Great musicianship. Probably very well trained. The eye movements to the conductor and the way he shapes the sounds are excellent. God, what a dorky costume.
You were a remarkably articulate and introspective sixth-grader. I'll listen to the aria later on, this evening.
The video didn't play for me, but the sound did. Would have guessed a young boy, but very impressive control and pitch.
substituting excellence in performance for joy in relationships
Eek, Tia. You summed that up a little too well. I sting because I haven't really gotten past that part. I always have in the back of my mind the fact that my parents could stop talking to me, my boyfriend could leave, and all my friends forsake me; I'd still have a brightly shining career. How gross!
Alas, I'm not enough of an overachiever now that relinquished that motivation. Related: I'm kind of ashamed to show up at my five year college reunion because I'm in my first semester in a dinky master's program. I can't decide if I should go.
Go! Everyone else will be all, "Here's my boring husband and baby!" and you can laugh and laugh!
4: I have that thought constantly, still. I recently verbalized it to my gf; it went over like gangbusters, lemme tell ya.
Is it wrong to care more about your work than about any romantic relationship? Because right or wrong, that's my story.
I can't decide if I should go to my five-year and I'm only ABD and my friends are all married, having children, having high-powered jobs, or are lawyers.
My dad was and is of the 'the only thing that ever matters is your education, because no one can ever take that away from you.' How To Raise A Future Neurotic Grad Student school of thought. No sports - that distracts from studying. Boyfriends and husbands will always leave you.
I've mostly dealt with it, but it is a bit disconcerting when your parents tell you that it's okay, you can date after you're finished with school (no distractions!) when you're twenty-six.
I do. My boyfriend cares about his kids more than me, so we're even.
No, not at my school. They'll all be like, "First I spent two years in the Peace Corps, and then I founded a non profit that helps inner city children start businesses growing organic vegetables" or "I'm just finishing up my PhD in Neuroscience; my dissertation is on a promising new treatment that regenerates brain cells" I'm telling you.
I expect that in three years most of my friends from college will also be mired in grad school.
I don't think my people have five-years. My ten-year HS one is coming up. I'm thinking about bringing my friend Ken who used to be a stripper.
Those who find opera impenetrable might consider Drag Queen Traffic Cop. I swear, tweak just a few of Tia's words, and it all applies.
But Tia, you could just be all, "Oh yeah? But were you 4 for 4 on the final Idol elimination going into the top 12? Were you???"
Mine have done all the Peace Corps/taught English in Japan/China/International Teaching/Passed the bar in Three States/developed a new polymer/airplane/space station/fuel cell AND they're all getting married. When do these people have time?
I think the count is up to seven weddings in my immediate collegiate circle.
I think it's important to come up with a few outlandish lies if you can't think of anything to say. Or just say that your work is Top Secret.
What muscianship in one so young. He really understands how to phrase and make the tones bloom. Here's to hoping that manhood's arrival leaves him with a nice tenor or baritone voice. He could also become a counter-tenor like David Daniels (a wonderful singer who is one of today's stars in the opera world). These compliments having been delivered, I will register that the slightness of the boyish timbre is odd and makes his performance a gimick and that the intonation certainly could have been better--- there is alas something of the circus-act to this--- what we should doing is looking at and listening to Joan Sutherland or Lucia Popp, e.g., do this aria and wowing over them--- for they too are (more) amazing and they capture better what Mozart was after. In fact, though this is by no means so egregious, remember SHINE from a few years back? After the movie came out, all the world fawns over a mental defective who flipped out (and who could no longer play effectively) while trained interesting pianists languish without work. [The boy's hair? Adorable.]
Those people are going to be burn outs, downshifters and drop-outs, you watch. I should have given more time to nearly everything I've ever done.
His intonation wobbles a bit in places, but yeesh, the kid's what, nine? It's a circus act, certainly, but it's a damn good circus act.
#17:
Apparent promise and self-evident stunt is the essence of what we're watching. I concur completely in all your judgments here, btw.
I worry about hypertalented musical kids. The ones I've known end up devaluing their musical ability as adults and no longer care to give it effort. My undergrad school was on the same campus as a top-notch conservatory. Half the people there had fallen in love with music in high school and had chosen performance above all things. The other half had been raised all along to play, so it felt like the default career for them if they failed at everything else. One guy I dated there was one of the most gifted bassoonists imaginable, but he dreamed of becoming an electrical engineer. Because he failed his attempts at math classes, he eventually took a prestigious job with an orchestra. It lasted only a few months before he quit to work on ham radios in his apartment.
And yes, I know the proper term is "fagottist," but it makes me collapse in giggles. He was a little effeminate.
What's really lame about my reunion anxieties is that I think I wouldn't be having them if I were still dating my boyfriend. I ran into an ex-friend at a party a few months ago and I totally wowed both myself and my current friend with how entirely gracious, how utterly sincere, how without an ounce of one-upsmanship, yet how funny and charming I managed to be throughout the interaction. It was like an instructional video for how to be a person, and I'm not your typical instructional video teacher most of the time. Anyway, I think it was the security that I'd at least things were going right in the relationship sphere that allowed me to do it. "Is in a happy relationship" was a big accomplishment considering the Tia they knew in college. Without that it will look like I'm not getting anything done.
And yes, I know the proper term is "fagottist,"
What, even in English? Must we speak of violonists, klavierists, chitarrists, selberharfists, and flautists as well?
Is a selberharfist a playe of the autoharp?
"Is in a happy relationship" was a big accomplishment considering the Tia they knew in college. Without that it will look like I'm not getting anything done.
I'm trying to think of how to say that this is insane in a manner that sounds warm and supportive rather than hostile. You're in a masters program, while you work to support yourself, you have hordes of adoring Internet fans, including those who email you questions so that they can bask in the glow of your your wisdom, you have work buddies to play Boggle with, and you think that your ex-classmates will think less of you because you're single? Hoarding all the crack so you can smoke it yourself like that isn't nice.
21 I have heard that about musicians who are really accomplished at a young age--- they have to mature through that phase of devaluing the ability they have. It happened to Yehudi Menhuin I know and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg got really weird about her violin for a while and was so careless with her hands that she nearly severed one of her pinkies while doing some chopping. I understand that this near disaster (from which she recovered completely) woke her up and almost losing her ability awakened her to its value.
25: That was the idea.
Whenever I see someone playing an autoharp standing up, I think it looks as if they're cradling a retarded child.
They wouldn't think less of me if I were single if I'd gotten further in my career...
23: Is getting bonked the only thing that means you're doing well? I can understand wanting to have a teammate there with you, though. What about bringing a friend for support?
24: We do call them flautists, don't we?
flautists
I have it on good authority that the proper term is "flottner".
Wait, no one understands: the point is to have accomplished something, to say you've moved perceptibly from where you were five years ago. That's what I don't have demonstrable evidence of.
flautist or flutist--- both are conrrect.
24: We do call them flautists, don't we?
Yes, we do. But really, a flautist is a flutist who disregards traditional technique.
No, no, a flautist is someone who shows off their technique to the world in an ostentatious fashion.
35 where are you getting this notion, Ben? I play the flute and have never ever heard of this distinction. Maybe it is down-town jazz-club dialect thingy?
Mark: flautist -> flout-ist. I have never heard anyone other than me making this distinction.
Mark is not flauting his ability to get jokes.
well i say if you've got it, flaut it.
or something.
I have no idea what Tia was thinking of.
The play of words is on flout-ist, one who flouts traditional technique. Ben likes to flaunt, rather than flout, his hairsplitting cleverness.
I like "flautist" because it plays up the confusion between "flout" and "flaunt".
Oh, flaunt. I guess I never really knew how to pronounce "flautist".
Stupid English.
If you can convey you've realized serious work takes serious preparation, you'll impress and abash anyone worth impressing.
Ben can't take it when I flaunt usage conventions.
Pwn'd. LizardBreat, eb, and w-lfs-n, you guys pwn me. You will have to work out a time-sharing agreement between yourselves.
Buuuut, Merriam-Webster says "flout" is, in fact, etymologically related to "flute"! My joke was saved, and me all unknowing!
39... ack!... went out this morning without my paronomasia function enabled. Must be more mindful in future.
You could ask for a volunteer to pretend to be your boyfriend for the purposes of fooling your friends. Doesn't that always go well in sitcoms?
Uh, TMK, I pwned you first. They can get in line.
the point is to have accomplished something, to say you've moved perceptibly from where you were five years ago.
A friend of mine was complaining about how this happens to her every time she runs across anyone she hasn't seen for a few years. Reunions are a concentrated form of this, but in other ways may be no worse than other occasions where this happens.
This same friend and I often discuss making major life changes or conducting one's love life in a certain way purely for narrative purposes. Similar to the lying scenario, only with greater commitment.
FLOTTNER TEDIOUS REPEATING FLOTTNER
54 -- well that goes without saying, non?
The thing is, boy sopranos are hardly freaks of nature. I love the aria, and he sounds quite good (though I always think boy sopranos have some kind of airiness or reediness to them that isn't my cup of tea), but it's not all that weird, is it?
Re. preferring career > relationships, I don't think this is a character flaw. I admit, though, that I have the opposite problem: I feel intense guilt over the suspicion that my career is less important to me and my happiness than relationships are.
Don't bring a boyfriend to your h.s. reunion! The whole point of the thing is to get drunk and hook up with the other people who were huge geeks back then and who, like you, are all in graduate or professional school now and super hott. Whereas the folks who were popular and successful in h.s. are all married, still living in their home towns, and have gained weight and/or dress badly.
WARNING--OLD PERSON RANT. DANGEROUSLY HIGH EARNESTNESS QUOTIENT.
Wait, no one understands: the point is to have accomplished something, to say you've moved perceptibly from where you were five years ago. That's what I don't have demonstrable evidence of.
Dude, take it from someone who has already passed the half-century mark, whatever you may think about whatever you and your classmates have or have not accomplished in the past few years does not mean a hill of beans.
Life is long. And much of the stuff that really matters is measured in decades. And most of it will not come up at a college reunion. Are you a good person? Are you making the world a little better than the way you found it. The platitudes go on, but they are nonetheless true for being platitudes.
Know who my hero is? LizardBreath. And for none of the reasons you probably see on this blog. She devotes herself to her kids, her marriage, her family and her friends, yet gets out of bed (almost) every day and goes to a job at which she is good, but which she does not really love, in order to support her family and make life better for them. She works at being a genuinely good person (albeit one with a bad temper--Gary, if you are out there, I could tell you stories).
I'd take that in a friend over a biotech millionare any day. That's what you should shoot for. The other stuff, if it's important to you, may show up at some point too.
I wish to disavow, however, the apparent implication in my previous comment that fat /= attractive. I was merely reporting the weight gain of my h.s. peers as a matter of fact, along with their inability to pick out their own clothes. For the record, the latter is far more important.
jeez, you guys almost wish i had a high school to reunion. sounds like i'm really missing out.
Depends where you go to high school. I think I'd relate better to the people who dress badly, from mine.
I believe I mentioned here before that I went to a wedding where the only guests I knew were the beautiful crowd from my high school, and they were still beautiful, and rich, and kinda mean, in an offhand sort of way. And dressed very well, one and all.
You'd think. But the thing is, the people who dressed "well" in h.s. (i.e., who had money) just had never had to develop any sense of style. Whereas the people who had gone on to have interesting lives mostly had more interesting or individualized affects.
I should go to our next reunion. I could lurk nervously by the pretzels, and remember how entirely dysfunctional I was in HS. But I have successfully gained weight and continued my practice of dressing badly, so that's something.
(And I have Ideal on retainer to make comments like 61 occasionally.)
Whenever I see someone playing an autoharp standing up, I think it looks as if they're cradling a retarded child.
Whenever I see someone playing the flute, I think "Mmmm, embrasure."
But yeah, I'm not from the east coast, so ymmv.
Had the invitation to my 10th high school reunion arrived before the actual reunion took place I probably would have gone, but even then I'm sure I would have hesitated for reasons not unlike Tia's. What do I have to report? Still in school; still not sure what direction, if any, I'm going; still single.
I've been terrible about keeping in touch with people I knew back then, but have run into some of them somewhat randomly over the past few years and they're pretty much all advancing in careers, married, or both. The one guy I can remember who was still working on coming up with a plan for the future had just returned from the Peace Corps.
One had started her own non-profit arts organization, another is teaching at Harvard, one gets pieces published in the NY Times, one is a billionaire, one runs his own consulting firm, &c. &c.
I talked to the successful musician most of the time.
I feel woefully misunderstood. I'm not talking about the measures by which I should value my life, I'm just talking about wanting to be able to give the impression, in an offhanded way, that I've been making progress, to people who remember me from college. This is neurotic and self centered, but that's how you're supposed to respond to the prospect of a reunion. Sheesh.
Maybe I should just tell them all I invented post-its.
The thing is, though, that it ends up not being about reporting one's own success, but about seeing who has turned into really interesting people. Of course there's a certain element of schadenfreude in seeing the people who tormented one now living half a block from where they grew up and selling cars (or whatever), but that's really neither admirable nor the main pleasure of the thing. Honestly. It's fun. Go.
I talked to the successful musician most of the time.
The guy I dated briefly?
B, this is my college reunion, not my high school reunion.
A woman did come up to me at some point to say, "Were you just talking to X?"
I nod.
Pause.
"Oh," she continues, "because he sexually assaulted my college roommate."
Then she walked away.
Oh. Well fuck college reunions. All the friends I had in college I'm in regular contact with anyway.
The guy I dated briefly?
Yes. I know him better than the others, we have another friend in common.
At my college graduation, all of the people in my major got together afterwards and decided we weren't going to any reunions other than our 50th.
Crap. I just remembered that my university dropped my major. Now the fate of our 50th is in question. Guess I'll worry about that in 40-something years.
I second Tia. I'm quite happy with my life, I just want to rub it in everyone's faces by being prettier, thinner, more talented and happier than they are and by being prettier, thinner and happier than they remember me.
This is neurotic and shallow, but one can only take 'Oh, you'll understand when you're not in school and you're a mom' so many times. It's not supposed to be admirable.
Dude, take it from someone who has already passed the half-century mark, whatever you may think about whatever you and your classmates have or have not accomplished in the past few years does not mean a hill of beans.
OK, I think I just went a little gay. Say something neocon-y and snap me out of it.
'Oh, you'll understand when you're not in school and you're a mom'
If that's the problem, the solution is to talk gaily about your light-hearted, unencumbered social life. No matter how much you love your kids, every parent is wistful about how it used to be easier to get out of the house. A couple of comments about how you just took off for the weekend to do something adult will have them wincing.
I suppose I'm the opposite of Tia and Cala, then.
re: 83
Hey, SCMT, why do you hate America? And earnestness?
I suppose I'm the opposite of Tia and Cala, then.
Meaning you are not at all confident about your station in life but everyone thinks you are very successful? I'm in that boat, a bit.
I went to my (small, private, elitist) ten-year HS reunion this Christmas, although I very nearly copped out. It was nerve-racking at first because I was so nervous that all of the talented intelligent people I remembered would have done all kinds of wonderful things. Some of them had, some of them hadn't; some of them had but still felt neurotically underaccomplished, some of them hadn't but still wanted to pretend to be better than everyone else. I got very drunk on the school's tab and ended up skinny-dipping in a hot tub at 4 am with people I hadn't seen in years.
It was totally worth it. Tia, you should go.
84 - Or, alternately, false praise: "oh, I don't know how you do it! I don't think I'll ever have children. You women who give up everything for your children, I just admire you so much! I can't even begin to imagine what it's like! You must just love the little darlings so much to have sacrificed so many things for them! But they say it just makes it all worthwhile, don't they? Oh, but then they grow up, and go off and leave you, and that would be just terrible! I can't imagine that! What it must be like to just make your whole life revolve around someone else that way, knowing that you're just raising them to go away! Oh, it just makes me so sad! No, no, I could never do that. But you must just be so strong!"
Etc., etc. Don't admit to "selfishness," and don't explain *why* you could never do it yourself. Just intersperse protestations of "it's not in me" with praise of the most revolting kind.
Ooo, nice. I thought I was evil, but that's goood.
Not exactly "very successful" but something like that, yes.
That's "wracking", you loopy brothel inmate.
I think I'm actually in an intermediate position between Cala and eb. I rationally accept that I'm on my own path, that I have goals, that everything will come out right in the end, and that meaninful things have happened in the past five years, but I neurotically would like to be more accomplished, and I neurotically would like everyone to think I seem really accomplished.
I look forward to going to my 10-year and finding out all the hot guys who wouldn't go out with me are now gay.
Wordy, w-lfs-n: you can do better.
You misheard. It was spastics nobody likes. And little bitches.
90: I call myself a bitch for a reason.
JM, did you ever check out the wordpress alternative to blogspot? I've just about had it with blogger. If I can't log on to post on my blog and commenting has slown down over here, how am I supposed to keep myself from going insane as I sit here scanning documents on a very, very slow scanner?
finding out all the hot guys who wouldn't go out with me are now gay
You jest, but I had an unrequited crush on someone in high school who actually did, years later, turn out to be gay. You'd think this would be a relief (along the lines of, "Wow, it really wasn't me!") but actually, it wasn't.
Ooh, B, that's mean. I don't want to be that mean, I just want them to recognize that *they* got married at a young age (22) and *I* am not an infertile, baby-hating freak only intent on money for being 26 and single.
A girl I used to work with had three ex-boyfriends with whom she had been reasonably serious, and they all turned out to be gay.
What did you feel, slo?
I felt bad for the other person in this scenario, and I felt guilty, too. Because in high school, they were beyond closeted. Which must have been difficult enough, and I added to their burden by my (we can retrospectively say) inappropriate crushing.
NB I feel really stupid using gender-neutral pronouns here, but I feel like I've committed to this course, so.
101: Actually, it wasn't in jest. I went to my junior prom with the "Big Man on Campus" who never kissed me. I moped around for years thinking "What's so gross about me?" Nowadays I hear he's queer as a 3.
103: Then you breezily say, "oh, I've got plenty of time."
#101:
It's proverbial that women are often attracted to men who turn out to be gay, I don't hear much about it the other way around, but I must have asked out girls whom I found out were gay a half dozen times at least. Some just told me, others, were quite coy about why they weren't interested.
108: Heh. I had a huge crush on a guy in college who I made out with once, but we got interrupted by a fire alarm and never picked it back up again. I have no idea if he was gay, but I've decided that he must have been.
109: That's only funny when you say it to women in their 40's.
"AWB, when are you going to settle down and have some kids?"
"Oh, I've got, like 12 years or so left to decide about that."
I lost my virginity to a guy who claimed he was gay. I think it might have been a clever ploy to take my virginity.
No, when you say it to women that age it's mean. But if the people you're saying it to are also 26, then it's a fairly neutral way of showing that you're not particularly worried about it.
Oh, look who's all concerned about people's feelings all of a sudden!
I went and had a cigarette and looked at the branches of the tree across the parking lot and tried to calm down. Don't get me all riled up again!
I think it's fine from someone in her mid-twenties. But remember how unsettled Becks was by the older woman warning about infertility?
I think you should totally avoid the reunion unless there are people there you would like to see. Instead of going to our college reuinions, my friends from college and I take a vacation together every 2 years--it's much better. You see the people you want to see and avoid all anxiety.
If you do go, I suggest taking an opposite approach to lying about some kind of successful job. When I was in graduate school, a friend brought a friend who was a flight attendant to a party, not a super-hott flight attendant but a flight attendant nonetheless. She got more attention than ANYONE. I recommend telling your friends you are a flight attendant or something similar or something totally off the wall that will make them completely re-evaluate who you are--head waitress at Hooter's, baker of erotic cakes, lead actress in your community theatre's version of My Fair Lady, this stuff just makes itself up. I just realized that this was also a Sex and the City episode featuring Miranda, who pulled this off.
AWB: How did he explain himself?
Back on topic: I had a roommate who was quite talented at the piano and who had applied to a conservatory but was not admitted. He said that he was quite disappointed at first - as you might expect - and had kept going over in his mind what had gone wrong during his audition, but that eventually he came to see it as a good thing because now he could play the piano solely for his own enjoyment.
"Shit, you mean you weren't putting me on about being a girl?"
119: The gay guy? He was German. He also gave me crabs and then pretended not to know what they were. Later, during a viewing of Das Boot, I realized that German people do get crabs after all.
We stayed friends for almost six years before I finally got around to realizing he was a complete asshole.
Great! Pwnt, as my son would say.
Does the head waitress at Hooters have a distinctive uniform?
Unfortunately, no. My understanding is that she has an expanded set of professional duties.
I'd just like to announce that Jeff Goldstein of "Protein Wisdom" is apparently horning in on my bestiality franchise.
125: Do they call her the Maitre T?
Re 126, I hope and trust Gary is misreading it here. That is, I hope and trust that the sex talk here is qualitatively different from Jeff G's sex talk, which seems uniformly hostile. When we talk about someone having sex with animals we mean it affectionately.
I think that was written in a moment of being pissed at us generally (well, me particularly) -- it was after the little dust-up on the other thread.
The quarterback of my HS football team / point guard of the basketball team turned out to be gay.
He was a finesse player, but one of the best athletes on the school. Our down linemen were nominally heterosexual, of course, though women really aren't attracted to down linemen.
eb @100: I haven't gotten a chance to check it out yet. First, Satan's Telecom, aka "Verizon," decided to go down, and then it was the Persian New Year n' shit. (Next time I make the saffron rice pudding, it will *not* be so authentic: I nearly went into sugar shock. The Mexicans liked it, though.)
What, blogging isn't your first priority? Oh, ok. If I end up trying it before you do I'll let you know how it goes.
131: Now are you going to jump through fire?
According to my sources, the jumping through fire should have happened last week. And then we should have partied for a number of days before arriving at the real new year and its related feast.
We punked out on the fruity meat and instead made a tremendous number of kebabs. I'm standing by my vow, though: if my honey wants a peaches n' lamb koresh, he's going to have to make it.
eb, if you get to it before I do, please let me know how it goes. I am going to look into it; it's just taking me awhile.
To give you a sense of what authentic Persian rice pudding entails, here are most of the ingredients, which are to be cooked, in various stages, over like 2 hours: 1 cup uncooked basmati rice, 12 cups water, 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 tsp saffron, some cardamon, some slivered almonds, 2 T rice flour, and 3 1/2 cups sugar.
That is the greatest spam in the history of the world.
But if spam ever disappeared from the face of the earth, it could be recreated from that one piece alone.
Ok, wtf? It's not showing up in the MT comments list.
Apparently god can make a spam so powerful that it cannot be filtered. I remain in awe.
137: I am a huge fan (and constant maker) of rice pudding, and I have never heard of sugar quantities like that. Remarkable.
My people are deep Southerners, and I thought they took the crown for sugar intake, but then one day I had gulab jamun. How are Indian people not all diabetic? I am surprised to hear the Persians are similarly angled.
136 hurts my eyes. Ben, make it stop.
142: What did you do to make it go away? Did it implode?
143: Sugar shock, I tell you, and that was after only a very few spoonfuls. Such goings-on make me much less likely to venture into fruit-meat stew territory.
The spammers are getting bolder or stupider: in the middle of an active thread? Really!
My favorite Persian dish is spinach with prunes. I had it 4-5 times before I figured out that the mystery flavor was prune.
142: What did you do to make it go away? Did it implode?
Ogged did it. He watches over us even now.
I was once very serious about piano. I practiced from 2 to 6 hours a day at my most serious. (This was probably bad for me, as I had wrist problems (and still do) and was probably causing permanent injury at that point.) I considered trying out for a conservatory, but decided that I really just didn't like music. You could say it was burnout. I started lessons at six, but didn't really start being serious about lessons at all until I was 14, so it's not like I was some child prodigy. My talent was such that I perhaps could have been, with much more pressure early on. (The number of people with such talent dwarfs the number of actual prodigies.)
I haven't played more then ten minutes at a time for about two years now. It's been four years since I gave up being serious about piano.
I don't really miss it much. I still enjoy music a lot, but not classical music as much. (Except for Bach. Bach rules. And Brahams is OK too. Also Bartok. But not Rachmoninov or Shubert or Mozart or Beethoven, sorry.) I'm happy just doing my little bit of computer programming and blog commenting. Also, I have ADD pretty bad.
re 148 and its referents: I find myself in a kind of opposite position. I was a pretty good violinist as a kid but had neither the love of classical music nor the driven-ness to keep going with it. I switched over to folk music fiddle and enjoyed that but never really pursued it. Decades later I am picking up the fiddle again and discovering that hey, I actually have a fair amount of talent playing this music (old time, blues) -- it's coming to me pretty naturally and sounds good when I play. So I am kind of lamenting the lost years -- if I would have really pursued folk music as a teenager and college student perhaps I coulda been a contender, whatever "contender" means in this context -- I'm not sure. Trying not to let that lament get in the way of my currently dedicating myself to achieving whatever mastery I can achieve. (This kind of lament is a pretty persistent theme in my life and no, not particularly useful ever, I don't guess.)
re: 148/149
I started playing guitar in my early teens and started gigging in local rock clubs/bars, etc around 16 years old in small town rock/metal bands. However, there are *so* many good guitarists out there and at the time I was competent but nothing special. As a result I largely gave up, learned jazz saxophone for a while, and then just played the guitar for maybe an hour or so a week thereafter.
About 4 years ago I got back into playing pretty seriously, practicing regularly, taking classical guitar lessons, taking jazz theory/technique a bit more seriously, etc. I even took some classical guitar exams up to roughly the usual level required for music college/conservatory entry.
Like Modesto Kid, I really regret not taking it more seriously in the intervening 10 years or so. Not because I could have been a contender -- there are just too many really great guitarists around for playing ability to be enough and I have no ambitions to be a professional musician -- but I could have spent the past 10 years making the sort of music I like.
It's only recently that I've got the sight-reading, theory and technique chops together enough to really make a stab at playing music that makes me happy and although I'm not all the way there yet it would have been nice to have gotten there earlier. Now, I just need to find a venue that want someone to make Marc Ribot/John Zorn 'Electric Masada'/Bitches' Brew/modern-classical sorts of noises...