I expect this to be a somewhat difficult read for a lot of people. I simply ask you to bear with me and hear me out. This has three parts. Two stories and a message. The first story is here:
Being perfectly frank, the last 18 months have been rough. A lot has happened. Mistakes were made. Some of them were mine and many of them were not. For the first time in my life I cannot say I live without regret. I am significantly shorter on patience now than ever before. Bitterness is a more common theme.
Now I am in Albuquerque, living by myself. I am finding that a month is a long time to be alone with my thoughts. What is important and what is not is clearer. Who I really care about is clearer. My opinions on things that have happened are more easily defined. Other things remain fuzzy. I expect much of that will clear up as the summer progresses, or rather I hope.
Am I content? Am I settled? Not at all. A lot remains unknown and a lot remains unsaid.
If I could do things over, I would go back to the last home football game of last season. November 3 was the date. Here, I thought things had turned around. Things made sense, things were going my way, and I thought my luck had turned. I was happy. Then regret. Things after that have been a whirlwind of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Confusion personified.
Thus is the setting of this particular scene. Cryptic? Yes. Unhelpful? Probably. Don't expect grand revelations and an explanation for most of this. Much of it still belongs in my thoughts only. I fear it's only a matter of time before that won't be the case, but for now that's how things need to be.
In an effort to stay on point (this is supposed to be about music after all), I want to bring up two specific happenings from this current year that bring ambition into focus and have contributed to that tremendous whirlwind in a profound way. There are two separate parties involved, but both are dear to me which has made all of this exceptionally difficult.
Where to start. Well, let's cover one now and the other in the next post.
Let's go back to that football game. Was there anything particularly special about the actual game or pep band itself that makes it stand out? No, it's something else which is nearly completely irrelevant to the current proceedings and that most certainly will not be discussed here; however, there is a reason to bring it up this time. Pep band was at a high point. Football season was spectacular. The band was spectacular for basketball too, but that season was short, weird, and ended somewhat abruptly. Unsatisfying is the word. Things were already slightly off.
Then ambition reared it's ugly head. It is said that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Indeed it is. Decisions were made by pep band officers and kept from me for too long. Destructive decisions. Decisions that should have never been on the table and were made in a moment of fear and panic. Decisions that put the future of the band in serious jeopardy.
Student leadership. I need to be frank. I do not believe leadership can be taught. This is unfortunate. Few are natural born leaders. Find these people and support them. They are the ones who will really make an organization go places and at the same time they are the ones who are the most vulnerable. People who want to be in a position of power will do anything they can to destroy a natural leader out of jealously and ambition.
Unfortunately, student leaders tend to be inexperienced and tend not to be natural leaders, yet the current generation (mine included) is told they can do anything they put their mind to. This is too often misconstrued to mean that they don't need any help in order to do whatever they want. This is completely asinine. The only reason I am where I am today is because I had the good sense to find good mentors, to watch them, to listen to them, and to trust them. If you don't take advantage of those around you who already have experience, you will be ineffective as a leader. Period!
This is the problem the pep band officers met. Sometime early in the year they became aware of the previous executive board's failure to properly manage the fundraising done in the fall. This left them in a precarious situation. The end of the year was approaching but they were behind on fundraising and they had to make budget decisions for the next year. The fundraising is used to pay me. On top of that, they came to the realization that I would eventually be leaving the university (that's what they tell me anyway). Let's back up for a second. Pep band officers are elected on the calendar year. The officers had been in their posts for about a month or so when all of this happened.
So, the officers made some decisions on their own. They decided that the only way to continue is to cut the musical director pay in half, take responsibility away from the director, take over musical management of the band, and make the musical director train student directors who will have the majority of control of the band starting with the upcoming band camp in August. Naturally this was all done without ever bringing any of this up with me or, even worse, the band membership. To make things dire, I was not informed of any of this for something on the order of a month and a half during which time the budget for the next year was submitted, and a significant amount of fundraising time passed.
Pep band will be celebrating its tenth anniversary this coming school year. It is a well settled, mature musical ensemble. It also, against all odds, is the best instrumental ensemble on the River Campus. I don't say this to toot my own horn. It simply is the truth. From a musical standpoint there is nothing else like it. I has taken the full nine years to build the ensemble to the quality it is today. It has taken a careful plan and a well thought out set of goals for each year to keep improving. From a personal standpoint, it has taken me an equal amount of time to build the skill set necessary to rehearse and lead the band in such a way that it maintains such a high level of musicianship and I'm still learning how to do this. I spend countless hours planning and studying, working and contemplating, and observing and listening to be able to do what I do with the band.
All of this was completely lost on the officers. They told me straight out that they thought a member of the band could do my job as well as I could. I was offended. Furthermore, they listed a number of responsibilities I would no longer need to do as a way to justify the reduction of pay. The overwhelming majority of that list has not been my responsibility for at least two and a half years. On top of this I am told I will be kept on to train my replacements.
Complete and total lack of respect. If you don't yet know how it feels to be taken for granted, put yourself in my shoes.
Let's just say that several conversations were had. The problem is that I am still having a hard time with this. It still keeps me up, consumes my thoughts, and makes me feel terrible sometimes. My authority has been challenged countless times. This isn't new by any stretch. What makes it worse is that neither were the problems the officers had to deal with. If they would have talked to me I could have advised them on what other officers did to solve these problems in the past and we could have worked together on a solution. That doesn't diminish the student officer's leadership of the group. It enhances it.
I'm broken. I'm tired. I feel betrayed. I don't feel like fighting for this anymore yet so much of my own blood sweat and tears is written into the history of this band that I feel obligated to it. Usually by the time July 4 passes I have the next pep band year planned out: goals are outlined, the repertoire is set, and I am excited about August and the year ahead. For the first time I can say that is not the case. I have more of a sense of dread than anything else. My optimism is gone.
What I need is cooperation and communication, and on four separate occasions in the past 18 months (this pep band business being just one) I have been deprived of that. Ambition is a cruel mistress. Difficult to control and difficult to let go of.
What wasn't clear until about a week ago is how to move forward. It's always about moving forward and moving on. Otherwise you just go insane. I know now what needs to be done and I am beginning to understand that I need to finally start putting my own needs in front of the band's needs. My hope is that the tenth year is the best for the band, but it's going to be a tough one.
