Took The Plunge

Remember a couple posts ago when I mentioned that credit is dangerous? Well, I have succumbed to the evil. Today I ordered the Grey Larsen Preferred Irish Flute by Australian flutemaker Terry McGee. This model is based on a 19th century American flute, lighter and with smaller finger holes than your average Irish flute. Which is good for me, because I have really small hands and have never been able to manage a simple system flute before.

Here it is. Isn't it pretty? I sure hope I can play it because it's a large investment... I sure hope it's okay to own this instrument even if I can't play lightning fast and never ornament like Matt Molloy. All the doubts about my worth as a musician and my worth in general--what I deseve and what I desire--are tied into this purchase. I was, after all, brought up never to buy anything I couldn't pay off within 30 days. (I was also brought up to think of my family as dirt poor and one step away from the homeless shelter, which wasn't true, but never mind).

I have to wait until the middle of next month for it to be shipped. I hope by then I will have become accustomed to the idea and not so freaked when it arrives that I hide it in the closet--or hide myself in the closet--and never touch it. I have been known to do this.

But I have high hopes. This is something I'm doing for myself. The only agenda is my own agenda, and I think it's a reasonable one. I just want to play. I don't have psycho band members breathing down my neck that I have to learn to do everything because they don't do their own work and I have to be able to cover for them. I don't have to listen to the...weird pressure couched as compliments: "You're so talented you can do anything but I'm worthless so I'm not even going to try. By the way, we need to be a headline band; you can make that happen, can't you?"

Well, enough of that. Maybe some day soon I'll tell the real and true story of BSS since, five years after the fact, I think I finally have enough perspective to know just what happened with that. In the meantime, though: I bought a flute! I think I'm happy about it.