My Encounter with Music

Today, music is the single most dominant force in my life.  I love music in all of its forms, and couldn’t see myself pursuing any other career.  However, I have not always felt this way.  Even after I’d chosen to become a professional musician, I often found it hard to maintain a devotion to the art.  Something was certainly missing, as I often played my music thinking, “Is this it?”  Surely there was more to the beauty of music than what I knew of it, and I searched for this missing link for years.  I finally overcame this obstacle between myself and music during my financial struggle to attend the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp last summer.

            The conflict presented before me was plain enough:  neither I nor my family had the financial means for me to attend this prestigious yet expensive music camp.  My acceptance letter had come, and they were providing a generous scholarship, but I still was far from able to pay the tuition fees necessary to enroll.  This dilemma proved traumatic to me, as I considered a summer at this institution essential to my success as a musician.  I normally take great pride in my avoidance of the obnoxiously temperamental habits identified with the general adolescent population, but what seemed to me at the time to be the end of my musical career (a ludicrous assumption, I know) began to bring out the inner pubescent savage within me, as I snapped unnecessarily at my parents and their calm explanations that I couldn’t afford this camp.  Things were looking (and, again, I admit that my logic was in emotional disarray at the time) very bleak.

            It was at this crucial point, however, that I became most intimate with the art and beauty of music.  Sitting in my room for long hours in frustration, I would listen to the subtle sounds of the world outside my window, trying desperately to draw any musical essence out of my surroundings.  It was at some point during these meditative sessions that I discovered the music that exists all around me, not just in its artificially regulated forms.  I found beauty in the jostling of the wind, the roaring of car engines as they sped past, and in the cries of birds, squirrels, and other wild animals in my backyard.  Finally, I discovered the monstrous power and majesty of dead silence, a musical embodiment in itself.  Before this enlightening moment, I highly enjoyed music.  From then on, I truly loved it. 

            In case the solution to the Interlochen situation may be of concern, I’ll add that I enrolled in and attended a shorter, cheaper camp session hosted by Interlochen, a fair compromise which I eventually came to find acceptable.  Although the camp itself was a phenomenal educational experience, it probably had its most significant effect before I even set foot on campus.  My endeavor to attend Interlochen ultimately catalyzed the final step of my courtship with music.  It awakened a new passion from deep within my musical studies that beforehand lay dormant, but now commands my very being as a man destined to lifelong musical expression.