Magic is an Excuse to make an Effort

One of my favorite poems is Mending Wall by Robert Frost. It goes like this: 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sens the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun, 

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. 

The work of hunters is another thing: 

I have come after them and made repair 

Where they have left not one stone on a stone, 

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, 

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, 

No one has seen them made or heard them made, 

But at spring mending-time we find them there. 

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; 

And on a day we meet to walk the line 

And set the wall between us once again. 

We keep the wall between us as we go. 

To each the boulders that have fallen to each. 

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls 

We have to use a spell to make them balance: 

'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' 

We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 

Oh, just another kind of out-door game, 

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across 

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. 

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'. 

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder 

If I could put a notion in his head: 

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it 

Where there are cows? 

But here there are no cows. 

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 

What I was walling in or walling out, 

And to whom I was like to give offence. 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 

That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, 

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather 

He said it for himself. I see him there 

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top 

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 

He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ 

Not of woods only and the shade of trees. 

He will not go behind his father's saying, 

And he likes having thought of it so well 

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

The reason why this poem is one of my favorites is that it is so pervasive in my musical experiences. The wall in the poem represents the fear of change. When it stands we are content and stay safe from what the poem represents through the hyperbole of the Hunters, (what we want to avoid), and the Rabbits in hiding, (us). However it only leads to one style of living- one that is in the dark as depicted by the writer's neighbor toward the end of the poem.

 My favorite line is: "We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'" It displays such desperation to use a means that doesn't even exist, (magic), to the point where you are content with the fact of seeing it stabilized just for a second. Then to completely forget about it and walk away. Over the course of Freshmen Year I've slowly learned what it means to become a musician and this line says it all. Through theory and learning music for juries, music isn't something that just happens. I've lived the majority of my life with the thought that everything will magically align themselves. Though it doesn't take a fake sense of reality to make a performance, it takes struggle and the willingness to change. If you take the writer and his neighbor, they did not put effort to make something new but they chose to repair what will always be broken. 

As musicians we need to try hard everyday to make an effort to just be able to do what we can do; even more if you want to improve. If we are so obsessed with what we don't want to do or obsessed with the fact of staying the same we are preventing our own growth within ourselves. It's very easy to become complacent when it comes to music. I've slowly learned that to be and become a better musician you don't stay in a place of contempt and make yourself stagnant, but rather go forth with the unknown and challenge yourself and improve. Why? Well for me it's to become competent leader and musician. What is your drive?