tired

Many years ago I visited a musician friend. A very well known and highly successful film composer. This was before I had made music my full time career and I was salivating when we were sitting in his study, sipping tea: his desk was overflowing with music manuscript papers, CD's, tapes, his piano open and all manner of electronic equipment scattered throughout the room. My salivating was caused by envy at seeing someone surrounded by music and so tremendously successful at it. Then my friend - who was in his late fifties at the time - did something unexpected. He reached over to his desk and swept a bunch of papers to the floor with the back of his hand. He looked at me and said: "Man, I'm so fed up with all this music crap, I can't wait to retire"

Well, I don't think I'd ever heard worse blasphemy! Fed up with music? What was he talking about? How can anyone get fed up with music as a profession? I would have given my eye teeth to make a living playing music and here's this guy who can't wait to retire...

You know what's coming, right? Here we are today; I've been making a living at music for the last decade or so and suddenly I can completely understand what my friend was talking about. I think one can get tired of just about anything, music included. Most of the past decade has been very enjoyable. After I had given up teaching and started doing gigs full-time, I had a good time almost every time I played a gig. But those days are in the past.

I'm feeling tired. I'm only in my early fifties but I feel dragged down and uninspired a lot of the time. I get that "is this all there is?" feeling quite a lot. Of course, this being mid-November doesn't help my mood and come May, perhaps I'll be twittering like a nightingale again, chomping at the bit to get out there and play for people. Right now (although I would still rather be doing this than almost anything else I can think of - perhaps with the exception of writing which pays even less than music), I need a break from playing swing tunes, from gigging late into the night, from playing the same repertoire, from playing requests. I am at the same point of blasphemy my above mentioned friend was all those years ago.

And my ear still buzzes and whistles. I have lost about 60db's of high frequencies in my left ear and it ain't coming back. Just saw Dr # 3 - this time at Sunnybrook. The prognosis - while not grim in the sense that this is not life threatening - is not good. My hearing certainly will not get better and there is a good chance it will get worse. There is also about a 50% chance this will develop into full blown Meniere's disease, a truly dreadful affliction.

Wow, I haven't written for almost two months and here I am writing all this downer stuff. Just wait till the AD's kick in!!