Tag: variety

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On and off and on again

Artwork by Matilda Heindow @crazyheadcomics

So, I took a bit of a break from my healthy eating program for a while.

I chose not to write about it as it was happening. Basically, I was feeling the truth of “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

But now I’m close to finishing my first weekly fast in almost a month, grateful that it hasn’t been any harder than usual (phew!), and feeling ready to look at what happened.

Some of it was due to the (not unusual) “perfect storm” of stress, emotional eating, and going on vacation. But I realize another factor is that I got a little bored with my eating routine.

And that’s due not so much to having lots of restrictions, but rather to the fact that I don’t really want to be bothered with creative cooking. I mean, other people in my program post these awesome photos of delicious, tasty meals which I would gladly eat — if they just happened to magically appear on my table!

I think it’s a lingering side effect of my decades as a freelance musician in San Francisco.

My “at home” eating habits back then were pretty darn boring and routine (I could eat pasta and broccoli 4-5 times a week for months on end), but that was balanced by the fact that I ate out a great deal of the time.

Chinese food, taquerias, coffee houses, favorite breakfast spots…these and so much more were a huge part of what made living in San Francisco so fun. Then there was the fact that I was frequently eating on the way to gigs or at gigs.

There’s definitely not that kind of constant interest and variety around food in my life now, which is fine! I’m not really a “foodie” and I truly don’t want to go back to eating out constantly.

But I’m also not going to sweat the fact that, after seven months of being amazingly consistent, I felt the urge to cut loose for a time.

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Variety

Don’t know what brought it to my mind, but this morning I suddenly found myself thinking about the incredibly wide variety of musical experiences I’ve had in my life.

If someone asks, I explain that I had a career as a classical flutist. One could get the idea that all a classical flutist plays is classical music, but that certainly wasn’t true in my case!

Well, for starters, I went from piano to flute to saxophone before finally returning to study the flute seriously. From age 15-20 I was a saxophonist and Big Band Jazz was my world. I was in five different big bands, playing the music of Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, Vince Gauraldi, and Chuck Mangione, to name a few. It was a lot of fun!

During that period I also spent a (very) short time as a member of a rock band; it simply didn’t take.

I moved to San Francisco, determined to make a living as a musician, and that’s when things got really interesting. To make it as a freelancer I took pretty much every gig that came my way.

I played for Noh Oratorio Society; The Flute Exchange; the show orchestra at the brand new Marriott’s Great America; recordings at Skywalker Ranch; for tips outdoors at Ghirardelli Square (where I was also asked to be part of a TV movie!); for lots of orchestras; and for a gazillion weddings and parties.

But maybe the most unusual gig was the one that popped into my head this morning, after not having thought about it for–oh, about thirty years! And that was the Chrysanthemum Ragtime Band! Yep, I played and recorded for a ragtime band.

When I look back at all the different things I’ve done, I’m grateful that I worked most of that karma out of my system before I came to Ananda. By the time I arrived, I knew with crystal clarity that my happiness did not lie in the next big performance or prestigious gig, and that knowing has allowed me to dedicate myself 100% to Swamiji’s music and to making it more available to the world.