Tag Archives: compose

Anomaly

dictionary with letter A

Anomaly: (n) something that deviates from the normal, standard or expected

I liked music.

At eighteen years of age, I’m not so sure that I was totally devoted to a career in the field or whether there was a bit of laziness tied into the equation, because playing piano sounded easier than punching a time-clock. (After all, we get ourselves in the most trouble when we try to purify our motives instead of accepting them a trifle sullied.)

One afternoon during that eighteenth year, I took my girlfriend, who was soon to become my wife, into a back room of a loan company owned by my parents and sat down at a piano which had been given to our family, but because we had no room in our house, ended up stuck in the back corner of this lending institution.

I had never written a song before.

As a teenager, I sang in choir, a quartet and for nursing homes, pretending like it was a big gig at Madison Square Garden.

Yet on this day, I suddenly got this urge to compose. It was not stimulated by a professor at a college asking for an assignment, nor was it motivated by my ancestors, wishing that I would abandon all normal courses of occupation and pursue a musical path.

It was truly an anomaly.

  • It was contrary to what everybody wanted me to do.
  • It was an open, seething contradiction to my cultural training.
  • I sat down at that piano, and in the course of the next ninety-four minutes, wrote two original songs. I didn’t know if they were good and certainly was not confident they were great.

But something came out of me that wasn’t a conditioned response or a well-studied answer for a final exam.

It was mine.

Whether it was good or bland, it came from me. It excited me. It encouraged me to muster the perseverance to survive the critique of my society and even overcome my own fits of lethargy to pursue it.

It still excites me today.

Hundreds of songs later, I still feel as thrilled when pen goes to paper, words appear and musical notes cuddle up next to them.

No one in my family ever took the course of action which I chased, beginning with that afternoon in the back room behind that piano.

But it is the selection of that odyssey that has made me who I am.

There are two things you have to remember about an anomaly:

  1. It is never immediately accepted.
  2. It always takes more work than you expected.

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Anagram

dictionary with letter A

Anagram: (n) a word or name formed by rearranging the letters of another word, such as cinema, formed from iceman.

The reason I am reluctant to have anyone refer to me as “smart” is that it is so easy for me to come along and disprove their assertion.

It’s not that I want to be counted amongst the ignorant or ill-informed. I don’t wish to be perceived as a dolt, but by the same token, there is a great pending tragedy in allowing oneself to be considered hyper-intelligent.

There are things I do well. For instance:

  • I can write.
  • I can sing.
  • I can play piano.
  • I can compose.

But there are things that demand thinking, intellect and reasoning which for some reason, totally escape me and thrust me to the back of the pack–to the disappointed glances of those who were once my promoters.

So on those occasions when I’m watching television right before prime time, and Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune come on, back to back, I am always humbled by the fact that both of these shows make me feel like an alien to my own species.

Jeopardy!–because there are always questions they call “general knowledge,” which make me look like a major fool in a private arena for dunces.

Wheel of Fortune–because I get so nervous about solving the puzzles but never can beat the people on the show, and end up either making excuses or switching the channel to reruns of Law and Order.

Anagrams are that way with me. Some people can look at them and see words leaping out, forming themselves in mid-air. They have determined the hidden idea within the collection of letters–while I’m still waiting for a “vowel movement.”

I know it’s good to try to learn new things and increase one’s perspective and insight by collective experiences, but I think somewhere along the line you have to determine the aptitude of your own brain, the ability that exists in your gray matter and pursue those adventures with greater zeal–and allow the experts in other fields to surpass you, and hopefully teach and protect you.

It’s not shameful to be dumb sometimes.

The shame only comes when you insist that you really knew the answer … or “somebody cheated.”

 

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