Let’s begin this retirement blog at the end. In an effort to build a relationship with my nemesis as we stood on stage together, prior to the gig, I said, in an open and honest fashion, I’m nervous. I could have bitten my tongue off, but it was out there now. I had shown myself to be needy. I hate doing that.
He looked down on me (he is about 6ft 3in) and said, as well as I can remember his words next day – nervous, what’s the point of being nervous? you are an infinitesimally small spec in the universe. You have no relevance and you’ll be dead soon. So why worry, just have fun. Hmm. Oookay.
Yes, it’s that time again. A retirement blog about Jazz summer school in all its multi-facetted glory. But what’s different this year is me being at the public performance at the end of the 4 day ‘course’. If you read any of the past reports of my attendance at this summer school you will know I’ve chickened out of the gig itself. I told myself in the past that simply attending the four days was enough. This year I decided it was time to front up, be a man, or similar, and perform at the Thursday night gig.
And so here I was looking out at a full house of about 50 people although I didn’t count them. I was too nervous. Why do I do these things to myself I wondered calmly and sensibly. Actually this last bit is not true. More like I internally screamed, hysterically and irrationally.
The four days had gone quite well (see score at end). Yes there were the usual (by now) moments throughout the week. Those moments of feeling I have no idea what he’s talking about. Yes, I know I’ve been told what a secondary dominant is but I’ve bloody well forgotten. OK? Yes, there were times when, although I knew I was supposed to come in on the second beat of the bar as opposed to the first beat, I can’t bloody well do it. OK?
What is simple is, I either focus on the bits I do well, or pack up and go home. To my undying credit there were no times this year when I felt like rushing out in tears. And there had been good moments – solos that actually got complimented, hats off to the rhythm section for keeping time when all around them was chaos from the brass. That kind of thing. Keep them at the front of your brain.
There were other moments that made me smile at the time and still do. On Monday we were told by Lesley, our excellent organiser and trumpet player, that there would be two drummers (she doesn’t like to turn anybody away and at one point there was the likelihood of being two keys players. Thank God the other one didn’t show). Was it King Crimson that had two drummers? I don’t really know because I was never a heavy metal fan, which I believe they were?
Anyway Lesley told us the second drummer was female and would be coming soon but she was always late, she said. My mind drifted off imagining what this female drummer might look like. OK call me Mr Stereotype but I imagined a young woman, bright-coloured hair, tats and Doc Martens crashing away on the bass drum. The door to the room opened and round the door peeped somebody I can only describe as Miss Marple or should it be, Ms Marple?
To cut a long story shortish, she was an excellent drummer with a great sense of humour. At one point after a particularly difficult theory session, she got up, passed behind my piano stool to the door and said quietly to me in a nice voice, I’m just going to throw myself under a bus.
Moral? That old chestnut, don’t judge a book by its cover, or a person by their looks. Liz made my week that bit easier. If I felt a little bit serious I looked across at the middle-aged, grey-haired lady bashing away (in time) at her drum set and smiled. Priceless.
So the ‘week’ itself how did it compare for me with previous years? I had forgotten until I was having a rare bit of social interaction with one (there were two of them) of the bass players who was also struggling a bit, that I’d given myself scores in four areas in previous years. No reason, I reasoned, not to repeat this task this time.
So here are my scores in four areas – how much did I learn? How much fun did I have (as re my nemesis’s advice)? How good was any social interaction? How well did I respond to the challenge I had set myself? Off the top of my head without too much thought, which is usually the best way to approach any rating task, my scores out of 10 were – learning – 6. I could have perhaps learned more because there was plenty to learn but I got so over-whelmed at times that I simply stopped paying attention.
Fun – 6 again, if I forced myself to focus on the good bits rather than my natural inclination to stare at the empty part of my glass. Social interaction – 5, still a disappointment and I think I’ve said before, as one of my strengths usually, this was a definite disappointment. Don’t they know what a great (read, ‘interesting’ guy I am? I guess not). Finally, in terms of meeting the challenge’ I’m going to give myself a surprising 10.* This purely because I attended the gig on the Thursday night and indeed played piano through all of the 7 numbers we’d been practising. Some people played on only a couple. Pah, wimps.
And I did two solos, one of which, if it did not exactly bring the house down, did at least stir up the odd spec of dust. Interestingly, it was the quietest solo of the evening which must tell me something. So having begun with the words of my nemesis ringing in my ears, I finished it with the applause of the audience in same ears, including Mrs Summerhouse in the crowd. This, apart from the Irish night, was the first time I’d ‘allowed’ her to be present at one of my (rare) public performances.
I’d like to say look at the photo above, at the beginning of this retirement blog for proof I was there but unfortunately you can’t really see me (that’s my head behind the woman in red on the right) so you will have to take my word for it. There’s a bit of a video as well but that’s not on here either. I don’t really do videos on this blog, maybe I should. So there we have it, retirement and setting oneself challenges. This challenge brought down on my head the inevitable mixture of pain and pleasure. You will have your own opinion as to whether this approach to retirement is sensible or barmy. I mean I was there and I have no idea which it was.
*Total – 25, compared with 19.5 last year.