Posted by Rick Denney on November 19, 2001 at 14:48:08:
In Reply to: irked about parents posted by Julie on November 16, 2001 at 23:28:15:
I lost you when you said, "I wasn't jealous 'cause I have my own Miraphone 188 (CC)."
You will only avoid being a slave to your possessions when you can truthfully say you weren't jealous, even if you were playing the school's plastic sousaphone. The fact that you mentioned your Miraphone was a 188, and further that it was a C (which were ALL 188's), suggests to me that you are suffering from a disease common around here: Tuba envy. I have suffered myself, and still suffer from time to time--more often than I'd care to admit. I have nobody to blame but myself.
Materialism is a killer. In this context, it will hurt your tuba playing, not help it, and in any context it will hurt your character. The tuba playing may or may not be important to you in the long run, but the character is critical.
My teacher was pondering getting a large tuba, and he brought his suggestion to his teacher. His teacher took my teacher's smallish Getzen G-50, and proceeded to cause structural breakdown of the buildings across the street with it. My teacher called this a reality check, one that forced him to realize, yet again, that the instrument does not the tuba player make. My teacher is a top pro, and if this is true for him, then how much more true is it for me?
I have no problem with kids owning fine instruments, even if bought by their parents, if they have the right attitude about it. I just don't want the tubas to own the kids. If a kid is all wigged out because the fellow sitting next door has a fancier tuba, or had to work less hard to get it, then that kid is not thinking about the music or about the blessings he enjoys. That kid is now owned by that fellow's tuba. That's a terrible waste of energy, and it's also immoral, in violation of that old principle that we sometimes think is no longer relevant: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's [you fill in the blank]."
Julie, to the kid who plays a school-owned plastic sousaphone, the notion that you can have a Miraphone 188 and pay it off over time is an impossible fantasy come true. He's as wrapped up in your tuba as you are in the fact that your neighbor doesn't have to pay for his. He doesn't consider that there are kids who have no music program to play in at all, or a school to go to, or even food to eat. Count your blessings, and think about them this Thursday when you are scarfing down that turkey. You will be a better tuba player, and a better person, if you do.
Rick "an occasional self-inflicted victim of tuba envy and the materialism it exposes" Denney