About thirty years ago or so, give or take but mostly accurate, I attended the University of Toledo School of Music.  I was a piano performance major, and it went terribly.  So terribly I consider it one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and it wasn’t entirely their fault.  Entirely, anyway.

Because I’m using my real name here, I won’t use any real names.  I imagine most of the teachers that knew me are retired (or… other) anyway, but still, that’s not really the point.  This isn’t to call anyone out, but to talk about my experiences, and to explain why what I’m doing now is such a personal victory.

I was home schooled through my high school years, so going to college was, in some ways, also a return to school.  The last time I had been to school was in the middle of seventh grade, when I was 12 or 13.  So I entirely missed my high school years.  I tool piano lessons and learned some things about music at the time, but I was rather, well, stunted.  So returning to school, or attending college, at that point was pretty much the same thing as throwing me into the deep and and expecting me to swim out.

I didn’t swim out.  I drowned.

The memories there weren’t all bad.  I have about five memories there that I think of positively or semi-positively.  And many, many more that cause me to cringe whenever I think of them.

One of the worst memories I had (and I’ve told this story elsewhere, anonymously, but you’d have to seek it out, so whatevs) was going around Northwest Ohio on a concert chorale tour.

The story around this is one I still resent.  I signed up for concert chorale thinking that I was going to just be doing concerts in the recital hall or whatever.  But, well…  thinking back on it, maybe the name “concert chorale” should have been a tip-off.  I didn’t find out that they were going to go on a tour of Northwest Ohio to many different high schools until a few weeks in – after I couldn’t drop the class anymore.

One of my greatest regrets ever in life was not just dropping the class and taking the loss grade-wise.

In fact, I honestly felt, and feel, tricked by the professor of that class, who just assumed I knew, and that’s the best case.

We went on a bus, and I was not comfortable throughout the whole thing, and we shared a bunch of hotel rooms that night.  I put on a brave face – I always put on a brave face, but at the end of the day, it was just spending a bunch of time singing in high schools I didn’t like, around people I didn’t like and didn’t want to spend all that time with, and with a bow tie that wouldn’t cooperate.  One of the high schools had just had a fire the night before, and the place smelled thickly of smoke.  How could one sing in that?  And I could hear the students in the audience laughing when I had to adjust my tie, which wouldn’t stay put.  About the only thing interesting (not fun, but interesting) that happened was when one of the sopranos (I think) locked her knees too much and fainted.  Apparently her head was heavy, or so they said as they carried her out.  Well, that, and I had an amazing round of beginner’s luck at pool, but that’s a different thing I guess.

To this day, I consider those two days among the worst of my life and I resent everything that put me into that position.  Including, but not restricted to, my own choices.  And I consider those two or three years to be about ninety-five percent wasted, along with all the money involved.  (There’s a reason I don’t ever say “I studied under blahblah”…  I don’t think they’d be any happier to take credit for that than I am to give it.)

But I also composed.  Well, I didn’t compose.  I sat there in front of a screen of an old (well, not at the time) Mac II LS in the theory lab and tried to compose.  I created maybe one whole note, and couldn’t think of what to do past then.  My brain would just shut down and I could create nothing.  That was kind of a defining experience for me, and I’ve spent a long time trying to come to terms with the abject failure that represented.

There are other stories, but I’ll stick with those for now.  You didn’t come here for a trauma dump, and I don’t intend to provide one.

The point being, though, that for me, just composing anything at all, much less something that was able to make it to finalist in a fancily named, and thus prestigious, international competition, is a major milestone for me.  So far I’ve composed four pieces.  I’m proud of one of them.  But even then, I’ve done something amazing.  I wrote something, and it sounds good.  And better, for the first time in my life, people aren’t choosing their words carefully to avoid hurting my feelings when they hear it.

So, I can compose now.  And I can play piano better than I used to.  I guess that’s something.  It took thirty years, but I finally got past the trauma of that time enough to continue with my musical pursuits and not feel like an utter failure as I do.

I hated college.  I resent college.  I resent myself for not having the presence of mind to simply not do that and to go into engineering, or mathematics, or literally anything else while I had the opportunity.  Instead, well… I did, well, that.

Would I be composing now if I hadn’t done that, then?  I don’t know.  Maybe.  Probably not.  So I guess it counts for something.

I compose because I like to compose.  Because, frankly, if I didn’t, considering that background, it’d be foolish to try to force the issue, don’t you think?