Look, I tend not to be one of those bloggers going on about his philosophies (unless they deal with the markets or things that affect the markets), talks about his life and its associated troubles or especially, goes on about his kids. I have no time for that kind of blogging and suspect you don’t either.
But without providing details I will tell you that the last 4 years of my life have been the most challenging of that now getting long in the tooth life. The last 4 years have brought pressure and stress the likes of which I had not anticipated and I’d wish on nobody.
Through it all we have stewarded ourselves as a family through the difficult times and somehow I have managed to not only keep up NFTRH’s quality service but I think I’ve somehow managed to put it over the top. That is honestly how I feel. I also feel that this is because I’ve had the fear of god in me for years now and failure is not an option.
I have two daughters who have had their challenges. Bright, sensitive and highly intelligent both, but challenged by the Podunk town they grew up in and its blandness and normality. These kids, like their dad, are not normal.
Sometimes on Fridays I post videos or audios of musicians I like. They range from punk to garage rock to pretty or melodic sounding neo-60s stuff. Stuff that my primitive brain can understand.
I’ve also proudly posted work by my daughter Izzy, a kid who took up music in her junior year of high school, somehow quickly ended up at Tanglewood, then at Manahattan School of Music as an opera vocalist. She soon realized she hated being a conventional opera singer and nixed MSM. She’s spent the last 2 years retooling in New York as a composer.
Today, the news came that she was not only accepted to Juilliard, but to the studio of the professor she most wanted to study with. It’s an exceptional studio and for an exceptional kid (who not only was never validated here in Podunk, but was routinely invalidated in this bland milieu where fitting in and being popular is priority #1) it is validation, finally.
All of this as a 20 year old who took up music at 17 (as a vocalist, mind you) and composition at 19. Anyway, here’s her first composition recorded only a few months after she decided opera singing was not for her but composition was. I am drinking tonight because I feel the need to exhale, and Izzy has finally found her place in life. We have literally been on tenterhooks this whole month, that is how important this was for our daughter and our familiy. A life changer.
Yeah, I’m a proud dad. What’re ya gonna do? It was a good day.
Amnesia by Isabela Tanashian
