I Wish I had been an Accountant
(Freelance Musician's Lament)
(For Mr. M. B. with thanks.)
I made first chair All-State four years in a row,
Fine colleges offered me scholarships so,
I studied performance, heck, what did I know,
And made plans to be a musician.
Those four years flew by, practiced hours each day,
Sent audition tapes to show how I could play,
I got one audition, in Boston that May,
I did not quite make the last call back.
My teachers had told me I had the right stuff,
The best one they knew! Well, it wasn't enough,
The world's just a jungle, but music is tough.
I loved it and so I went freelance.
For us freelance players its an uphill climb.
Since even the good ones work at best part time.
You get to play some, and just hope in your prime,
That soon you will win an audition.
The years pass by fast, life is surely no beach,
A full-time position stays out of my reach,
But one needs to eat and so also I teach,
Take students wherever I find them.
Some students are good but the others, no way,
They skip lessons, come late, don't prepare or don't pay,
At the college its worse, those guys think they can play,
They don't even know all their scales yet.
Frustrations assail me, there's one sophomore guy,
Just can't seem to reach him and do not know why,
He could be All-Region if only he'd try!
He won't, guess that's it, still it rankles.
In all of these years just one student loomed tall,
Would be first chair All-State and might have it all,
We worked very hard for ten weeks through that Fall,
He failed math three days before tryouts.
My students are crazy, the things that I see!
The wasted potential, all that they won't be.
Why if they worked harder they could end up like me..?..!
I wish I had been an accountant.
Copyright George Yenetchi,
1995
