Growing up

Tell me again: when was I supposed to grow up?

For my entire career, I have been doing for pay what I was doing as early as grade school: playing keyboards. At what point was I supposed to transition from being a wunderkind into being a professional? At what point does your typical prodigy transition into being just another performer, if not just another great performer?

When was I supposed to go from being clueless to being respected in the field? It’s really scary to recall that during my work at a certain church, I was thrust into the leadership due to the boss’s illness. We made it just fine, and I didn’t feel any different then, but I am horrified today to think what my immaturity and inexperience might have done.

I did not feel one bit smarter when I turned in my dissertation. I did not feel one bit relieved when I released the final chord of my final doctoral recital. I did not feel one bit more degreed when I got hooded. And I have never been taken by surprise when anyone addresses me Dr. Bell.

I am teaching in the same building where I was an undergraduate student. Sometimes I have to reflect on my past and my present to remind myself that I am no longer a student in that building. (Maybe that's why I grew a beard and wear a coat and tie to work.) I still feel energized in that building, just as I always did. I don’t feel any different now vs. then, but I see external evidence that I’m now making a difference and an impression, which helps when I lapse into kid mode and feel that no one will take me seriously unless I yell and scream.

I don’t need my students to love me in order to make me a good teacher. I just need them to do what I teach them to do, at least until they graduate. I don’t need to win a teaching award to know that I’m doing good work. (Good thing, because I haven’t won a teaching award and probably never will. I just don’t teach enough students directly to generate votes among the student body.) Tenure and promotion are designed to reward good teaching and retain good faculty. But if I may put those under a microscope, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that I became a good teacher at some point before the hiring committee decided I was a good teacher? And that I was a good teacher before the tenure/promotion committee decided I was a good teacher? I did not feel one bit different when my tenure and promotion were approved, nor when they actually went into effect, nor when I saw the raise in my paycheck. My art and my work ethic didn’t change when those things did.

There is deeper therapy to be explored here. At what point was I supposed to stop being a good little boy? My rebellion wasn't much -- it consisted of playing the organ rather than the piano, attending grad school in Texas rather than in North Carolina, joining and leading an Episcopal church rather than a Southern Baptist one, and establishing family and friends among gay people.

Though our statuses rise and change, we are much the same person we were way back when. Now, just as then, there are still accolades and approvals some of us crave, yea even need, to continue doing what we’re doing. I can’t work in the pragmatic vacuum I have discussed here today. I need human interaction and human approval. Therefore, yes, I do need students to love me. I do need audiences to celebrate my work. I do need presenters to keep calling me. I do need committees to consider me worthy. I do need (or at least want) pastors and conductors to acknowledge me as an expert, rather than as hired help.

To many, I am da man. To myself, I am often merely the same man. To those who seek an organist or organ teacher, I am their man. As a boy, I wanted to be a man. As a man, I sometimes miss boyhood. I think I’ll just continue being Joby the organist and good man, if it’s all the same to you. If you’d like to give me an award for any of that, I’ll gladly accept it and proudly display it. But otherwise, I’m still practicing my notes, teaching my students, and continuing to grow up.