Out of the loop

We all need protection. But not like you think.

Note: there‘s a content warning ahead.

So, I’ve been unable to write anything here since August.

I am writing, though. Co-writing a book on collaborative piano. It’s cool! And difficult! I’m also getting chances to speak about our research. So I supported that by…reposting some piano-related Overcoached posts from 2023. Sigh. Yeah, I‘ve been struggling.

It’s the election, of course. The escalation of that sneering, bullying carnival show alongside the hurricanes and the wars has simply been too much. I‘ve been taking my little doomscroll-y sound bites a few at a time, just enough to compromise my sleep, and relying on meme-based humor and passive aggression. A few days ago, I posted this on my Instagram stories:

Within 24 hours, I had eight texts linking me to the latest story about the latest Title IX actions at a former workplace. Oh universe, you are so ironic.

Musicians, read my IG. I beg of you.

This made me think of the first thing I ever wrote that got some attention, which was this post on Medium from 2018, right after I left a job. Here‘s the content warning - it‘s about the three times in my life I was sexually assaulted. It‘s a nervous, oblique little essay, but felt monumental to write. My assaults happened a long time ago, one each in my family, at high school, and in my first workplace; when I wrote the essay, I was aware of assaults in every single one of my subsequent workplaces; a couple of those would end up being famous. 2018 was the beginning of a landslide in classical music concerning such stories. Colleagues and friends took great risks, speaking out about powerful perpetrators and paying high prices for it.

It takes my breath away to think that this was just six years ago.

In my six decades I’ve seen so much progress and regression around the topic of women’s autonomy. I remember when women got credit cards, crying when the ERA didn’t get ratified, “Mars vs. Venus,” “The Rules,” biological clocks, girl bosses. Somewhere in there I was the first woman to do a fancy sounding job in Europe, which of course made me believe progress was winning out (the day our boss demanded that all the women in senior management wear dirndls to work, my faith began to waver).

But then my industry’s post-MeToo bravery kicked in, and it seemed like we were starting to talk about all of it: exclusion on the basis of race, body shape, and different ability, problems with donors, abusive behavior in rehearsals, financial gatekeeping, all manner of inequities. The pandemic came, and the summer of George Floyd. Unemployed, online, we continued talking. It was, at least, a start inside the rabbit hole of our weird niche profession.

Now that we’ve been out in the record-breakingly hot air for a couple of years, things are awfully rough. The news of misconduct just keeps coming. Out on the wider stage, a perverse throwback opera rages like something staged by the spirit of D.W Griffith after spending the pandemic years binging Rogan podcasts. Talk about regression: it’s all death threats and slurs followed by “can’t you take a joke?”

As a classical musician, I understand thick skin as an assignment, I’ve lived it. Taking stock now, as an old, I must say that for me it wasn’t worth it. Not everyone feels the same, which I also understand. But that atmosphere of learning to take it, dishing it out, laughing with the mean guys and girls so they don’t hurt you - that was every playground in the seventies, that was my dining room table growing up. That was music school, masterclasses, auditions, and so many of my workdays. I was excited to feel we were collectively trying to leave it behind. Watching our larger culture call it back up and embrace it is one of the most disheartening experiences of my life.

I did learn something big and true through music: we’re all connected to each other. Don’t you dare sneer at this. I relearn it every day. You don’t have to learn it through music, but music makes so tangible something that can sound facile and woo. We are part of one another’s success and progress, we rise and fall together. Music is such a pleasurable and inspiring path to take, full of beauty and risk and surprise and inspiration, on the way to realizing that nobody does a single thing alone.

There are soloists and leaders at the front of the ensembles, but every person is essential. It matters that all the violins play with great articulation or that the second bassoon is in tune. It matters that the lights are in working order and that the costumes fit. It matters that the singers agree on the vowels and the color of the sound. It matters. Everybody matters.

That’s why it always felt like such a lie, such a violation, when any person was elevated above the group and allowed to behave however they chose, to whomever’s detriment. But we did allow it, over and over again. I allowed it. I wanted to stay and make music in impressive places, and I could as long as they weren’t coming for me. And I didn’t think my voice mattered in such situations; I could point to retribution all around.

So, music: I mattered, and I didn’t matter. Is that totally messed up? Or like, a universal truth about existence? But I digress. Humans will acquiesce to cruelty and worse if we believe we’ll be protected. And we need protection, because we are fragile, and our lives are small and precious.

But when I hear someone say that threats are coming from the outsiders, I say that I’ve only been attacked by people I knew well.

When I hear someone say that they are the strongman, I say that I’ve only found safety in communities and kinship.

When I hear someone say that we are different and better, I say that I’ve only found healing in looking at our ugliness.

In other words, safety and danger are both coming from inside the house. Wild.

I don’t know what will happen in the coming days, but I will show up in this space again, and stick with appropriately sized topics - for example, equity and justice for collaborative pianists. It’s not a small issue in my strange neck of the woods. If anybody knows about being essential to other people’s progress, it’s us. Musicians, we’ve got you.

In the meantime, whether we like it or not (ahem), we have to protect one another.

This is dedicated to the chaos reducers. There are so many of you, thank God!