To Serve The Music Itself

"We now experience simultaneously the dropout and the teach-in. The two forms are correlative. They belong together... The dropout represents a rejection of nineteenth-century technology as manifested in our educational establishments. The teach-in represents a creative effort, switching the educational process from package to discovery." Marshall McLuhan



Being in my current college institution for the past four years, there are many things discovered, and being in the BA in Music, a sort of limbo between the Conservatory and the College, allows me the chance to see certain things. I did consider going fully into the Con, yes, but that shattered quickly for several reasons. When I got a voice instructor, I realized all too quickly there were disagreements in how we thought about many things, but I had neither the confidence to voice such things nor the power to have any safety doing so, being a first-term student. This is on top of my other mental health problems going on at the time which I do not think should be disclosed on a public blog.

I never really got too close with the people I met in my first year music theory classes, but at the same time, I had so many things I loved outside of music and the average schedule for students in there seemed more than packed, from what I overheard. This is still something I wonder how we let happen. Bodies and minds have limits, and students in the college have only three classes with plenty of time between. Why is it so different if someone is in the con? Why is it so different if an instrument or ensemble is part of their life? Why do we impose such unsustainable requirements?

Furthermore, I took a class last term, 'Music and Disability'. It's easily one of my favorite classes I've taken in my time here, and I can't help but remember that disability is not an isolated thing. It connects to so much else, it can be read differently depending on what else is seen in your appearance, it can be caused or exacerbated by the environment around you. If we only address pathological issues, the issues we see medically, and ignore the social causes and disabling environments and how it affects so many people, we ignore most of the picture.

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