Am I Really a Musician

 Poor John.  He will be the "victim" of this post... When I was 11 years old (barely), I was in the church folk group (praise band for all y'all protestants).  Suddenly this new guy showed up playing piano.  He had blonde hair and big glasses, but holy cow could he play.  Love at first sight. Our friendship grew, even though he was 5-6 years older than I am.  As the girls in Catholic School grew crushes on celebrities, I had no idea what that meant, but I wanted to be normal.  So the only male close to my age that seemed like a person to spend lots of time with was John.  He played piano, I played flute, and music grew from there. When I was in 9th grade I finally told him how I loved him, and it turned into my pestering where he finally had to tell my mother (also a member of said Folk Group) about it, and so that happened.  I apologized, and he said not to worry about it, just let's go on as friends.  So we did. I'm still sorry for tha...

  Lately I've been following a lot of vlogs about musicians who have made it in the performance scene.  I'm especially enamored with @katieflute ... not just because Katie is my favorite name (long story), but because holy cow she plays beautifully and her sense of humor and musicianship keeps me going when I feel like everything is falling apart. I used to be pretty good at flute.  Within the top 5 of the studio at the Crane School of Music between 1998-2002.  When I practiced/played 6+ hours a day, my technique blossomed and my musicianship grew.   MUSICIANSHIP.   Mr. Andrews (Ken Andrews = AMAZING musician!) always said that the ultimate compliment to someone is that they are "a musician."  It implies more than flute, more than music theory, more than teaching, everything.  In a school that cranked out music teachers (case in point), he seemed to be an anomaly.  Ken, if you're reading this, I owe you so much.  I'll write you a musical...