The Internet, the Cafeteria, the Street, and Me

I remember so very clearly when access to the Internet was something that people connected with academic institutions could use. I remember exchanging emails with my mother from my portal at a university radio station and her portal at Mass Art. I remember the first real-time "chat" that I had from three different computers on campus (with Michael and with our friend Norman who now lives in Norway). I remember user groups where I found that there were thousands of people who shared my interests.

I enjoyed lively conversations with people about music and viola playing, and I found a great many people I would otherwise have no access to at "play." I had meaningful email correspondences with many people I met through those user groups.

Once we were able to connect to the internet at home, I started participating in the newly-created blogosphere. The blogosphere was really lively, and it allowed for a very special and meaningful kind of connection. Writing in the blogosphere remained available to anyone to read, just like a website. The way blogs were set up allowed me to post an organized catalog of music I had written, and provide links to the email address of the publisher I worked with (Subito), the WorldCat (where pieces of mine in libraries could be borrowed via interlibrary loan) and the Werner Icking Music Archive, where I shared my arrangements. I was early to the musical blogosphere, and the title "Thematic Catalog" hadn't been taken yet.

I hoped that people interested in music might search for my (accessible in the WIMA for free) arrangement of the Pachelbel Canon and stay to explore the rest of the music.

People certainly love the Pachelbel Canon. I don't know how many people "stayed" to explore some of my own (non-transcription) music, and I guess I never will. I have, however, made friends with musicians everywhere through this catalog.

I was an avid user of the Werner Icking Music Archive, and I contributed many transcriptions in those early years. The recorder player who ran the archive asked me if I would like to make my own music available in the WIMA, and I jumped at the chance. At that point I had around eighty pieces of music published. After my publisher's death (it was Seesaw) its inventory was sold to Subito, and my music, along with the other music in the acquisition was not made available for purchase for what seemed like a very long time.

Eventually the WIMA became too big for one person to maintain, and it was absorbed into a public domain library for choral music. These two public domain libraries became the IMSLP, which has grown into an absolutely indispensable international resource for musicians, scholars, librarians, students, and performing organizations. I still keep most of the music I write there. Here's the IMSLP page for my music.

I mostly use Facebook to let people know about the music that I have posted in the IMSLP, and I do my best in Facebook instrumental groups to respond to queries for music for a specific combination of instruments. I appreciate having the ability to do this. Sometimes I post links to these blog posts there.

My early experiences with Facebook reminded me of going to the cafeteria at Juilliard when taking a break from practicing. Everybody I knew (from school and from elsewhere in my past) seemed to be on Facebook.  Practicing musicians who emerge from the captivity of a practice room seem to have great social needs when they are let out. We work for hours and hours on the art of communicating musical phrases, and sometimes we achieve the joy of having them flow successfully. but that success falls only on our ears, and then it disappears into the ether.

Even the most introverted musicians need, at some point, other people to play for or with or to talk with. 

Why do we do this thing anyway? Isn't it for making connections with our fellow humans? When I was at Juilliard I was starved for people to play with. It was in the cafeteria that those connections were made.

There used to be a separation between what we call "real life" and what we used to think of as "virtual life" (or, as a friend put it "sidebar life"). But in recent years the "real" and the "virtual" have mixed together. During the year or so of isolation from live music that we experienced due to the pandemic, the "virtual" became the "real." For me the time between March of 2020 and March of 2022 was an incredibly creative time. I wrote a lot of music, really learned to play the violin like a violinist rather than like a violist, and found that I did have real connections with people through the internet. My virtual life became mixed with my real life too.

And then we were let out into the world, and "real life" was presented to us again.

Using Facebook is now (at least for me) like walking along a city street filled with billboards and flashing signs advertizing everything that I didn't know I might need. (Who knew that a nail clipper could work as a wire stripper, or that the little hole in it could bend a piece of metal wire into any shape you desire? And what is wrong with the way I eat and the way I dress?) To further distract from the social experience I crave when I take a break from practicing or working, I see photographs and videos of people I do and don’t know in beautiful places, cooking beautiful food, and having great success in their lives. I also see photographs from my "real life" friends that I enjoy. My emotions are all over the place: overstimulation, happiness for my friends, and a sense that that life I lead in "real life" is rather dull (which it really isn't: I have a great life).

Because I have this blog as a place to express myself, I do not post very much on Facebook. And more and more I restrict my participation to commenting and occasionally linking to blog posts that I have written.

I'm so grateful to have this "place" to play.