That's odd. Most of what is on this blog are extracts from notebooks, things I wrote and never intended to share. It feels different writing something to share it.
Last year I made a decision. I wanted to try to switch my career from architecture to music. That meant in my mind going back to school, and getting a Bachelor's degree all over again. A troubling thought after 5 years in architecture school. Those who have been to architecture school know what I mean. But somehow, I felt that I had attained the required skills and maturity for this undertaking. I felt capable of attempting it.
That was in the summer of 2013. Now it is the fall of 2014. I am still an architect, I haven't made it into school to start another 4 year journey. I don't know if I will. I might give it up.
How do you make such a decision? That's what I'm trying to write about. About how I made it. Here goes:
I am here now, in the country I fell in love with 6 years ago, the country I've dreamed of over and over, and wished that I would come back to. I find that I am less excited than I expected, less overwhelmed by all the beauty that surrounds me, less enamored, less touched, less joyful to see long lost friends.
I don't know why I walked there. I think it was a memory that drove me. A desire to see an old place. Perhaps that is why I am writing this.
The river flows without a thought to what surrounds it. Silently, softly, quickly. I can make out the large overhanging trees on its right bank and they guide me to the gate of the garden. I walk aimlessly, trying to find if I remember the place at all. It has been 6 years. The trees are still the same. So tall and large. I look around and listen. People walk by here and there, and sit on the grass and under the trees.
A sound reaches my ears. Unintelligible at first. Noise. But as I listen intently, I hear the sound of music. I had seen the ads filling the streets for the Festwochen der Alten Musik. I didn't know anything was happening here. Perhaps a public performance, perhaps an event of sorts? I walked towards the music, and found myself facing the pavilion. People filled it, sitting, standing, leaning against the pane-less windows, and the pleasant tender voice of strings streamed out. I walked towards the interior, hoping for a place to sit, but there was none. I walked and watched the seated musicians express the music through their bodies. I watched and watched and listened. I stood in the back within the crowd and closed my eyes and just listened. The music finally found its way deep down into me. It found the hole, the little crack through which light had been dripping since I arrived, it found it and shattered its way through and touched me inside, and my tears came down. My tears came down! What relief to be moved again! To be touched again!
As I listened and cried, the realization came to me "I can do this, I can make music like that, music that can touch you. I want to do that."
The music continued until the final note. The people clapped and cheered, and the musicians bowed. Soon many left, and I was left standing there, watching.
This is what I wrote a year later at the same place, after having not been selected for a music exchange program in the USA, and not being admitted to 2 music schools in Austria (and more recently being accepted into Berklee College of Music, but not being able to afford it):
It's dusk and I'm in Innsbruck. In fact I'm sitting in the same pavilion in the Hofgarten. The same one in which I sat last summer and heard music that made me cry, and decided that I wanted to make such music.
However, the pavilion is empty. I look around and I can remember where the musicians were sitting last time and where I stood. It was full of people then, there were no empty seats. The pavilion, like me, is empty. One year later, I stand here where all of this started with nothing to show for it. I'm still stuck in the same dilemma, and it seems that perhaps there's nothing wrong in being stuck.