Risks, Jocks, and Nerds

So based upon some conversations with the hockey player, Ian Laperrière on twitter, I’m having a few thinky thoughts about injuries, jocks, nerds, and the line between the two.  The point Laperrière has been making is that, yes, we should prevent injuries, but also that people take risks to play at such a high level.

Enter the recent discussion on NPR that had little to do with sports writing. It devolved into a panel discussion of how horribly violent hockey is.  Nobody is arguing that point, but the attitude of the story was that the sport isn’t worth it (and that hockey is mostly fighting, which is another argument for another time.  Short response: they haven’t been watching the same games as I have this year.)

But it got me thinking:  What would that panel have thought about the scads of musicians that suffer career-related injuries? RSI’s are legion among musicians, as is hearing loss.  (Ask any violist what they think of the brass section behind them. Those sound barriers don’t block a whole hell of a lot.) You see the same kind of attitude here, as well.  If a rock musician is injured, it’s their own damn fault, whereas an oboe player with a crippling case of tendinitis is somehow nobly sacrificing for his/her art.

Before I got into composing, I was a violinist.  I played semi-professionally all through high school, and I was well on my way to being a gigging musician.  I wasn’t soloing with orchestras or on the solo concert career circuit, but–to be honest–I was pretty good.  Then in my sophomore year of college, I developed tendinitis in my shoulder during a marathon 3-performance weekend of most of Handel’s Messiah. I was on the “scratch list” for most of that weekend and on NSAIDs and muscle relaxants.  Because teachers and professors weren’t overly understanding of the effects of RSI’s back then, it only got worse until I was in the middle of a premiere of a piece by Robert Ashley a few years later in the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. (I’ve broken bones before, and I think they hurt far, far less than bad tendinitis.)  My playing career was over.

In hindsight, it was a good thing that happened to me.  It freed me to fully pursue composition, which I dearly love.  While I liked playing the violin, I didn’t like practicing much, and I can’t think of anything more mind-numbingly boring than a 3-hour orchestra rehearsal.  (And that includes having my own pieces played.)  A part of me misses performing.  There’s no bigger endorphin rush of giving a great performance and connecting with an audience.

But back to Laperrière’s point:  people take risks to play at such an elite level.  I remember back in high school people telling me that a career as a musician was a “waste” for someone like me–who was academically gifted, a nerd.  They told me that I wasn’t a jock, and had options.  First, this is pretty insulting to both groups:  there are nerds who’re athletically gifted, and there are jocks who’re intellectually brilliant. But beyond that, we’re not dealing with normal people.

If a child is gifted at something, be that music, sports, or whatever, it’s cruel to enforce “normality” on them.  They aren’t ever going to be normal, and to withhold the training and competition they need to hone their craft isn’t helping them. Yes, athletes retire, and so do musicians.  But the best thing that can help either isn’t to harp on what they expect to do after retirement, but to encourage them upon the way there.  It’s a very long road with hours of training to get at the point where a person is offered an NHL contract or a chair with one of the “big name” orchestras.

I can’t speak for other athletes, because I’m not them and their world is different from mine, but for me the transition from gigging musician to composer wasn’t that difficult precisely because I had taken the risk.  I knew who I was.  I knew what I was capable of, and–more importantly–I learned my limitations.  That never would’ve happened, had I played it safe with an escape route planned out in some career I had no interest in.

What do we take away from this?  Prevention is a worthwhile goal.  What happened to me, for instance, was preventable.  This happened in the early days of the 1990′s, so medicine hadn’t quite caught up to the epidemic of computer-related RSI’s.  I never should’ve been pushed to keep playing as much as I did when the injury happened.  But also: we can’t wrap people in bubble wrap.  Shit happens, and bodies aren’t machines.

 

 

Still Alive

Still here.  Still alive.  Big move.  Different area.

How’re you?

Hi.

I’m still here.  I’m in the final throes of my dissertation, so I’m kind of wrapped up in that.  Hopefully I’ll have time to blog on some stuff in the near future, if I still have any braincells left.

By the way, cleaning one’s bathroom is a perfectly acceptable method of procrastination.  Let’s just say I’ve got procrastination down to an artform.

(N.B. This isn’t directed at anyone in particular.  It should not also be read as a flounce.)

Today is kind of a weird day, if you’re a contemplative, and it’s mainly to do with the fact that contemplatives aren’t understood.  In one sense, today is a very public demonstration of one’s faith.  In another, the entire Church is being called to turn inwards, perhaps more than most would in their everyday lives.

That puts those of us who’re called to some sort of contemplative vocation in a weird place, especially if we’re the liminal types who’re both contemplatives and not living in some sort of community fully dedicated to contemplative life.  Every day of our lives, we’re pulled in a thousand different directions, mainly having to do with our secular lives, which is as it should be, since we have obligations to things that contemplative monastics don’t:  we have our families, our friends, and our jobs.  That also means that our faith gets showered with a thousand different “shoulds” as to what we “should” be doing.  Yes, witness is important, but so, also, is contemplation, which is something I think our culture has lost.

Some are quick to point out that there have been contemplatives who’re more public in their lives.  (Mother Theresa had a very public ministry that was invaluable, but she’s not the type I’m discussing, although contemplative prayer was important to her.)  Everyone likes to pull out Merton as an example of a “public” contemplative.  Most religious communities in the Benedictine tradition lovingly offer hospitality.  I’m certainly very public with some things:  I blog, I’m on facebook, and I play WoW.  I’m also engaged.

But there’s always a cloister.  No matter how much I love my fiancé, he will never fill that “God-shaped hole” that’s in me.  Nor will my blogs, facebook, or WoW.  If you are at some sort of cloistered or semi-cloistered community, there are places you’re requested not to go, the cloister.  Merton’s writings have certainly been a blessing in my life, but I can’t help but also feel his pain at being forced into a more public life than he was being called to, because that pain is something I have to mitigate every day of my life.

I’ve also got some pretty clearly-defined lines.  There’s a point every night at which the computer gets locked and I get my space with my Maker.  My prayer life is between my God, my spiritual director, and I, and there are things which don’t get blogged about, either.  It’s when those lines get blurred that there’s trouble and conflict between these two worlds I’m in.

Yet often because my faith doesn’t fit “the norm” I’m written off as not being “on fire” enough or lukewarm, especially among the types who’re influenced by evangelicals.  I’m attacked because I don’t publicly support the right causes or do the same things.  Certainly there is always a need for protests, soup kitchens, and other acts of charity.  Sometimes those things have to take precedence over anything else.  But by engaging in those kinds of witness, I would be ignoring the one to which I was born:  contemplation.  I hope there’s still room for diversity in what our vocations are.  Without it, the world would be a poorer place.

And here’s a link from Steve:  http://faultline.org/index.php/site/item/incendiary

One of many reasons why I’m marrying him.

Welcome to the new blog.  It’s the same as the old blog.  Haloscan started charging for commenting features, so I decided to move.  Blogger’s got a lot going for it, but its comment functionality is limited, to say the least.

On trying to be a good ally

First, a video I saw on Kurt Sutter’s blog:

I think it’s instructive to watch, especially in light of yesterday being National Coming Out Day. So many people I read yesterday posted something along the lines of coming out because they like members of the opposite sex. This is not being supportive. This is not being a good ally. It’s being a douche. Why, you ask? because of privilege. You’re taking the voice of someone marginalized in our society, whose voice might not be heard. Congrats!

See, privilege is an insidious thing because while you have it, you don’t know it’s there. I can hit on a guy in a bar and not worry about being killed for it. I can tell my parents I like men, and not be kicked out of the house, shunned, or otherwise expelled from whatever support structure they offer. I’m free to marry the person I love with all the legal protections that come from it. And I’m certainly not going to be shunned or expelled from my denomination, should it become known that I’m attracted to men.

Don’t believe me that it’s happening in the Catholic Church? Go read this article. Go ahead. I’ll sit here and wait.

Here’s one thing you should take away from that article: twelve of Corcoran’s parishioners went to the bishop. They didn’t go to the parish priest, who could’ve diffused the situation. They went straight to the head of the diocese. Also, they went to the bishop with nothing more than rumor. Even if they had conclusive proof, what those twelve parishioners did was nothing more than a witch hunt.

If you can stomach to read further in, it’s mentioned that being an altar server isn’t a right, but a privilege. I’d agree with that, but I’d also like to point out the sentence where the one parishioner quoted says that gays and lesbians aren’t supposed to be involved in the liturgy. I wonder if the person who said that realizes that we’ve got at least two thousand years’ worth of Church history behind us. I’m willing to bet good money that a not insignificant amount of popes, priests, religious, saints, and martyrs have been gay/lesbian. And that’s not counting all the countless people not recorded who lived and died for our faith.

You know how in the video Wise discusses how the white people in the district next to the 9th Ward blamed everything on those who lived in the 9th Ward? That’s happening in the RCC right now. Look at what fingers get pointed where. Who got blamed for the sexual abuse crisis? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not the same group of people described in the research done by independent groups about pedophilia. Instead of whiteness, you’ve got sexual orientation being thrown around.

Divide and conquer. We don’t need other groups imposing it on us. We’re doing it just fine on our own.