Safe Haven

AFTERWORD

Amor Fati

 

LOOKING BACK

When I was about 11 years old, I decided I wanted to be a professional orchestral horn player when I grew up. (Yes, I was a total stud.) I immersed myself in all the repertoire and practiced multiple hours every day. (One of those hours was before school—and imagine my parents’ annoyance getting awakened by blasts of Mahler each morning, bless their hearts.) I got very, very good at it.

It might even have been preordained as, unbeknownst to me at the time, my birthday falls on what is known as the “Horn Duumvirate Date”—the shared birthday of the two most preeminent horn players in the world. But it was not to become the “Triumvirate Date.”

One day, at the age of 14 or so, it hit me like a ton of bricks: There were only three horn positions out there that I determinedly and obsessively wanted: principal horn of either the Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, or the Berlin Philharmonic. That was it! Anything else, and I would regret ever committing to this.

It didn't matter what other paths might also have been available: second chair at these orchestras, principal at another, or performing in subway stations. All were unacceptable to me. And those three principal horn positions that I so obsessively wanted opened up perhaps once a generation. And so, while I loved my expectation, I hated my probability of ever seeing it (Duumvirate ...