Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Competition

After our journey into the world of Coleridge, and after reading a little about his relationship with William Wordsworth, I wondered if there might have been a film made about it. My suspicions proved correct, and I found this film from 2001 very satisfying in many ways.

The writers took liberties when filling in possible sub-plots, and they went back and forth in time a bit much for my taste. But the acting is excellent, the poetry extremely well read, the music (all original) is appropriate for both the time and the place, the visual effects and general cinematography are stimulating and imaginative, and the props (always important for me) felt authentic (unlike period films that look like advertisements in a Pottery Barn catalog). It wasn't easy to find this on YouTube, but here it is.



I suppose that I reacted quite strongly to the character of William Wordsworth because he was portrayed as an extremely competitive person who had a sister, who, by the dictates of society, had to express herself by helping her brother succeed. She wouldn't have thought for a moment to try to compete with her brother.

I like to think that when I was born I was delivered with a "non-compete" clause. My older brother Marshall, who identified a great deal with Wordsworth and his poetry, was competition personafied.

I couldn't compete with Marshall, who had the most absolute form of perfect pitch, though he insisted on competing with me.

I tried my hand at competition outside of the family as a child: trying to be the first to complete the SRA (reading) cards, taking my seating in all-city orchestra as an evaluation of my violin playing, and counting the lines I had in school plays as a way of gauging how important my part (and therefore I) was. I have since learned that there are no small parts, only small actors, and that where you sit in orchestra has no reflection on the quality of your playing.

After getting into Juilliard through what I considered the back door (see the post about doing a color trick to manipulate my teacher, and add to it the fact that Julius Baker taught my mother, and that my father was the principal violist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), and never being among the students who did the necesary things to be noticed (giving the impression of being something special by talking a good game and associating with "important" people), I turned inward and tended to my own musical garden, which had its rewards in sound, knowledge, and expression.

I don't do the aggressive promotional stuff that composers and performing musicians do on the internets because I do not have the taste or the skills for business. I have come to realize, however, that it might have more to do with the fact that I have a serious distaste for competition.

Competing for visibility by feeding an algorithm is kind of like counting lines in a play to me. Comparing my playing or writing to someone in a professional position that could be considered "above" mine is also a complete waste of time. 

I value the ability to "say" what I feel is true in music, and am so glad that I can continue to grow, even at this advanced stage of a life devoted to under-employment.

I hope you enjoy the movie, and I hope you find yourself exploring Coleridge's poetry. And Wordsworth's as well.