Date a Musician

(I was going to try to keep this gender-neutral, but the constant use of “they” bogged it down after a while, so I kept it feminine like the original- which is also fabulous, and right here, if anyone’s curious).

Date a musician. Date someone who spends her money on Bernstein and Karajan recordings instead of clothes, who has problems with bookshelf space because of all of her sheet music. Date someone who chooses Bach over Beyonce and Schubert over Shakira, whose JB is Johannes Brahms, not Justin Beiber.

Find a musician. You’ll know she is one because she’ll always have an etude book shoved into her bag. She’s the one whose fingers are tapping quietly on the table during class, refusing to pull themselves away from the snare drum part of Ravel’s Bolero, which, inside her head, she’s playing back in entirety to kill time before she can leave and practice. You see the weird chick on the subway, dragging around the mysterious black case? That’s her. She’ll drag it anywhere she needs to go, the looks of curiosity she’ll get from passersby will bounce right off of her.

She’s the one with the headphones and the study score, sitting alone in the coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek into her mug, it’s been empty for ages. In half an hour, she’ll leave for rehearsal, and that cup of coffee will get her through the day. But she hasn’t bothered to refill it- she’s following the score, lost in the world of the composer’s making. Sit down, if you’re feeling bold. She’ll probably glare at you, most musicians don’t really like being interrupted. Ask her how she feels about the piece. Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you think of The Rite of Spring. Ask her which is her favorite Beethoven symphony. Understand that if she says she listens to 12-tone serialist pieces for a good time, she’s probably just trying to sound cultured. Bring up Clara Schumann and prepare to have your ears talked off.

It can be pretty easy to date a musician. Buy her tickets to the symphony for birthdays, Christmas, and anniversaries. In return, she’ll give you the gift of music- whether it’s in the form of the collection of etudes she frets over daily, or the constant stream of recordings playing from her hefty iTunes library.

She’ll introduce you to Messaien and Mussorgsky, Schoenberg and Strauss, Ives and Ibert, Respighi and Rimsky-Korsakov. Let her pull you into her musical world. Embrace her enthusiasm. Understand that she realizes not everyone will appreciate Shostakovich the way she does, but also know that she doesn’t care. She’s got to get her thrills somehow, and if she can’t stick it to the man the way she wants to, at least she can live vicariously through the music of somebody who did.

Fight with her. Challenge her. Don’t tolerate her mood swings, pull her out of her artistic blocks. Give her hell when she won’t practice. Give her a challenge. Give her dynamics, give her modulation, give her passion. With even basic knowledge of music theory, she’ll know that the non-harmonic tones are the ones responsible for the beauty of every piece, that every suspension has both a preparation and a resolution, that sometimes the key changes will catch her off guard, but of course, since she’s known all of her scales and arpeggios front to back for years and years, she’ll be able to adapt.

Watch life fail her. Watch her lose the audition, watch her bomb her concerto competition, watch as her favorite orchestral solo is passed off to somebody else. Watch her reeds wear out, watch her strings snap, watch as her instrument cracks from the cold. Watch life drag her along for days in a minor key. Watch her wait, sitting with bated breath, holding on, just for the tiny possibility of a picardy third.

Why won’t she give up? Well, musicians may not be fearless, but they’re strong. They understand that the dissonance will do nothing but make the resolution more worthwhile, more touching or powerful.

If you find a musician, keep her close. When you hear her at 2 AM, sobbing over the one passage in the Mozart concerto that she just can’t seem to perfect, make her a cup of tea. Let her play it once more, and then take her out of the practice room and put on one of her favorite string quartets. Hold her. Watch as the music permeates her brain and her soul, watch it rejuvinate and reinspire her. Help her come up with a plan of attack for when she picks up the same piece again the next morning.

You’ll propose after an NY Phil concert. Or on the way to one of her gigs. Or perhaps very casually, the next time she finishes a practice session.

She’ll make you understand Berlioz’s idée fixe. You’ll attend every single one of her concerts, but recognize that not even you will be able to reach her when she’s wrapped up in her music. When she plays the New World Symphony, she’s homesick. When she plays Tchaikovsky, she’s gay. When she plays Beethoven, she’s deaf. When she plays Schumann, she’s bipolar and schizophrenic. She may sometimes be distant, transfixed on her work, or hard to understand, and at times her enthusiasm may be inaccessible to you. That’s okay. Perhaps, eventually, you’ll walk the cold winters of your old age together, and she’ll sing Winterreise under her breath as you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a musician because you deserve one. If all you’re willing to hear is pop and I-V-vi-IV, you’re better off alone. But if you want a life full of passion and music and unpredictability, go find an instrumentalist. Go date a musician.

Or better yet…become one.

Adapted from http://gershwinning.tumblr.com/post/55087147834/date-a-musician-in-the-style-of-date-a-girl-who