On Friday, I went to the funeral of a mentor of mine. John was the music teacher when I was in high school. He was a hard-ass. He was a perfectionist. He demanded excellence, and he got it. We won damn near every competition we were in. We had to hold our high school band concerts in the local college auditorium because the community wanted to be there.
He was also the organist at my church, so I spent years working with him outside of school. He was a mentor and he was a friend. The last time I’d seen him was at my father’s funeral. At that point he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and could barely dress himself. His death was more of a blessing than a shock. John hated not being independent. He hated the fact that he couldn’t dress himself. He hated the fact that he couldn’t do the things he used to be able to do, and for a man who used to compete in triathlons, it was a long, hard fall.
John taught me that you might not ever reach perfection but that doesn’t mean you should ever stop trying to get there. I can recall on class where he was upset with some part of a song we were playing, and we spent a full hour going over one single measure of music. For those who are not musically inclined, let me try to explain it. A single measure of music is essentially three or four beats long (although there are a multitude of time signatures, I’m keeping it simple). You have eighty people in a room. They all have directions on paper sitting in front of them. They’re all trying to play those four beats together.
We can change it up for this demonstration. Perhaps they’re all trying to say the same thing all together, a sentence written on paper for them. In fact, let’s use the first sentence written by our gracious host in his post:
Do you remember this piece, Gentle Reader?
Now, read that out loud. Did you do it? Good. Did all eighty people read it out loud in the manner that they should have? No, they did not. Read it out loud again.
And again.
And again.
OK, now just the women. Read it out loud. Do it again. Now do it again.
OK, just the men. Read it out loud. Do it again. Do it again.
All together. Read it out loud. Not good enough, do it again.
Do that for an hour. Over, and over, until every single person reads that sentence out loud perfectly, in unison, without a single error.
That was John. And despite the fact that he didn’t give private lessons, and hell, he didn’t even play 90% of the instruments that he directed, I still learned more about music in four years under his tutelage than I learned in the decade previous.
I’m sad to see him go. The world lost a great man and a great talent. Hopefully I’ll see him in the future.
And I’m tired of going to funerals.
