Use Your Hands
Musicians, especially flutists, are ridiculous. Just listen to the kinds of things we say for ourselves: respectable professors compare musical study to military training, and sought-after performers style themselves as sound doctors healing the souls of their audiences—or worse, latter-day Menuhins spreading peace and love. Bloviations aside, where’s the music?
I can’t tell most players apart. Technical standards may be rising, but the range of acceptable expression remains narrow. There are sanctioned sounds, eligible feelings, and, if you ask the jurors and professors nicely, a list of allowed eccentricities. But where are those ancient pipers who play from a need to fill the silence? They’ve been replaced by conference attendees who, like Gibraltar macaques, jockey for higher and higher position on the rock face while aging tourists take selfies.
I’m quite convinced that the remedy is learning to prepare good, simple meals by hand. After all, a man who can serve up a feast of reason and a flow of soul will never be as silly as someone who lives solely to be a virtuoso. Only when I can do so shall I pick up my flute again—not as an artist, but a cook. ∎