Let’s be blunt: My father is dead. I don’t really care to talk about him all that much. The world will be better off when he dies the second death of never having his name spoken again. Except right now, I kinda feel like I have to.
I’ve recently been taking lessons at certain things – I think I’ve talked about that. That’s not really news. People take lessons about things all the time, and sometimes even succeed. The news is, I’ve actually been improving. I said to myself, “umaku naritai”, and, well, I did.
That’s not to say I’m perfect, or even great yet, but I’m improving. I am slowly working through being able to play the “revolutionary etude”, a particularly difficult Chopin etude. I’m about halfway through. That transition (where it starts going up by fifths) is a bitch, but I’m finding each day as I sit down and practice it I become just that much better at it.
And I’ve been composing some music, too. I remember a few years ago, and even a few months ago, when I tried to sit down and compose I ended up with a block and couldn’t even put notes to (figurative) paper. But now I have a concert band piece out, and I’m working on a series of short, experimental pieces so I can kind of flex my compositional muscles.
But the news is that I am actually improving. I may or may not be good at this now, but I can be good at this.
I remember when I was a child, watching my father do his thing. He worked as a transformer winder at a company that made spotlights (you’d recognize the spotlight name if you know anything about the industry or ABBA, but I won’t say it here). When I was in my late single digits, the company moved to Omaha, and he didn’t.
He never really had a stable job again. He had a few jobs here and there, but rarely enough to put food on the table, and eventually he just gave up. He put in the absolute barest minimum effort possible in life. I never once saw him succeed at anything. I mean anything. He failed at everything he tried.
And that included teaching me anything.
I’m not saying this out of a place of hatred or anything like that. I’m to the point right now where I’m indifferent to him. I’m being clinical and entirely objective. I never once saw him succeed at any single thing. And he never once allowed me to succeed at anything either, if he had anything at all to say about it. If there was a resource I needed, I didn’t get it. If there was anything I needed that I couldn’t provide for myself or didn’t come free from someone in the church, it was too expensive, can’t find it, no one else has it… always an excuse.
And once I grew old enough to start succeeding on my own terms, I didn’t know how that felt. I self-sabotaged more than anything, because I didn’t know what I’d do with myself if I actually succeeded.
I’ve succeeded at a few things in life, but frankly, I’ve mostly just bumbled into it.
Until now.
Tonight I sat down at the piano, and I played well. I mean, objectively well. Not “I think that sounds alright”, or “I guess I can pull that off”, or even “Well, I can bumble through it if I have to”. I knew what I was doing. And while I still have a lot of practicing and learning to do on the pieces I’m learning, I’m finding I’m actually capable of playing them.
I’ve never had that experience before. And, quite frankly, I don’t know what to do with it.
If I had to say one thing about my father, it’d be what I just did. He failed at everything in his life, and succeeded at nothing. And that includes raising me. But I’ve surpassed him. I surpassed him a long time ago. And I will continue surpassing him until I’ve eclipsed him in every possible way, and I will keep surpassing him even then.
I refuse to be a failure like him. I refuse to let it end like this.
I guess… this is a father’s day post? Or maybe I’ll write something even worse, then. He deserves all of it. Or deserved. As I said… he’s dead.
(If you don’t like how I talk about my father, I don’t care. You didn’t know him. He earned it. Please feel free to talk in glowing terms about your father or any other one. Leave this one to me.)