time when I was doing two lessons from two different teachers on the same day.

There was this other thing. Once I started getting older, I could actually hold conversations with adults. When they learned I played violin they would sometimes say "Oh my son plays violin too". Really, do they? I'm sorry, but please don't compare your child's experience, where mediocrity reins, the average practice time is around 15 minutes per day, and your music teacher has the unfortunate task of teaching 25 children (who don't care, and aren't talented in that particular area) how to play music at a skill level I had when I was 6, to my experience. It's insulting. It's like saying you "play volleyball" when in reality you play nukem, or that you're going to the gym, which actually means you plop on the elliptical and read the paper for 20 minutes, break a light sweat, and call it quits. Please.

I hated it. All of it, the comparisons, the multiple teachers (though I liked my teachers). I loved music but the journey was so difficult.

When I made the decision to switch to film I also decided to try new things. Photography, volleyball, fencing (again), biking. The list doesn't go on and on, but it's pretty different in comparison to that list of one that used to be me. Does that make me a more rounded person? Probably not. Unfortunately, I went through two stages: one was being "normal", to do the stuff that everyone else did, something I "missed out on" in my pre-college years. I lost interest in that and found out normal was more boring than I possibly thought. Now, I find myself with a label that I used to hate: the jack of all trades. Maybe this doesn't bother other people about me: Oh he knows a little about this or that, ask him. Oh, yeah ask beamer about this and such.

The problem is, my competitive drive (though always at odds with my laziness) can't settle for being ok at something, or to know a little bit about something.

For that reason, I'm vowing to enter the Sphinx Competition. It's a strings competition for minorities--African- Americans and some of Hispanic descent (though not all, I don't think). You might say: Isn't that the opposite of what you want to do?

Well, yes, and no. Typically African Americans and Hispanics are underrepresented in classical music. International competitions are dominated by caucasians and asians, just because there are more of them. The population of good musicians is large enough to have an event like this but small enough that there are faces that have been around for awhile, people that have been able to place but never capture first.

I want to capture first. Or place, at least. It'll be tough. I'm 4 years off of my high, though I'm better in some ways than I was. I don't have a teacher, so this training will have to be on my own. I'm entering the real world so my practice sessions will have to be ultra-productive. I'm not out to prove anything for anybody but myself. I NEED to do this. If I place, I get to play in Carnegie Hall a few months after the initial audition process.

That is every musicians dream. That is my dream. Or at least 50% of that. The other half was getting to play a Strad and I've already done that. So...let's get er done.