On the Peculiar Breed Called Musicians

Music may be a universal language, but the language of musicians certainly is not. I remember receiving a rude shock when one of my fellow novices in the Monastery of the Infant Jesus asked me what a bar line is. Having been a musician surrounded by other musicians for most of my life, it simply never occurred to me that someone wouldn't know what a bar line is. But then, I'm sure the incredulous look on my face when I was posed that question is exactly the same look any computer-savvy techno-geek would give me if I asked him the kind of questions I'm likely to ask. "What's an URL?" (Yes, I do know what an URL is -- now. And my fellow novice now knows what a bar line is.) The bar line question was just one tiny incident among many in the cloister that prompted me to write the following passage in my journal:

     9 January 2005   It struck me last night that I really have no one to talk to about the things I love to talk about -- music, opera, books, films. No one in the novitiate, that is. There are some among the professed sisters and temporary professed who know literature and films, but even the few who have had musical training have not had enough to talk about it on the level to which I've so long been accutomed. And then, just as I was beginning to feel genuinely depressed about all this, I received a letter from the very person who embodies the kind of friendship I miss. His letter made me ache bitterly for his companionship and understanding, the understanding of two people with the same likes, dislikes, opinions, experiences, and vernacular. Yet I can't talk to him about this deep instinct telling me I need to be here in the cloister precisely because I love him and all those dear to me. I would bear any cross for them, even the sacrifice of that daily physical companionship which has been one of the great joys of my life. I can be a far better friend and greater help to them here, through this life of prayer and penance, than I ever could be in the world.

     I think I wrote in an earlier journal about musicians being a peculiar breed unto themselves. They have their own way of thinking and feeling and they speak a language all their own. No one, but no one, can truly understand the soul of a musician except another musician, and that is the absolute truth. A musician may come to be understood by non-musicians on a certain level, but that very deepest level is accessible only to those of the breed. It goes beyond understanding: it is empathy. I've been blessed, until I entered the cloister, only to have had relationships based on this particular empathy. I indeed lived in a kind of cloister, inhabited only by those of my own breed, and I never had to worry about not being understood or accepted; artistic temperament, a certain amount of moodiness, and rages directed at no one in particular, were the norm rather than the exception, along with pronouncing foreign words properly and debating the merits of Bösendorfer vs. Steinway. They were common traits of our peculiar breed. Suddenly to be plunged into an entirely different cloister with an entirely different breed that cannot understand your peculiar language or customs is not only a shock to the system, it is crucifying. But I took the plunge in faith, and in faith I will continue to swim blindly, with no life preserver save that of God's grace.

It's ironic that today I seem to suffer the opposite problem, though not quite to the same degree: I now feel out of the music loop, and more in the poetry and religion loop. Not that I don't have musician friends who are also religious; I have many, but they and I now tend to talk more about spiritual rather than musical things. My way of thinking and speaking has changed. Music is a crucial element in my life and always will be, but in the past it was crucial because of my own ability to produce it. Now I simply love it as one of God's great gifts. And another VERY important thing: I now know that using an outdated browser is like using Schirmer editions of Rossini.