Whispers about Abigail being a prodigy began when she started wearing gloves to school and got exempted from gym class. At eleven years old, her hands couldn’t be damaged in any way, or it would impact her violin playing. She already studied with one of the area’s most prestigious teachers and she’d take trips to places like Julliard or Curtis on the weekends. She seemed to enjoy it. It gave her a lot of purpose. But when the rest of us would be on the court playing basketball and she’d be off on the sidelines attempting to read a book, I couldn’t help but wonder if she secretly wanted to join us.
I can’t remember what exactly caused Abigail and me to argue. I think she generally just hit a mean streak that showed no sign of stopping. But by the time she transferred to a different school at the end of the 6th grade, we were nowhere near as close as we were even a year before that. I still gave her a bracelet with our school’s emblem on it on our last day together. The school she was set to start at the next year wasn’t a complete unknown. My older sister had played soccer against them plenty of times. But because so much of my sense of self was tied to my school, it felt like Abigail was moving to a different country and renouncing her citizenship. I suppose I just wanted her to have a memento of where she came from.
We ran into each other several years later the day of our SATs. She looked about how I would’ve expected. Lots of acne. No gloves. Another girl who I’d been friendly with who ended up transferring to the same school as Abigail after a few years told me she detested playing the violin but that she had a boyfriend who everyone but Abigail herself suspected was gay. Truthfully, I haven’t thought about her in a while. But when it popped into my mind to open this piece like this, I went to a trusted source of snooping: LinkedIn. Like many girls I grew up with, Abigail attended an Ivy League school and became a doctor.
Good for Abigail.
With matters of marriage seemingly a lifetime away from the perspective of my childhood self, the most looming thing at hand that often materialized was the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
(Read “The Plot: Staying off script.”, for my thoughts on marriage)
I went through two distinct phases when it came to that overarching question. The first was my military phase which stretched from 9/11 through most of middle school before it morphed into my engineering phase which carried me almost up until it came time to apply to colleges. My father was an engineer and it was my goal to build machinery for NASA or the armed forces. It was the type of job that mattered, he often told me. A job that would make a difference and that would mean something. To pursuits like art or music, he strongly felt that hobbies should just stay hobbies. Even supposed prodigies like Abigail didn’t sway his opinion.
But while the question of future occupation could sometimes seem as far away and abstract as something like marriage, there was a more present-day question at the crux of that: “What are you good at?”
With all the talk that goes on these days about identity whether it be race, sexuality, or gender, it is far more natural to me for that cornerstone to be anchored by matters of skills, occupation, and where you come from. I’ve always felt it was important to represent my family well out in the world and I’ve always felt that the values of the school I grew up in were integral in shaping my worldview. In that worldview, excellence was the expectation and challenge was an exciting prospect. That thing you were excellent at would lead you to college which would culminate in your occupation, your life’s work, the thing you seek to not just be excellent at but to master. My great-grandparents were carpenters and farmers. My grandparents were bankers, teachers, and housekeepers. My parents, aunts, and uncles were engineers, doctors, lawyers, and accountants. I was eager to know what I would be excellent at because my profession would mark my purpose in the global tribe.
I was good at a lot of things growing up. Great at a few things. Never a prodigy but that never bothered me. There was time to become better, and a lifetime to devote to mastery. Perhaps more importantly, I was interested in the things I also happened to be good at. In a school as small as mine, there was never any room to feel left out if you had skills. But there were also so few people in any given grade that it was normal for the girl cast in the school play to also be on the varsity volleyball team who would also come up with an interesting science fair project. They called it being a “triple threat.” There were many triple threats in my grade. It was the expectation that made TV shows detailing conflict between jocks and nerds seem like a thing of fiction. Everyone was a contributor so everyone belonged. Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time.
“Are you going to make me ask or are you going to just tell me?” I ask Molly when she announces she has a new boyfriend. She sighs.
“Ask away.”
“Alright. Where is he from, where did he go to school, and what does he do?” Sadie sighs between us. “And while we’re at it, what do his parents do? That’s important too.”
“Those things don’t matter. You should ask her who he is as a person,” Sadie chimes in. I level her with a blank stare.
“How? By asking for his favorite color?”
“No, by asking how he treats her.”
“Not like shit, I’d hope.”
Molly is unamused being talked about like she’s not sitting right there. I give her a sympathetic look in apology.
“Alright then. What is he good at?”
“Boardgames,” Molly says matter-of-factly.
“I don’t have a dream job,” a friend of mine from back in college told me recently. “I don’t dream of labor. I’m not eager to be a miserable worker bee in the capitalist system.”
To that, I have no idea what to say. In college, she had plenty of goals. Our goals were actually somewhat aligned. She was interested in concerts - specifically live music journalism. She graduated with honors too but for whatever reason immediately took a job in sales that she hated from day one yet stuck with for eight long years before getting let go because that’s just how corporations work, apparently. She now spends her time retweeting daily posts that seem to suggest that a communist utopia would mean she would get to lay around all day and not have to work in exchange for food or shelter and has developed an obsession to put into words exactly how queer she is despite a long history of seeking out and enjoying sex exclusively with men. Our drifting apart has been natural, but we still check in once in a blue moon.
“I wish I knew what I wanted to do,” Molly told me during our junior year of high school. “You and Sadie seem to have always known.”
“Not always. I went through phases,” I pointed out, not even bothering to bring up the dramatic ordeal that was telling my father I wanted to study music instead of engineering.
“And I’ve never had a phase. I don’t know what I like. I don’t even know what I’m particularly good at.”
“Math. Science. Rowing. Fitness,” I begin listing things. “Your PSAT score was also far better than mine.” We looked through the list of majors at the state college figuring it would have the most to choose from.
It was Molly who ended up joining the military, smart enough to work with maps and numbers and patient enough to deal with the rigid structure of that particular lifestyle.
I sit with Sadie on a rock somewhere deep in Central Park in New York City. We’re tiredly comparing notes from our chosen paths. I ended up working in live music and she ended up working in live television. Same story, different location.
“I’m just… tired. All the time. Most people I work with are useless but I care too much to just throw my hands up and let the whole thing burn,” she says to me.
“Same… but I think I’m getting pretty close to being willing to see what would happen if everything did burn, just to prove a point,” I say just before we both get phone calls from our respective jobs. In my ear is a panicked ballet director. In her ear is a panicked line producer. We realize at the same time that our lunch date will be cut short (because of course we’re both working on a Saturday) but start heading toward the subway in step with each other. Sadie explains how she’s taken up baking more seriously on the side and asks me if I still write music.
“Music used to just come to me, like a superpower,” I said. “But somehow, music school killed wherever it was the music was coming from. I still write stories though. Not nearly as much as I’d like.”
“Maybe someday when you’re off the road you could publish something,” she said. I shook my head.
“I’m not a writer. I think I’ll die on the road. Backstage somewhere getting screamed at by an artist manager. Just crumple to the floor five minutes before show time.” I envision it clearly in a humorous fashion. “But I’m good at this. Really good, I think. And I do like it even if I complain. There’s certainly nothing else I’d rather be doing. I wouldn’t call it a calling, necessarily, but it’s definitely something close to that.” Sadie nods in agreement.
Over a year later, I sit at my new keyboard in my first real apartment. I set a Chopin piece up in front of me and stumble through a few measures of a waltz I used to know. I then take out one of my own scores and stumble through a few measures of that. I hit random keys but when no melody hits me I revert to doing warmup scales for the first time in almost a decade. My fingers feel like an infant attempting to stand on two legs and frustration is quick to set in.
Back in my personal library, I take out several long-forgotten pages of story and am a bit surprised to find myself being pulled in. It’s not that bad. But there’s not much time to linger on it. I just got back from tour and am too tired to do much else before preparing for the next one. My chosen profession. The thing I’m set to master in life.
“I’m going to South Korea,” I announce to the surprise of everyone who knows me.
“With which show?” is the first thing Molly asks me.
“No show,” I say. “It’s a leisure trip. Though I am going because I want to see a specific concert. Isn’t that crazy? I haven’t actually been to a concert in… years!”
“Leisure?” Sadie says. “Do you even know what that means?”
“I’m thirty years old, I have the money, I have a passport, and - most uniquely - I have just enough time to pull it off. The stars have aligned.”
It’s a little hard to conceptualize that you can just step on a plane on one side of the world and step off on the opposite side of the world that is so different than anything else you’re used to that it’s like being in a different galaxy… save for the McDonalds.
I walked through parks, wandered my way into a hike up a mountain, saw a show, saw a second show, went out to dinner, got invited to a party, and wandered the streets at two in the morning.
“Where do you come from?” the man behind the counter at a kebab place in Itaewon asks me. He’s clearly a foreigner too and maybe he figured at two in the morning, I really didn’t feel like attempting to speak in Korean at a regular restaurant.
“America,” I say.
“Are you enjoying it here?” That question is a bit of a first.
“Yeah. But I leave in a few days. Gotta get back to work.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“Concert production,” I say with pride even if that aspect of my life seemed very far away at the moment.
Sitting at a picnic table under the awning behind the rehearsal studio in Burbank, Jenny takes another inhale of her vape. As I’ve explained before, Jenny has been my career partner in crime. We’ve traveled all over managing tours together and kept in touch when doing tours apart from one another. Quite stereotypically, I think working beside her makes me better at what I do. And in adulthood, she’s the only friend I have who gets what living as we do truly entails.
“I think I’m done,” she says. “Not now. But within the next four years, by thirty-five, I don’t want to tour anymore.”
“Oh?” I say, a bit taken aback. “Then what will you do?”
“Something simple. Less anxiety-inducing. I think I want to run a cafe. I still want kids but I don’t think I’m cut out for it.” I’m quiet for a while. “You’re not going to be doing this forever either,” she points out.
“I know.” I’d thought about it too. At first, I figured thirty. Then I figured thirty-five. Recently I’d figured at forty I’d choose a place whether that be a venue or a production vendor to take all my touring experience and settle down on the other end of the equation. Places like PRG or TAIT or Rock-It Global. Then maybe I’d help out at a community theater, something I’d done in the past but hadn’t had time for in many years. But every now and then I’d encounter someone in their fifties or even sixties still out on tour as a Tour Director. Massive productions. Divorced or never partnered. Masters at what they do. But to switch gears entirely in a whole other industry? It never crossed my mind as anything other than a whimsical fantasy, usually ending with the thought, “I’m not a writer.”
Over Christmas, I sit across from my mother who is talking about her new foolproof plan to retire in the coming years, listing all the stuff she’s always wanted to do but never had the time or energy to get around to. Inevitably, she starts questioning me.
“I really want to master what it means to put together a show. I don’t think I’ll be the best there is or ever was but… I want to make a name for myself. I’m good at this,” I reiterate when she asks exactly how long I’ll be out on the road.
“And with the skills you have, you could also do countless other things. Things that could let you have a real life outside the circus.”
“I haven’t done a circus yet but it’s on my list,” I say seriously.
“Your father still thinks you would’ve been better put to use as an engineer. It’s exhausting whenever he brings it up.”
She doesn’t push too much after that. She’s the one who encouraged me to buy those concert tickets that landed me in Seoul, saying throughout my twenties I never stopped to do anything just for fun. It’s true that there are things I’ve wanted recently that I didn’t think much of before. A home, for one. Before a suitcase was all I cared about. Now I enjoy making a nest of my own in my apartment surrounded by all the many things that interest me - usually in book form.
How many people ever reach their full potential? What does reaching your full potential even mean? Is there such a thing and does it even count if you’re not a genius or a prodigy? There are so many directions you could take your life in that I think it’s easier to focus on one singular thing than the endless possibilities, all the stuff you chose not to do. I’m sure this particular wheel of thought has been invented over and over again by billions of people alive and trillions no longer with us. I’m only a more recent entry. But it puzzles me in the quiet moments between shows when the crowds are gone and half the team is out at a bar somewhere which is a very new development in a life that has otherwise been defined by consistency and a one-track mind.
Maybe it’s just a phase. After all, that concert I saw in Korea? That seemed very much like mastery in motion and was a bit of a wake-up call: I have much more to learn and much more to accomplish to even hold a candle to TVXQ and their team, twenty years into their careers as K-pop idols with no sign of slowing down any time soon!
Of course, my opinion is very biased. I’ve been obsessed with those workaholics for half my life, constantly exhibiting diligence and determination.
Good for TVXQ.