5/6/08

A tuxedo.

Tomorrow I go with my mother to pick up the tuxedo I'm wearing for prom, which is this Friday. I can hardly believe it's so close already. Everything is ready, my girlfriend has a dress and make-up, the flowers are ordered, our homeroom teacher is giving us a ride in her fancy convertible. My mother insisted that we pay for her prom ticket, and the cost of the two tickets was $140. That's pretty outrageous, isn't it. Apparently this mass-produced food that tastes like freeze-dried poop is costing thirty dollars a plate alone.

I'm only a junior, but my girlfriend is a senior, so I'm taking her to the prom this year. Hopefully this means I won't have to go next year. But I'm thinking that if I get enough energetic and charismatic people to help me I'm going to try to organize a student-led prom that the school doesn't sponsor, just because the price is so unbelievable. We'll get our own facility, decorations, maybe even have a pot-luck style dinner where people bring in home-made dishes. So if that ever gets off the ground I suppose I'd have to go.

My girlfriend, as I said, is a senior. She's graduating this year. She's valedictorian, going to make a big speech at graduation (which I'll be attending because choir is singing for it). We've been dating for almost two years, but it feels like a lifetime. I'm not sure what I'll do with myself once she leaves. She wants us to remain friends with the possibility of a relationship, but not be exclusive, which means she might date other people. I'm okay with this, it's only natural after all. But it will still be very hard, her leaving. I only came to terms with the fact recently that I really do need her, that leaving each other will be hard. Before I always told myself whatever happened happened, that I would move on with no great struggle. Not the first time I've lied to myself.

I'm glad prom is going to be over, it will be one less thing to worry about. I've had a lot to worry about this semester. Since January I've participated in four different chorus festivals, County chorus, District chorus, Regional chorus and finally the all-state festival (each successive festival more selective than the last). I've missed school for each of them. Add on school show, the school chorus competition in Virginia, the language class trip to New York, and the physics day at Hershey Park, and the various absences I've had just because I didn't think I could drag myself to school, and lately I've almost been out of class more than I've been in.

This isn't a very intelligent thing to have happen the second semester your junior year, as I've been told your grades in eleventh grade are the only ones that matter. I'm currently failing trigonometry this quarter. I managed to pass first and third quarter, so I have to pass the final to pass the course, and if I don't pass the course I'll have to take a math in my senior year, which I really don't want to do. I want my classes next year to focus on music -the only thing I really care about besides my girlfriend and, you know, God and stuff.

I want to go to college for music, if I get into college at all. I've gone over this in my head so many times and written it down in various places so that I'm a little sick of it, but here it is, one final time, my struggle with what I'm going to do in college:
They say college is where you go to learn whatever it is you're going to be doing for the rest of your life (ideally). My brother went to school to be a librarian, he's now a librarian. I want to be a musician, so naturally I should go to school for music. My father says college isn't cheap and whatever you're learning there better darn well prepare you for whatever it is that will be earning your salary, or you've blown a whole pile of dough and you're no better off than you were before. If I spend my college education on music, I have to try and make it as a musician. But a job in the music industry is the farthest thing there is from a "sure-fire plan". What if I go to college for music like my parents did and end up changing jobs every three years and living from paycheck to paycheck for the rest of my life? The smart thing to do seems to be majoring in something profitable and minoring in music. But music is my passion, my drive, it's the only thing I want to do. It seems like there must be something you can do with a music degree (music composition, specifically) that will be sure to bring you a paycheck every week. Maybe even with a good dental plan.
I wouldn't mind living on breadcrumbs for the sake of my art, but the question is would I ever be able to move out of my parents' house. I couldn't handle living in my parents' basement for the next ten years. So do I go to college for a career I don't want or for music which won't give me a career?

And this is all assuming I get into college in the first place, which with my grades is just about as far from a sure-fire plan as making a living as a musician.

There. I wrote it all down, it's done, I can move on. I'm not worrying about college yet. I still have a few months left of blissful unawareness, and I'm going to savor every second of them.

In the meantime, it's clear what I have to do. Write music, write music, write music. If this is going to be my career I might as well get used to producing heaping helpings of music just below my quality standards at impossibly high speeds for projects I only barely care about. My chorus teacher is retiring after this year, which might explain why after I handed him a finished piece of music he basically ignored it (except for the occasional "hey, we should look at that sometime"). The orchestra teacher, on the other hand, had the most opposite reaction he could've had. Here's my chorus teacher, I've had him for years, I am the only student of his to ever make all-state choir, and I hand him a finished, computer-typed choral arrangement, and several months later he's just barely glanced at it. Here's the orchestra teacher, I've never been in his class, I know nothing about string instruments, and I in passing mention to him that I'm thinking of writing a string quartet, and immediately he tells me to bring it to him once I have something written (not even finished) and he'll record each part on a layer tape for me so I can hear what it sounds like on real instruments, and if it's good he'll have the school string quartet perform it. So... I guess this means I'd better write it.

This summer, after I take the dreaded SATs, shouldn't be too bad. I'm undergoing a personal renaissance of sorts. Basically, I've realized that for the past few years I've been "dead", being a lackluster student and wasting all my time on the internet. So starting now I'm going to try as hard as I can to "live" as much as possible, to do as much as I can, to learn as much as I can. I'm going to read books, finish one in three days and start another right away. I'm going to learn the piano. What kind of music student can't play the piano! I'm going to write and record as much music as I can. I'm going to listen to every band and musician of whom I've ever thought "Hm, I should check them out sometime." I'm trying to expand my mind, and hopefully, if I fill in these gaps with constructive pursuits it will help me with some of the vices that have brought down my spiritual life.

I have a theory; not sinning isn't hard so long as you keep busy. There are little sins I commit in my every day life, little attitude problems and other things I ask the Lord to help me keep in check, but all the big sins, the ones that keep me up at night, happen when I'm bored and wasting time. So if I keep myself busy, I shouldn't be too bad off.

That's all I can think of to write for now, kudos if you (whoever you are) have actually managed to read the entire thing. Don't expect posts here very often, maybe once a month at the most, unless I'm hit with a sudden inspiration. My life doesn't change very fast, many of the things I've written about here were true months ago.

In summary:
I shouldn't be too bad off.

-Dr. Benedict Madrigal,
aka Timothy Gordon,
aka Timothy Neher