Music, Oh Music

an email exchange with my MOM

dear friends,

i’m glad you’re here.
thank you for being here!
as you may know, i often share short fun things here
AND OTHER TIMES i share longer pieces LIKE THIS ONE.
it’s an email exchange that i had with my mom this morning.
it was meaningful and i thought folks might enjoy reading it.
thank you for receiving!


background ingredients:

— my parents were music teachers
— my mom really wanted me to love music like she did
— i started taking violin lessons when i was 4 and i didn’t love them
— i taught myself guitar in high school and DID love it
— writing songs led me to doing standup comedy which i ALSO love
— the other day, my mom and i had a conversation about a lot of this
— today, she sent me this thoughtful email (because she knew i wouldn’t be awake yet, and then i wrote back to her, and that’s what i’m sharing)

FROM MY MOM TO ME:

Hi Mike,

I want to acknowledge that taking violin lessons as a child was an upsetting experience.  That was never my intention.  I wanted you to have a love of music & I tried to not make you do a lot of other things or chores.  I thought by allowing you to watch a half hour of Muppets & practicing a half hour would be a fair trade.

I can't do anything about the past but I wanted to acknowledge your feelings as a child.

If you can think of anything else I can do moving forward, please let me know. 
I love you so much.
Love,
Mom


FROM ME TO MY MOM (FROM HERE TO MATERNITY?):

Dear Mom who I love so very much,

Thank you for this message.
Thank you for the conversation in the car the other day.
Thank you for asking the questions you did and for really listening to my answers.
Thank you for acknowledging my feelings!

It feels really great to be heard, to share, to offer and receive.

I love you so much and I thank you so much for all of this.

I'm also so grateful that I DO have the love of music that I do now, and comedy, and art, and life, and love, and everything. And I know it all has roots in the seeds you helped plant in me as a child.

To start learning music so young IS a gift.
It might have been a gift I didn't recognize as such as a child, but I do now, very much.
You know, sometimes a child gets a gift of SOCKS, and the kid is like "but I wanted a toy to play with," and we can understand that, and also socks are important!
(Also as an adult, sometimes Rini has gotten me some really nice-feeling socks, and that can be a wonderful gift. Which is another example of the way I feel now being different from the way I felt as a child.)

A few years ago, I was on a podcast. I forget the guy's name, but I remember the experience very well. He was about 25 years old, and he seemed wise and kind, and I learned that his father had died 6 years earlier, when he was 19. I offered my condolences and he thanked me, and then said something like "it was the worst thing to happen TO me, and the best thing to happen FOR me." It was hard and sad and painful, and because it happened, he said that he grew and learned so much.

This is in no way a perfect parallel. I offer it only to share that even when the WORST thing happens to a person (loss of a close close loved one), even that can be a source of growth and beauty and wisdom and compassion and love.

And my violin lessons as a child were nowhere near an experience like that, of course. The scope is completely different. And also, there were things that I did enjoy about learning music as well. Like so many things in life and work, there are elements I enjoyed and elements that were less my favorite. Like, I really did like learning music theory a lot. It was like learning these fun math equations, harmony and counterpoint and what Bach did with these rules that if we followed them we could make these beautiful sounds. I also liked a lot of the people that I played with. Wendy. Alexandra. My quartet (Amy, Beth, Chris... I didn't realize til now that their initials are ABC!). Tons of other people over the years, in various orchestras and groups and classes and things. I also really liked Mrs. Gerson a lot. She was a sweet lady, and a lot of the pieces that I played were beautiful.

Being able to create music is a magical thing, and I am absolutely grateful for it.

When Rini and I were driving the other day, I believe one of the things you said about curating the experience for me was that you likened it to school. Like, school is a given for most children. And I understand you wanted music education to be a given for me as well. And honestly, I think you succeeded. How I feel/felt about my lessons IS/WAS similar to how I feel/felt about school. For school, I absolutely didn't love waking up in the morning and getting on the bus and then having to be at that place all day, and ALSO, there was a lot that I loved learning. Math, grammar, language, some science... There were some great teachers who I still think about. Some great books I read. Great experiences. I'm glad that I have my education, glad that that was a given. And I feel the same way about my violin lessons.

On top of all that, I hope you know and just in case I'll remind you that I'm so very very happy with my life as an adult and more. Starting with childhood, I absolutely appreciate that I didn't have lots of chores and I was taken care of, fed, sheltered, clothed, all the basics AND MORE. That I got to watch the Muppets and more. That you found Far Brook and French Woods and Buck's Rock AND MORE. That I got to become who I am. That I got to be who I was/am. That at camp, I met so many loving people who are still my dear dear friends today. That I got to pick up Arie's guitar and start easily learning how to play it, thanks to the violin lessons and music theory I'd already learned. That I got to do the fun part of pure creation, pure play, because of all the fundamentals I'd learned. That I got to start making music with Sam and fall in love with music so deeply that I wanted it to be my career, my path, my dream, a dream which is still underway, having only shifted the exact output of my artistic creations to comedy. And my comedy is musical. My jokes are like songs. Sometimes they literally are songs. Music is in me. Music IS me.

And I understand your love for it and for me. I know that music is in YOU and that you, in a way, ARE music as well. We both love words and sounds and notes and melodies and rhythms. We both say things in fun ways, because we kind of each are our own instrument, creating the music of our melodious, harmonious lives.

If we zoom in and look only at how I felt during particular lessons as a child, we come away with an incomplete picture. Objectively, my lessons were an hour a week, practice was a half hour or an hour a day, violin school on the weekends was several hours. My life was, and is, wonderful.

And here's a maybe fun analogy about the way I felt at my most challenged as a child. I might have felt things like "oh poop!" and now can see that it was actually fertilizer for the field of music that these seeds were planted in, which I couldn't see at the time because they hadn't grown into the wonderful luscious full plants, a forest full (at the time, I couldn't see the forest for the TEARS, maybe?), a cornucopia, a beautiful musical utopia.

Oh, and one more (maybe lots more) thing(s):

You know this poem?

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail."

Without music lessons, I might never have picked up the guitar.
Without the guitar, I might never have started doing comedy.
Without comedy, I might never have moved to NYC.
Without moving to NYC, I might never have met Rini.
(OR THIS CURRENT VERSION OF MYSELF.)

And also I wouldn't have the same relationship I do with Zach, and Gus, and Liz, and so many others, on and so on infinitely. My life is beautiful and I'm so grateful for it, for you 1) HAVING me, 2) RAISING me, 3) LOVING me, 4) SHARING with me the love that you have for music and encouraging me and to love it in a similar way WHICH I NOW DO.

If I had a child, I would absolutely want them to love music the way I do, or the way that THEY do. And/or I would want them to love SOMETHING the way I do, or the way THEY do. You know? Like with Rini's little siblings. Some of them DO play music and sing. Some of them act. Some of them do gymnastics and ballet. Some of them read and write and create like that. Some of them make jokes. Of course, Rini and I aren't their Parents (more like their grandparents, we feel), and we're happy to encourage them and support them and meet them and learn who they are and offer what we can to them. And I know that being a parent is different, so much more monumental. The parent is the original shaper, the creator and the curator of the child's experience.

And you did such a wonderful job, and you STILL are.

Thank you for wanting me to have a love of music. Thank you for your love. Thank you for saying "If you can think of anything else I can do moving forward, please let me know." Thank you for saying "I wanted to acknowledge your feelings as a child." Thank you for truly listening and hearing and acknowledging my experience, my feelings. That is a wonderful gift that we can continue to give to one another.

I love you so much, and receiving this message from you this morning made me feel a lot of beautiful things, so tender. Thank you for listening and sharing.

I feel like I could keep saying more and more (another gift that you've given me, the ability and desire to express myself infinitely), and I'll pause for now.

I look forward to talking more soon, and always.
I love you so much.
M