(Disclaimer: Not only is this probably the longest blog entry I've ever published, even longer than the "Barbie" posts of some years ago, but it also contains a blog-within-a-blog. Two blogs for the price of one! Sorry for the length. Can't you see I'm venting here?)

Going Postal, or The Return of Roberto, or Can You Believe The Nerve?

So. I told you I'd let you know about what's causing me to climb from the depths of my numbing depression. I'm still not all the way out, but I'm working on it - and you know, I just realized I said a mouthful when I said "numbing." Cause that's what it's been basically. I've just been numb. But not to worry, friends. I shall survive.

Anyway. Does everyone remember that I play the clarinet? OK, good, got that out of the way. Remember that a while back I was groovin' in a clarinet quartet that was me, whiz-kid MP, Mr M, and, well, for the sake of this blog we'll call him Roberto. Then quicker than you can say *pbbbt!* quartet was over. It ended with a whimper, which was odd considering that there was a huge bang right before the eventual whimpering.

The dissolution of the Never To Be Named Clarinet Quartet was very upsetting to me. I liked playing in it, and it was doing me a lot of good in the musicality department. And so just like a distraught woman in old movies would sit down at a piano to play away her emotional pain, I sat down and wrote a long blog about the end of quartet. But I didn't publish it. I didn't publish it out of respect to Roberto. I sent a link to it to a few close friends, but I didn't publish it for the world to see.

Well, here it is. Any respect I had for Roberto is long since burned away like a thousand hot suns, and I've got to tell the story. If you were one of the few who read this the first time round, please feel free to skip ahead. I won't mind. The only difference in the original is the omission of the man's real name. It was written February 6, 2005.

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The Decimation of Clarinet Quartet

I should have known it was coming. Mr M did.

It's an odd thing. I'd known R for quite some time. He played in Community Band for a while, played first clarinet and all the solos. He was never happy though, and when he left the rumor went round that he'd given up the clarinet. He came back a few years later, but not for long.

It was a few years later that I started hearing The Stories. Apparently R was a piece of work, musically speaking. An otherwise nice guy who went totally schizoid when playing in any type of musical ensemble. Had basically been shunned from any musical organization he'd ever been involved with. And it all seemed to stem from the fact that 1) he's a good player, but not nearly as good as he thinks he should be, and 2) he's a good player, but can't understand that not every musician in the area is as good as he is.

He was also, so I'm told, blackballed from Sauerkraut Band. This was after he walked off the stage three times during a performance, not being happy with the way it was going.

And then, just as he was leaving another community band in another city, R met his match in the name of one Mr M. It was one of those "sizing up" things. R had been hearing of Mr M around town, that he was an excellent player who'd played professionally and in orchestras. They were on the same clarinet mailing list, and started sending some emails back and forth. And Mr M, who was getting sick of the Community Band setting and looking for something new, finally said, "Hey, why don't we get together and play some duets."

And don't think Mr M hadn't heard The Stories either; he had. He's just the type who judges for himself, and musically he can match up with anybody out there.

So the duets began, and then the quartets followed. The first quartet was Mr M, R, Another Guy, and me playing a very shaky bass clarinet. Then Another Guy, who was never much into it to begin with, bailed on us. So R, Mr M, and I carried on as a trio till MP came along, a whiz kid high school student who's an excellent bass clarinetist.

Now, let me just interrupt myself here to tell you something. R was hinky, there's no doubt about that, but I found him to be a nice guy. He was friendly, and although he didn't seem to enjoy a laugh quite as much as I do, things were OK, you know?

Except when it came to music, R clearly needed professional help.

He would constantly talk about sound. And air. And his reed. And his embouchure. And how everything was supposed to mesh this way or that. And he talked a lot about other ensembles. Every clarinet quartet or quintet that've ever recorded a performance, he'd heard it. And he couldn't understand why we didn't, or couldn't, sound like that. And we tried to tell him! These guys are seasoned professionals who record in big studios with filters and equalizers and everything else. But that meant nothing to him.

I guess probably the first inkling of R Behavior came during an early practice of the quartet. See, we always have a nice big pot of coffee nearby. And we'd just played a piece, hit the last note, and finished before the second movement began. I made the mistake of reaching over and getting me a drink of coffee from the table.

"Betty (why he called me that I've no idea), we're playing, not drinking coffee," R barked, horn up to his lips. I looked at him, and him at me. He wasn't joking. I apologized and lost the coffee pronto.

After our first performance, we all went out and had Mexican. We sat around laughing about the concert, our music kept falling off the stands, and all of us squeaked, and I even got a little lost at one point. But we were playing at a retirement home, the audience thought we were very talented, and as Mr M says, "nobody died."

R waxed philosophical though, about our sound and how it should be airier and able to surround us. "They're old people! They're deaf!" I wanted to shout, but didn't, nice person that I am.

Then came the emails with sound files attached of this quartet or that. "I think we should model our sound after these folks," he'd say. I was too embarrassed to say they all sounded alike to me, four schmoes blowing into licorice sticks.

About a month or so ago, there was a rather tense moment in a practice between R and I. First of all, we played a song that, frankly, I find very hard. It's kind of atonal, with lots of interacting parts and weird time signatures, and he started ragging on me. I wasn't playing right; I was dragging. I finally told him I was playing at the tempo his head was bobbing, so if he thought I should be playing faster he needed to bob his head faster.

The next number we played was sightreading. I was having a problem with one section, and yep, it was all me. It was my melody and I was just flat-ass having trouble reading it. After the first read-through, we went back and tried it again.

I had trouble with the same section, just as before. From the corner of my eye I noticed R rolling his eyes and making a hand gesture. A gesture of, "See? She's doing it again!"

It was at that point that I stopped playing and said, "What!" And he told me I wasn't playing it right, or too slow, or something, and I just yelled, "Excuuuuuuuuse me!" And I went on to explain how I had trouble with sightreading and he needed to have a little more patience, and he got up and started walking around the kitchen, and well, like I said, it was tense, but I apologized for yelling and said let's get back to playing, I want to try again.

Cut to last week, the week I referred to in my blog as "blowing all to hell."

See, I left it at that because R has read my blog on occasion. And I certainly didn't want to rehash the story of what happened there where he could see and get angry, or embarrassed, or depressed, or whatever.

I personally think it all started that week when he brought his very fancy and expensive new recording system to practice. He was going to record us so we could listen to ourselves and critique. And that's fine with me, I like doing that, it's a good technique to use, and anyway, I put up the sound files on my blog.

Well, he was just obsessed with the system, the mic, having everyone seated in the right area, this won't go where I want it, why won't this do what I want it to.

We sightread one piece which I thought went very well, actually. Mr M played while bouncing around in his chair. I laughed. I could see the hairs on R's neck start to stand on edge. Then we did the song again to record. Then we did the same with a second piece, read it the first time, and the second, set it on record.

We were three songs in. I was worried about weather conditions and getting antsy to play some more so I could get home. Mr M started making dinner for all of us at the stove.

And out of nowhere - and I mean it, folks, out of fuckin' nowhere - R just went friggin' ballistic.

He started railing on our playing. We weren't paying enough attention to the notes, we weren't playing musically enough, we were walking all over each other, and we weren't paying attention to dynamics. And you know what? He was right. But it was our first fuckin' time playing the songs! Isn't that why you have practice?

He got up and started putting his horn away. I asked, "Is that it?" and he replied it was for that night. Then I made another mistake. I said, "Well, you know, I don't know about you all, but the only reason I'm here is to have fun. And if it's not fun anymore there's really no reason to do it."

I may as well have said we should cook and eat a baby.

Apparently to R there is no fun in music. If one wants to have fun they need to take up needlepoint or something. (Only that wouldn't work because he'd find a way to take the fun out of that too.)

Then, out of nowhere, R walked over to where Mr M was making dinner. And he - I still shudder - got right in Mr M's face and started ragging on his playing. About all the air in his head, and how he puffed out his cheeks when he played, and how he didn't understand how anyone could expect to play well like that.

I was waiting for Mr M to punch R in the face. I certainly would have. I guess Mr M proved that night he really is a pacifist.

R walked off, MP and I looked at each other with the helpless giggles, and Mr M hurled a wooden spoon into the sink. R had the audacity to try to make a joke about "flying utensils," but it went nowhere fast.

Now, while I was walking back and forth to the bathroom (a gesture of pure helplessness), I heard Mr M corral R and calmly - but firmly, believe me - say to him that he wasn't angry, but he's played for a long time and the last thing he's going to put up with was R trying to become his "teacher," he didn't want that and he wouldn't stand for it.

And I thought that was an excellent time for me to go take my things to the car.

And so I put on my coat, and loaded up. And when I came back, R was a little calmer and started to express regret at his behavior. I hugged Mr M goodbye, as I always do. Then I went over to R and hugged him. And I said to him, actually meaning it at the time, "R, please relax. You're going to have a stroke, and we all love you and don't want that to happen." Then I hugged MP because, well, why not? And I went the hell home.

A few days later, we all got an email from R. It contained a link to his website where he'd put up a bunch of sound files. They were pieces in our folder - with him playing all the parts, mixing them one on top of the other with his fancy new equipment. Letting us know how these pieces "should" sound.

It was the most hilarious thing I've ever heard. I contacted Mr M immediately - "R's found the perfect quartet!! He plays all the parts!!"

And still, I should have known….

There almost wasn't a practice today; I forgot my folder. Got all the way to B'burg before I realized it. I made the decision to go all the way home and back again to pick it up so we could practice.

Mr M had told me he was going to have a private word with R before practice. He sent him an email. In it he said simply, R, you know, we're not professionals, we have MP, a good player who happens to be in high school and has never played in this kind of setting, and we have Bet, whose level of playing isn't up to either of ours, who doesn't practice much and likes to cut up (well, he didn't tell me exactly what he said about me, but I'm sure that was included - and rightly so, it's true), and me, who both my eyes and my fingers are not what they used to be. But I've had my time in the musical spotlight, and personally I don't care. So we need to start playing together with all of our strengths and weaknesses and you really need to lose the idea that we can sit in my kitchen and make sounds like professional groups who are recorded in professional studios. It's not going to happen; hell, not even they sound like that out of the studio. We care about you and want you here. So let's not start fighting, etc, tomorrow.

And back came the email from R. If that's what the quartet is going to be, people not having any regard for the music, dynamics, not listening to each other, not striving for the best sound they can possibly have, then he had no choice but to "walk away." "Yes, I'll walk away and remove myself from this situation." Oh, yes, thanks a lot R, aren't you the noble one, removing yourself from our situation and subsequently leaving three people in the lurch.

Thanks a fuckin' lot.

Mr M emailed him back. It wasn't pretty. It was all true, but not pretty at all. And even in blasting him for this approach he decided to take, he left the door open. "If you want to come back and play with us, you may do so and none of this will be mentioned." But he won't. He knows he's peed in yet another musical chili that he can never go back to.

You all know how in love I am with this movie "Dig!" the documentary about the maniacal Anton of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. There's a quote from another of the band members that Anton thought the perfect Brian Jonestown Massacre would be himself on all the instruments and the vocals. Sound familiar? Who would have thought that the Never-To-Be-Named Clarinet Quartet actually had its own Anton?

It's very funny. And yet, it's not really funny at all. But I'll find a way to laugh over it.

As Johnny Rotten said, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
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OK. Cut to the relative present.

Believe it or not, the three of us who remained were actually mulling over letting Roberto back in. Mr M was at the forefront of that; for all his crumudgeonliness, he's basically a letting bygones be bygones kinda guy. I'm not. And yet, I hadn't closed the door on things either. I'd just set my foot down firmly that before one note was played, R and I were going to have to be able to talk. He talked to Mr M. He apologized to Mr M. He kept the lines of communication open - with Mr M. MP and I were just so much musical chattle to him. And frankly, that pissed me off.

Then a sad thing happened; a local clarinet guy was sick and dying. Roberto wanted us to play at his memorial service when the time came. Mr M committed himself to it. I stood firm that I wasn't playing until I could talk to R. Out of the blue an email arrived from him to me explaining that his friend was a nice guy and this would be a good thing to do. And that's all. So in the interest of fairness, I replied, saying that, yes, I did think it would be quite a nice gesture, but before any playing between us took place again, I wanted to talk to him. Not to yell or throw tantrums, to talk. I said we could do it via email or messenger if not face to face. I left the door open. His friend passed, as did the memorial service. (Mr M didn't play.) I never heard one word from him.

Until Tuesday night. An email appeared from nowhere. It was titled, "Yo, Mr M." I wasn't quite sure of why, but it was sent to Mr M and copied to me. Nothing to MP. In it he reminded Mr M that he'd given us all a little "reality check" about our playing that day and we couldn't handle it. And that he'd apologized for what he'd done, but it "wasn't good enough for you or your companion. Whatever!" I could just see him there, making the "W" sign with his thumb and forefingers, a la Amber in "Clueless."

That was really only the part that pertained to me in any way. The "companion."

Anyway, here's the real meat of the email. Right after quartet fizzled out, Mr M (who remember, was still speaking to Roberto), agreed to try and sell some of his clarinets for him. R buys expensive clarinets like they were candy bars, always ending up unhappy with their performance. Imagine. Mr M would try and sell them, keep whatever profit he would make, and everyone would be happy.

Yeah. Sure.

In this email, Roberto was unhappy because he hadn't been given any money for these clarinets. This is because the clarinets weren't selling. Of course, Roberto didn't think of that possibility. Instead, he demanded his instruments back, adding that, of course, Mr M could have taken the instruments, denied any possession of them, sold them on his own, and pocketed the full amount. With a cute, "But you wouldn't do that, would you?" as an addendum.

OK, now I was mad. I crumble like biscotti if you insult me, but I'll fight back if you insult my friends. And so I emailed Roberto.

I basically got out everything I wanted to say in my email. How sure, he'd apologized for his outburst - to Mr M. How I'd wanted to talk to him and possibly even play again - but he didn't think enough about me to even reply to my request. How he needed to learn to work and play well with others - a futile plea, I'm sure. And how Mr M, MP, and I were still playing trios - maybe not like the Grand Renowned HooHah Clarinet Quartet of Amarillo, Texas, but I'll bet we have more fun.

But at least it's over. I have Roberto out of my system now. I have closure.

Mr M took the still unsold clarinets back yesterday - and left them at a music store both he and Roberto frequent. As Mr M said, he didn't want to see Roberto's mug under any circumstances. I told him that was probably a good idea, given R's particular personality flaws.

Plus, he works for the Postal Service.

Oh, well. Thanks, Roberto - at least you got me off my ass here.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* And so The Pope was finally laid to rest today. I'm sure it was the first time I've ever heard applause at a funeral. I think I'm going to have a written request for it at mine. Though it may well happen spontaneously. Along with a chorus of "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye."
* It really was long, wasn't it?