The value of a song

Music...have you ever noticed how much we worship it? I mean, seriously: about 70% of all mainstream celebrities are famous because they are musicians. Think about some of the names that are plastered on the covers of People and OK! and other front-line magazines. The Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, Jamie Lynn Spears, Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Miley Cyrus, to name a few. Although all except the Spears are owned and overly-publicized by Disney, they are all still musicians. And, even though they aren't necessarily smart people for that matter, they are what our society worships.

And then think about the market: One of the most-sold electronic gadgets on todays market is the iPod, a music player. (OK, they do do other things, but they started out as just music players.) And Apple Inc. is now making a fortune off iPods and the iTunes Store.
So if our society loves music so much, then why are young musicians ridiculed?
"Oh, they're chasing an empty dream." "They'll never make it as a musician. Don't they know how small the odds are?" "They should spend their time doing more constructive things that will help them later in life." Blahblahblahblahblah. And, even though the odds are small, and maybe it's not a good life to be a celebrity, think about what even the idiot adults who say those things do for leisure: A good amount of them will go to a symphony at least once a year, and pay a hundred dollars to see those "geniuses" perform.
Now take a step back maybe, eh, 20 years for these people in the symphony. If the first-chair violin player is only 25 years old and is first chair in the National Symphony, he/she has probably been playing for at least 10 years, more like 15. So if he/she is 25, that means they will have started playing violin between the ages of 10 and 15.
And those obnoxious operas they go to. Oh, they can't get enough of them. Think about those singers: they were probably singing in their elementary school chorus, dreaming of being a star. And now, they're singing in an opera every evening, getting paid thousands of dollars per show. How many kids are like that nowadays, imagining themselves, maybe not in an opera, but being a professional singer? And even though maybe two out of the 100 kids in the 5th grade chorus will actually become pros, that's a difference made for those two people. 

It's like that story we've all heard a million times about the old guy throwing beached starfish into the ocean. And the kid comes up to him and says, "There's hundreds of starfish on the beach, and you can't possibly throw all of them back into the ocean. It won't make a difference." And then the old guy throws one in and says, "It made a difference to that one."

The point I'm getting at here is that those "sophisticated, realist" people, and they're not just adults: there's kids like that too... They're just big fat stupid hypocrites. They respect those "amazing violinists" and those "incredible singers" that they see at those annoying show, yet when they see an eleven year old with a real gift on the trumpet, and he's dreaming of one day playing first-chair for a Broadway show, they tell him how small his chances are and that he needs to focus on something that is "within reach."

Bottom line, people need to look at the people they respect, and realize that those people were kids once, too. And they too started out with a little violin that they got for their birthday, and played in their school orchestra. You have to start somewhere.

So think about that next time you see a sixth grader carrying around her oboe, and dreaming of becoming the next Chopin.