An Exercise Considered, Then Discarded

 Dear businesspeople,

We all wait on hold at times. But “If It Takes Forever, I Will Wait for You” is a poor choice for on-hold music.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Minnows try to act like larger fishes, but the results are not the same.

— Will Cuppy, How to Tell Your Friends From the Apes

I’m not even sure why the idea of this particular thought experiment crosses my mind now but here goes:

What would you say to your 18-year-old self, if you could? At the risk of appearing to think that, as it is, I’ve always done the best I might (I think no such thing) I’m not convinced that anything I might have advised myself then (apart from practice more) could have made a difference of net better. What would I say? “Get into a different school, so that your opportunities are better?” “Marry into wealth so that you do not lack resources?” Firstly, telling myself those things would not change the fact that such opportunities did not arise for me. Secondly, no other path brings me to just this place musically as a composer. In one of the hour-long episodes of the fourth season of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling’s “No Time Like the Past,” one Paul Driscoll goes back in time, first to seek to convince the Hiroshima police to evacuate the city; second, to attempt to assassinate Hitler; and third, to plead with the captain of the Lusitania. Failing in all these altruistic attempts to improve the 20th century, he goes back a fourth time to the 19th, to “retire” to a quiet Midwestern town.  He falls for the town’s schoolteacher, but he comes to learn that she will perish in a fire. If this sounds familiar, there is a bit of an echo in Back to the Future III. Serling’s cautionary tale does not end so well for Driscoll as it does for Doc Brown, and indeed Driscoll finds himself serving as the unwitting catalyst of the conflagration. Let me not chide myself for any lack of imagination, if I cannot think of anything efficacious to say to mine 18-year-old self which might have improved the arc of my career.