Get a Life

Doing Beats Watching Any Day

Several things met to create this post.

Someone asked me today what sport was "mine". The context lent the meaning, "What sport do you enjoy watching?" The questioner continued trying to discover what I am a "fan" of--Baseball, football, hockey, etc. I had to confess that unless I am actually a participant, I don't care at all about any sport. And watching someone else play a game just seems silly to me.

OTOH, I watched and listened with great pleasure—joy would not be too small a word—to James Galway's Lincoln Center concert, tonight. But then, having played a number of instruments and having a somewhat larger music "vocabulary"—shared understanding from participatory experiences—than most "sports fans" share with "their" game, the listening/watching experience was quite likely at a different level than most sports fans experience when watching a game.

(BTW, the performance highlighted to me the great chasm between "great" artist and merely wonderful artistry. When Lady Jeanne Galway joined her husband, the difference was readily apparent. She played beautifully, wonderfully, artistically. He played at another order of magnitude beyond that. Stunning—both of them—but more so because of the readily discernable difference between beautiful and truly great artistry.)

The third thing that led to this post was something quite out of the blue. Pushing a cart through Walmart—a Walmart we do not often frequent—I was stopped by a Walmart "associate" in the dairy section and asked, "Aren't you the whistler?" It seems that he recalled my visits to a Walmart in a different town, 20 miles away, where he had worked five years ago. Simply because I whistle tunes, often without conscious awareness, frequently when I am out and about, noodling around here at home, working—whenever.

Why do I whistle so much? Partly because my voice isn't what it once was. Partly because I don't play any instruments so often any more. But mostly because music isn't just something to consume; it is something to do, to make, and it's just there ready to be made.

I rarely listen to music on the radio.

I do not listen to tapes, records or CDs like I used to.

I rarely, as tonight, listen to/watch a concert.

Because music is to be done, music is to be made, not consumed as a passive listener with no creative participation.

Try it. Sing a song; whistle a tune; make some music. It beats the heck outa being just another consumer of someone else's creativity.