I Quit Music

I’m not talking about the eight year old who says, “I don’t want to do scales and arpeggios anymore, Dad. I don’t get them.” And Dad shrugs, because he doesn’t get them either and the kid never looks at another instrument. I was eight years old, and even I bounced back a bit, but I still blame my parents because I am not a great rock star. Not that it is really their fault… but… No! I am not talking about that kid. I’m talking about the person who has been involved in music from an early age. Understood the scales and stuff and worked it into their body and started composing and did clubs and bands and solo career and then, at around seventy says “I quit music. Cold Turkey! I lobotomize it from my life. Bad music. Goodbye.” I don’t believe it is possible.

I am struggling to find a way to describe this to non-musicians. Quitting music is a lot like losing faith in God. In music, just like in religion, you have your monks and your priests. I can talk about “the priests” because they are out there, moving about, making a name, trying to get some bang for their buck. But I can’t really talk about the monks, because people would go “Who?” And Monks don’t really want to be bothered with people anyway. They are too busy with their music.

I met a guy once. A farmer. Musicians came from miles about for the privilege to learn at his feet. We talked a bit and I played some harmonica with him. But he didn’t like bands and was fed up with people. So nobody knew who he was. Did he quit music? Nope. Did music quit him? Nope.

And what about the eight year old? What can an eight year old know about commitment and focus? At eight, a little kid needs a nudge from his or her parents because there are kids outside playing baseball and HR Pufnstuff is on TV. What can compete with Jimmy and Freddy, his magic flute? And then there is the theory that pushing a kid too much can make all the joy go sour, so I don’t know.

When I attended University there was a bar called The Grad Club. They had jazz and blues on Friday nights and I met a guy there who used to be in the music department. (That’s the same club I got thrown out of for dropping beer bottles from the balcony. It was an accident.) Anyway, this guy went into the music department because he was good. I mean virtuoso good. But he had no joy for the music. So he switched to anthropology.

And me? I quit music once… or twice. I dropped piano and I dropped trumpet. And I’ll quit right now again, too. There you go…

And now I’m starting up again. I can only put it down for a moment and then it is like that cursed item I can’t get rid of, and it shows up in my pocket the next day, or it is sitting there mysteriously on my bedside table when I wake in the morning. And I deny it, and I say I am not so good - which I am not, but that is beside the point.  I am not “The Music“. Music is much bigger than I, and I am nothing. The first time I ever carried a tune or fell into sync with a band, like John Gillespie Magee, I had “…slipped the surly bonds of Earth. Put out my hand and touched the Face of God.” So I am stuck now. But can music quit me? Oh, God. I hope not.

A musician doesn’t have to put out an album or play in a bar. But if he is famous and he decides to stop putting out albums or playing in public his fans might say “So-and-so quit music.” The fans don’t really mean it, you know. The fans mean “The bastard abandoned us. What are we? Chopped liver?” Well, yeah, as far as music goes, the fans are chopped liver. Believe me. The musician doesn’t really need an audience. I have been there on stage, in a huddle with the bassist, guitarist, sax player, the audience listening on the outside, but not really there. As soon as a musician needs fans, like they need a job to make money, music becomes like flipping burgers. And I understand why some musicians can quit the music industry. A fan can’t know what Music (with a capital “M") means, not unless they are a musician. Not unless they understand the investment. In the Face of God all other things are insignificant.

When our life is wonderful we believe there is some benevolent force guiding us. And we tend to take it personally when we have a shitty life, so we say “God doesn’t exist", to take it out on the Big Guy. “Now He’ll see,” we say to ourselves. “I’ll stop believing in Him for all the Crap He put me through.” But percentagewise it’s the same. Lots of good things happen to us and we thank the benevolence. Lots of bad things happen to us and we reject the benevolence, because the Universe owes us something, and rejecting a benevolent force which owes us something is far easier than the alternative.  Confronting some evil force which is dragging us through Hell is inconceivable.  So God is Good, and I reject God because a benevolent God will not retalliate.

But life is tough. And anyone who told you otherwise was lying to you. And, just like life, music demands a lot from you. It takes practice and practice and practice, and even when you “get it” you might not have it, because it is so tied to what you are that you can’t control it. “So I don’t care if HR Pufnstuff is on or if Myron is at the door wanting to play baseball. You have scales and arpeggios! You’ll thank me when you’re older!”

Music - the ability to play - grows within you as you grow as a human being, and perhaps you were not made for certain things, and yeah, you take it personally when you try and someone else says it doesn’t sound right. Or you think it doesn’t sound right. Or you can get arthritis or carpal tunnel. I had another friend, a great blues guitarist who went that way. God had abandoned her. “After all I have done for music and this is how the Universe rewards me? Well, I Quit! You hear that Music? I quit you!!!!!”

Now, I am not saying that you have to believe in God if you want to play music. And I am not saying that quitting music turns you into an atheist. I am saying that you might have had a lot of unreasonable expectations going into music, like it was going to be easy. I am also saying that music can absorb you like a faith, that it becomes part of you so that it is as hard to quit as it is to stop breathing.

I just read that a certain musician was going to “Quit Music” because of various health problems etc… etc… so I went to his Facebook Fan Page and there were all these people screaming obscenities at him and crying “Don’t Go!!!!!  Don’t leave us!!!!!!” I don’t think a person can “quit music” so easily.  Sure, I think people can quit “a band"; people can quit “an industry driven career“; and some people can choose to never go there and some people can never get there at all.  Happens all the time.  And you can certainly quit a situation where people come on your Friendpage and write obscenities.

Buddy Rich, a few years ago, went on the Alan Thicke Show, showed off his heart surgery scar, and then proceeded to beat the desk chair coffee mugs and floor with this incredible show of jazz magnificence.  I have seen conductors conducting into their eighties and nineties.  I don’t play piano but I bought some keyboards a couple months ago for the family and I have a Jazz Fakebook with 635 standards so I figured…  Well, now I can pick out the beginning to T Monk’s “Round Midnight” and it sends shivers up my spine.  I would never tell anyone because I am so horrible… ooops… but I do like Thelonius… so I think I will continue.  But I certainly don’t need “fans” coming to my Facebook and calling me the F word because I suck at piano.  So please cut that little piece of information from your memories.  I am sure people some people who say they have “quit music” still play small clubs - just acoustic guitar and some poetry, you know - when they just want to get “that feeling".

One of the problems is this whole music thing is all tied in with media and fans and money. Some people think that if they can’t hear it - if they have no access to it, then it can’t exist. The whole media circus has poisoned our minds as to what we should think is real or not. If a person is no longer known then it doesn’t mean they cease to exist. If it ain’t on the internet, it just ain’t on the internet. A person can play something but they don’t need to share it. And even if they are really good they don’t need to overturn their life to share it with the masses if they don’t want to. And maybe that offends the masses who want to listen. And if that same person was really bad but famous - which happens sometimes - the masses would be offended because they would lose their chance to feel superior. But a person can play on the weekends, and flip burgers during the week.

So, until next week, your’s truly will be flipping burgers for his family. Stay tuned.