Use Your Hands
Musicians, especially flutists, are ridiculous. Just listen to the kinds of things we say for ourselves: respectable teachers compare the difficulty of musical study to military training, and sought-after performers style themselves as sound doctors healing the souls of their audiences, or worse, latter-day Menuhins spreading peace and love. Bloviations aside, where’s the music?
I can’t tell most players apart. Technical standards may be rising, but the range of acceptable expression remains narrow. There are sanctioned sounds, eligible feelings, and, if you ask the jurors and professors nicely, a list of allowed eccentricities. But where are those ancient pipers who play from a genuine need to fill the silence? They’ve been replaced by conference attendees who, like Gibraltar macaques, jockey for higher and higher position on the rock face while aging tourists take selfies.
I’m quite convinced that cooking is the remedy. After all, a man who can feed a table of hungry guests with his own hands will never be as silly as one who lives solely to be a virtuoso. Only when I can do so shall I pick up my flute—not as an artist, but a cook. ∎