Recognition and Legacy

Every weekend my best friend (well OUR best friend) comes over for dinner and we have a nice relaxing night of each other's company. He is like family to us and so it almost seems weird to call him a "friend" as he is really more than that. We have been a trio for almost 20 years, and with my daughter added, a quartet for the past 12. He would be at our hospital bed the minute something happened and vice versa.

He is also a republican. Not a trump republican at all, but a Reagan conservative. We argue all the time and for the most part, we actually agree on a lot of things. The bleeding heart liberals that are my family vs his staunch economic conservatism. I could write a book about all debates we have had over the years, but this is not a political post. But that should at least give a basic level of background on the relationship. This someone who I feel extremely comfortable with and would tell everything to, really. But there is an interesting dynamic that showed itself this weekend in a conversation we had on Saturday night.

Legacy. Recognition. Respect. Intelligence. Adoration. Attention, even.

These are things I have strived for. Since I first took the stage at age 13 I got kinda hooked on the attention. But I moved away from the literal stage over the years and, let's face it, music in general. I should mention that he has not and is still FIRMLY in the field as a music educator and god damned good one at that. I always wanted to be a composer. Being John Cage and all that shit. So we went on vastly different paths, but in the same genre. I have worked my ass off for 15-20 years to make a music career and really have none of those words above to show for it.

He has all of those. He has been a successful educator for the same amount of time and has devoted his life to it, at the sake of everything else. He has no wife, no kids. We are his main friends. But he is so devoted to his craft (the craft of music education) that he doesn't need anything else. He has his work and that is enough for him. He quite literally works 60-80 hours a week with very little free time to relax or do much outside of it. We have often discussed how we are kind of an outlet for that, and by spending time with us it can FORCE him away from his work.

Which then brings us to where our conversation started. In a strange place, too - the musical "Hamilton". My daughter has been really getting into the theater and has become obsessed with Hamilton over the past week. We were discussing the elements of how it came to be and how Alexander Hamilton was known for generations as the guy who got shot by Aaron Burr and then the narrative changed. NARRATIVE being a key term in the arch of the story. They reference many times in the second half of the person who "tells your story."

Who tells mine?

This has been an obsession of mine for almost my entire adult life. I have always looked for the moment. I have watched a lot of documentaries over the years, about artists, musician, etc... and I was always intrigued by the moment that it all came together. Lin-Manual Miranda read the Hamilton biography Chernow and it essentially changed his whole life. He was already starting to get somewhere, but it was Hamilton that made him a household name. Cage and the prepared piano. Pollock and paint drip. My father and his medical "camouflage." Everybody seemed to have something that truly inspired them to do something unique and amazing.

And that was what I have always waited for. I envisioned the documentary and either myself or one of my many admirers telling the story of the moment. The crazy thing about self-realization and gaining the cognizance of being cognizant is that even as I sit here typing this on a Sunday afternoon, metal music in the background, I'm thinking about this exact blog... will anybody read this? Will this be an inflection point? More on that topic to come I'm sure, as I need to examine that in more detail. Stay tuned in you are interested.

But the moment was not what this conversation was about. It was about the time following the moment. You see, in that previous story about me describing my moment in a documentary, the most important part is washed over and implied. The documentary had to get made. Somebody had to be interested enough in your work to make such a thing. To recognize me, the work I have done. This is has been my dream for years and yet... here I am. Blogging about exactly how that didn't come to fruition.

So legacy became the topic. And he gave me an amazing answer as to his legacy. He really didn't give a shit.

(A quick side note, my father was always outspoken when I used expletives in my public writings, because he thought it wasn't professional. I have a sailors mouth, and i've given up trying to curb it, so here we are).

Right, he didn't give a care in the world about HIS PERSONAL legacy. I called him on it. I asked if in 100 years, his program becomes the best music program in the world and it was because of him... but nobody even mentions his name about it. He gets no credit. How would he feel? Though it did throw him for a bit of a loop I think, he still insisted that it didn't matter along as the program and his students thrived somehow.

I have always know that many of the people around me didn't think too deeply about their life and about their legacy and about earning respect, but I thought if anybody would understand, it was my (kinda self-centered, arrogant) best friend, but he gave a truly self-less answer. Was it true? I don't know, I guess he could only answer that truthfully. Was he saying that because that is what he is supposed to say? That he is a teacher and a teacher's first priority is his students, so his careen path has essentially told him exactly what to say in that situation. It's not about me, it's about them.

Yet this is a guy who comes in every week and tells me everything that happened in his week. A lot of people do that, obviously. "My vacation was great, here are all my photos!" "I had the most amazing meal the other day, let me tell you exactly about it." Don't get me wrong, there is a standard of typical conversation that dictates this kind of discussion. I was just cut from a different cloak, so it has always been hard for me to talk about myself. I wanted to be humble, not make people feel, I don't know, jealous I guess? I wanted to be the one that they said "oh he is so good at his craft and yet, he hardly talks about it, because he is so humble."

And yet, here is my best friend, who has done everything he needed to do to succeed. Small-town politics at its best. He LOVES getting his way, being powerful, being successful... but when he is dead, he is dead. What does he care? This is fascinating to me. Not that I am anti-education or anything. I don't want to be misconstrued. I come from education. My father was probably the best teacher I knew, but he also strived to be a great painter and was well-respected in the local community for it. He didn't do it ONLY for the students. There has to be some of him that wanted to see his name in lights, even after he was dead and gone.

And yet, when he has only days to live, I asked him, "Hey, you have prepared everything in the will. The money, the house, all of it except your paintings. What do you want me to do with your paintings?" In maybe the most jaw dropping moment of my life, he said flippantly, "I don't know, they're just paintings. What the fuck DO you do with them?" Now, granted, my father had been through 6 years of hell with my mother and was actively dying, so might not have been in the best headspace to answer that question, but there had to be some form of the truth in there, right? He probably did feel like he hadn't made it as far as he wanted and here was, dying younger than anybody expects. He had lost his chance to make it.

And so here I am. Actively in my mid-life case. Thinking about death often. And legacy. My legacy. And my father's. And who actually gives a shit about anything. And what is the point of any of it. I'm asking "WHY?" almost constantly. Why did I say that? Why did I think like that? And most importantly, why did I MAKE that? Why did I make music? Why do I take photos?

For years, the answer was always to find THE MOMENT. The moment that would put my name in lights. The moment that would cement my legacy. But why? For what? What does any of it matter? There are so many people happier and more content than me who do absolutely nothing with their lives. They run a stump grinding company or a study the migration patterns of weird birds or assemble car parts in a factory for no money... and will be forgotten in a matter of a few generations. And they are totally fine with it.

Is that what I need to do? Do I need to just give up everything I have thought about for years? Live in the moment and not worry about anything? Probably.

My friend gave me the suggestion of a soup kitchen and to do charitable work to give something in my life worth. He wasn't saying my life was worthless (at least I don't think so, ha), he just thought doing something like that would give me satisfaction. It might. But I think it is missing the point. (It also kinda pissed me off that he was taking pity on me and feeling sorry for me. That's not what I wanted. I don't want help in my journey of self-discovery)

On a micro level, that might give me a day's worth of something. But looking at the macro level... I'm having a hard time finding the why of everything.