later on

Though love is one of, if not the, greatest all-encompassing and unifying forces of our universe; one of the constants of this world, it is also a magnet and emblem of transformation, of change.

In that, grief has often been stated to be the final form of love, the desperate gnawing and clawing of that beauty even when all the beauty seems to be impossible and gone. And, that love so often takes us, as independent people, and builds us into something stronger, decorates the mirrors of our faces with the people we love.

I did not have a childhood I was particularly fond of. My presence here with you all today is more or less a direct consequence of that fact.

But, by the age of twenty-three, I finally knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. That dream, one I took so unusually long to dream, is reflected now, in front of me. I knew that I wanted to do as you all had done: I knew I wanted to be a performer, a leader, and a teacher. Most of all, I wanted to be a good, honest and reliable friend.

I think we can all agree that [he] wasn't the easiest person to talk to (at times exceedingly difficult, I must admit). You just couldn't tell him anything he didn't already know, think he knew, or want to know. And yet, he managed to make manifest an extraordinary curiosity and patience toward so many around him. Not everyone, for sure! But the young people, the students, those eager to learn.

In making his judgements about the world around him and the people that surrounded him in it, [he] made decisions. Dozens of opiniated decisions, in a single day. He decided what information was and wasn't useful to him, which players could and couldn't be helped, and which friends were and weren't going to receive this or that alternately cute, clever, or crass Facebook video. With this work and his routine done for the morning, [he] contrived to determine what he would do about and with each passing moment. What was in, and what was...out.

Today, the woodwind repair shop. Tomorrow, meeting a former student to formally confer the borrowed horn. Tonight, going to rehearsal with his best friend. In between, a trip to the diner and plenty of educational YouTube videos. On the way back, they'd always consult on the highs and lows of the evening, one of which would usually be how their fellow horn players were faring with this or that tactic of attack or technique.

I never knew [him] when he was a teacher. In fact, one of the first times I met him, though I didn't truly place it at the time, he was accompanying [his wife] to chaperone her students to an open rehearsal which my high school orchestra was also attending, and even then he was just a looming presence in a greatcoat. I rarely saw him around young students. His teaching career is all folklore to me.

But even as a section player who shrank from the concept of drilling down, [he] always, always, always had a perspective to offer. Even more often than that, he had a story to tell. Someone was always raising another question, in his mind. The horn section always left stronger than it had come. He'd talk of bowing out, but I just couldn't imagine that future. Going to rehearsal, and not seeing him there.

[He] would consistently end diatribes with, "I mean, come on, what do you want?" or "I'm probably crazy, I dunno." What I wanted was for him to be his crazy self, so that I could see how to get on and make myself mine. I argued steadily with him about what he thought I did and didn't know, what I did and didn't need explained as an overbright post-isolation yuppie.

He encouraged me to believe that, just as there was more to [him] than horns and haranguing, so too was there more to me than notes and neuroticism. He relentlessly praised my musicianship and potential. Once, he confessed that he'd been afraid there'd be no one there to tell all he'd learned. But, then, there was me.

I'd meant this to be more poetic, briefer and to a sharper point. It's not to clap myself on the back that I relate all this. It is to acknowledge that we have all been so greatly changed, and to say that as he once said to me, for the role of a teacher, [he] was a magnet, because even when he didn't care, he cared.