13. I Am a Forty-Year-Old Robot

I was eleven when it happened.
My first chord changed everything.
The A minor chord.

Soon, I learned all the chords.
And joined a couple of music groups.
And then, at fourteen, I met the violin.

She was different.
I joined the school orchestra.
But there you can’t jam.

Classical musicians don't jam.
They train. They audition.
They build mathematical precision.

Jamming loosens you up.
Auditions tighten you up.

But the symphony orchestra kept calling me.
And I started building serious technique at age 17.
Eventually I got to play alongside classical superstars.

So it was worth it, in a way.
However, I lost something.
Joy.
The joy for music.

Music became mathematics.
Metrics.
Technique. Pyrotechnics.

How could I enjoy music if all I heard was equations?

Concerts became mathematical seminars.
All of them.
I went to analyze metrics.
To admire perfect formulas.
To see fireworks live.

Numbers tell the truth.
They tell you where you are.
They tell you how to improve.

Want to become better?
Count.
Then beat the number next week.

Getting better can be addictive.
I fell into that trap.

Don’t get me wrong…
Humans should want to get better.
But a life full of equations is not a human life.
It’s the life of a robot.

You can’t feel a written equation.
You see it.
But music… music you can feel!
You can feel it in your bones.

Adults optimize.
Kids play.
But adults can play, too.
Otherwise, they slowly become robots.

I am a robot.
A forty-year-old robot.
Today I sat with my eleven-year-old self.
We played the A minor chord that started it all.

We were both smiling.