As Long as I Told a Good Story
I highly recommend getting rejected from graduate school. It’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.
That’s because I had to face the reality that I couldn’t succeed using what I thought was the standard career path for a concert pianist. Instead, I’d have to blaze my own trail.
That trail has led to some unexpected places, including my debut as an author with a new illustrated storybook for adults, Honey, If It Wasn’t for You. Such a project may seem odd for a concert pianist to produce, but to me it made complete sense. Once you’ve learned the rest of my story, perhaps you’ll agree.
A Very Good Place to Start
I wanted to be a performer from the beginning. My earliest memories include sitting transfixed while a Glenn Miller Orchestra record played, being amazed by the cast of STOMP turning street signs into musical instruments, and studiously watching my professional musician father play piano. By age six, I was already presenting my own house concerts complete with tickets, stage lights, and box seats for special guests.
No single style of music held my attention. I played classical on piano, but also enjoyed jazz, funk, and pop. And I didn’t play just piano, I taught myself drums. I sang a little. I rapped more. I loved the beauty that great music of any category could convey.
I didn’t know how I’d earn a living as a musician but figured that studying music in college was a good place to start. I chose piano over drums, since it’s more professionally viable, and got serious about my studies at age 16. Most elite pianists get serious about 10 years sooner than that. This was about to become painfully relevant.
I Can’t Get No Satisfaction
After graduating from The University of Oklahoma with a bachelor’s degree in piano performance, I became determined to attend a prestigious graduate school for music. Surely (so my 23-year-old brain reasoned), such a degree would ensure wild professional success.
I wasn’t as proficient as some of my competition but hoped that some professor would be willing to take a chance on me. The first indication that this plan might fail came during a conversation with one of my hopeful professors. While looking at the list of classical compositions I had ever played, he said, “I have 13-year-old students with more repertoire than you.” I got rejected by every elite school I applied to.
My career plan was shattered. I had hoped to become a professional concert pianist, but if I couldn’t get a live audition at an elite school, that seemed unlikely. What was I to do next? There was only one obvious choice: make satirical hip-hop.
Shake Till You Feel Better
Okay, the truth is that I didn’t really know what to do. All I knew was that I didn’t want to practice piano, but still had the creative urge to do something. So I took the most fun—and least ambitious—path. I made fun of popular rap music.
I had long enjoyed the radio hits of Jay-Z, Ludacris, and others, but the older I got, the sillier many of their songs seemed. So I made spoofs of common hip-hop themes. Instead of rapping about how great my music was, I made a song called “Not That Bad.” Instead of writing songs about alcohol like “Gin and Juice” or “Pass the Courvoisier,” I made one called “Ice Water.”
As you might guess, few people go searching for this kind of music. Still, if anyone were to enjoy it, they had to know that it existed. So I followed the advice of a close friend and marketing expert. “If you want people to be interested in your product, explain the process that went into making it.
The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow
I started making videos, blog posts, and posts on social media, and what do you know? A type of music that almost no one goes searching for started attracting attention.
At the same time, I had the chance to compete in a classical piano competition that would send its winner on an international concert tour. The competition was open to classical pianists over the age of 22 in the state of Oklahoma. There were four of us.
I dusted off some old classical piano pieces, and doggone it if I didn’t win the thing. Now I had a different problem. After being rejected as a classical pianist mere months earlier, I’d have to prepare a classical concert program to tour abroad.
But because of my brief hip-hop career, I knew that I didn’t have to give people exactly what they were expecting. As long as I told a good story, an audience would follow wherever I led.
Getting to Know All About You
By the time the story of this book arose, I had 10 years of practice telling stories about music. I told the stories of writing down and learning my favorite jazz pianists’ arrangements, writing funk-inspired classical music, and composing a piece to commemorate a major historical event in my hometown. But Honey, If It Wasn’t for You had the potential to be my greatest story yet.
I met Linda Feagin through one of my concerts. She was kind, gracious, and supportive, and over the course of a few years, we became good friends. Only then she revealed that her late husband, Don, was a professional songwriter. He had died of a genetic disease at a young age, and they both knew when they married that this would likely be the case.
When Don died, he left behind boxes of unfinished songs. Did I want to take a look at them? Yes I did, and I knew exactly what to look for. I wanted to find lyrics that he wrote about his wife. Then I would set them to music.
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I Could Write a Book
I couldn’t have planned it any better. Don had written lyrics to a song about how if it weren’t for his wife, he’d have nothing to write about. It was called “Honey, If It Wasn’t for You,” and he’d left its handwritten lyrics behind when he died in 1981. Linda had never even seen them.
I set the words to music, performed the song for Linda, and received her permission to share what made the song so special. My first plan was to make a short documentary film about the story. I enjoyed popular documentary series like Chef’s Table and Formula 1: Drive to Survive and thought I could produce a similar but (much) more modest presentation of this story.
Even a short documentary would require plenty of outside expertise and funding, so I’d still have a lot of convincing to do. I wondered, How do you pitch a 40-year story in five minutes? My answer: Write it as an illustrated storybook. Then I realized, Oh, I should just do that instead.
That Would Be But Beautiful, I Know
That’s how I came to write Honey, If It Wasn’t for You. It made complete sense because I aim to do more than simply make good music. My goal is to discover and present the beauty I am uniquely positioned for. (If that sounds like a mission statement, it’s because it is.)
“Beauty is never ‘necessary,’ ‘functional,’ or ‘useful,’” Fr Alexander Schmemann writes in For the Life of the World. “And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love.”
That’s the sort of beauty I hope this book adds to the world. It’s about love: the love that makes for a strong marriage, a meaningful friendship, or a wonderful piece of music; and the love that makes life itself worthwhile.
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(A portion of this essay was adapted from Barron’s ‘Classic Meets Cool, Explained’ video. It has never been written or published as text before.)
If you love to write and have a story you want to tell, the only thing that can stand between you and the success you’re seeking isn’t craft, or a good agent, or enough Facebook friends and Twitter followers, but fear. Fear that you aren’t good enough, or fear the market is too crowded, or fear no one wants to hear from you.Fortunately, you can’t write while being in the flow and be afraid simultaneously. The question is whether you will write fearlessly.