A Rock Star is reborn…

…yeah, yeah, yeah…

We did a good thing…

We raised a wad of cash for Saku’s Foundation… (over $2K)

 But MOST importantly… the inner rock god came out that night…

Thoughts on personal fulfillment

This Saturday is the Saku Koivu Foundation fundraiser, organized by yours truly.

It’s the third annual fundraiser that I’ve put together, but this year seems to have been harder work than usual…

It’s hard to say why – I imagine a combination of timing (I just got back from Washington DC), balancing family dynamics, and just a spread of energy.

It’s also, in some ways, the largest of the events that I’ve produced solo: – 9 acts, marketing, logistics and, the most challenging of all, people!

I was asked the question, whilst in the US recently, as to what I thought was the way to go with life – the dream job which challenges you every day, or a lesser daily challenge, supplemented with created challenges and passions.

My initial reaction was that the dream job is all fine and good, but that, by definition, you encompass all of the things above into that sphere because, if you are anything like me, you throw yourself head first into it and allow it to consume you.

I also firmly believe that you are personally responsible for your own passions, which means that nothing but that motivates you to succeed in them…

I have so much respect for doctors, nurses and teachers who work in extremely challenging circumstances and environments and often wonder if the reason that drove to where they are now still remains. I studied to be a teacher and soon became jaded to the fact that I wasn’t going to change the world and rose tints on my glasses soon faded to let the harsher neon striplights in.

Are they living their passion? And if they devote whatever is left of their lives to something else, is their focus gone?

I now work in an environment which is sometimes dull, frequently frustrating, but often challenging and even rewarding. It also allows me to switch it off at 5:00pm so that I can shift my priorites to family and those things that I can enjoy in their purest forms. I can mix them up when I want and try something else, all the while (relatively) secure in the fact that I can look after the practical things like paying for my heat and car insurance.

And after a couple of relatively high stress but high profile positions before, this is very refreshing… but it’s all evolution… marriage and family brings compromise where there was none and I chose (some) security with changeable opportunity over personal and selfish dedication. I hate using the word ’selfish’, but in my head it is the only appropriate word.

So, having said that I found the fundraising efforts hard, I wouldn’t change any of it, because when it’s all done, I look at it as another thing I created and did because I wanted to, not because I had to…

Now then… whether all of this makes for an interesting life, well that’s another question…

Strapping the Les Paul and jumping about like I’m still 18 years old?

I’ll say…

Dreams of trumpets?

Damn, it’s been a while…

I had a dream last night that I had to sit a high level,. grade 8 trumpet proficiency exam, in front of some very stern french speaking Québecois and within some oak trimmed, old, school setting.

What made the situation all so uncomfortable was that I hadn’t picked up a trumpet in 15 years and that the taking of the test seem to be expected by those who surrounded me… and even though I had no idea who ‘they’ were, I knew there was an enormous expectancy for me to pass and do quite well.

I sat and passed my Grade 8 BSM exam in 1986, playing through the entirety of Haydn’s trumpet concerto, two highly complicated studies, a sight-reading piece and multiple scales, and know, in the cold sober light of day that the preparation for this lies in terms of months, not days, less hours!

In my dream I looked first at the scale list and focused on the scale G# major, and in a moment of semi consciousness I started figure out the progression:

G#, A#, C, C#, D#, F, G, G#, and I caught myself working out the notation with my fingers:

G# = 2nd and 3rd valves, A# = 1st valve etc…

Luckily the set piece was Haydn’s concerto so I felt this wave of relief as I remembered the majority of it, only for a further wave of terror to hit as I remembered the improvised cadenza.

This wave crescendo’d as I looked at some faceless study which required lightening quick reflexes.

And the weight of expectation was almost unbearable as I realised that I was facing something that I couldn’t do. At least not now. Not without preparation. At one time I could have, but not now.

I picked up that trumpet with trembling hands and tried to blow, but all I got was multi-tonal farting: somewhere between noise and sound.

After a few more attempts, the single notes began to appear, and the arpeggios started to flow… but the lip was weak.

As the sense of desperation began to peak, a further sense of hopelessness began to creep into my psyche. Which, especially in dreamland, is not a good place to be. I realised that I was going to have to tell someone I cared about (why else would the weight of expectation be so high) that I had failed and that I couldn’t do what someone so desperately wanted me to do.

It was actually a relief to wake up, and to hear Jack gurgle in the monitor and to see the snow through my window… but I do subscribe to the notion that our thoughts, fears, joys and the such do manifest themselves in weird ways… thing is, I can’t think of anything that is beyond my scope of ability at the moment. I’m someone who will meet a challenge head on for the most part.

Have your way dream analysts.

But it was intense. And I still don’t fully know if I was more nervous that I would take this test and make a complete ass of it, or if I felt so awful that I was about to let someone down, or that I couldn’t do something do something as competently as I once could…

———————————–

I checked out my blog stats and although I haven’t written a word in almost 3 months, there is still a steady stream of visitors.

Hello! Who are you?

Do stop to say hi…