It’s about starting over . com

This is the long awaited blog post. I’ve officially announced that I’ve been accepted to The Berklee College of Music in Boston (Hallelujah!) but the oft’ asked question is, “did they give you a scholarship?”

This year, around 7,000 budding musicians auditioned around the world to attend Berklee . Each one was considered for a scholarship that’s based solely on talent at first. Once a few are selected as being worthy, they then must prove financial need. The need is the final determining factor.

Out of the 7,000 (I hope I remember these numbers correctly), 30% were considered talented enough to be considered in the first round. That’s around 2,100 people. Out of these, 70% are weeded out in the second round. That leaves 630. This is the final selection group. I don’t remember the percentage that actually gets selected for some type of offer of talent-based scholarship, but it’s small. The top, most coveted scholarship, the Presidential Scholarship (covers all cost of attendence) is usually offered to only around 7 to 10 of the original 7,000. What’s that, 1/10th of 1%?

Oh, and BTW, the entire student body of Berklee at any given time numbers around 4,000. Yup, a LOT of people are turned away each year.

Scholarship selection process: What is talent?

So, I recently asked someone who is involved in the selection process exactly how this works. I was told that people are grouped into categories based on their main instrument. So all singers are in the vocal group, guitar players in the… well, you get it. Then, within each group, the most talented are identified. Then, the most talented from each group are compared to those from the other groups.

What is talent anyway? Continue Reading »

Are you blogging? Do you say, “hum, what should I write?” before beginning each post? Or are you one of those bloggers who feels that you know exactly what you want to say but as you’re writing, you have to ask yourself if you really want to tell it all, exactly as it is?

There comes a time in blogging where you have to ask yourself, “Exactly how much do I want to reveal here?” For sure, no one wants to put something out there in black and white that will come up later and bite them in their future.

We’re all vulnerable and we all want people to see us in a certain light. We all have secrets, and we all have things that aren’t exactly secrets but that we would just rather not reveal publicly. And we all have fears. When starting over, venturing out into the unknown, the two biggest fears are “what if I fail?” and “what if I succeed?”

The “what if I succeed” fear is something that needs the help of a professional to overcome, that is, if it’s preventing you from trying something you really want to do. Sometimes, it’s just easier to stay in the comfortable place that we’ve already settled into. But the “what if I fail?” question, which I’m guessing is a lot more common, is about losing face, about making a fool of yourself, and for me and others who want to inspire, it’s a much larger issue: If I try and fail, how can I encourage others to try? After all, it hurts big-time to fail, and sometimes you loose things or people in the process. The image of a hung head and a proverbial tucked tail come to mind.

Maybe the saying, “It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all,” is relevant here. Is it better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all? Better to have ventured and embarrassed oneself than never to have ventured at all? And is it better to have revealed the truth of our fears and losses, or better to remain…safe? Continue Reading »

Yesterday in one of my classes, the teacher was taking attendance and he called the name of a guy named Liad (in Hebrew, it means “next to”). One of the students pointed out that he was the kid who recently died. The story is that (he’s not really a kid) Liad set out on his way to propose marriage to his girlfriend and got into a car accident that he didn’t make it out of. I think he was in his early twenties.

The energy level of the entire class dropped as if a collective “oh” of realization had been sighed–the teacher remained poised with his pen hovering over that place in the attendance sheet where Liad’s name was printed. Without looking up he said, “I can’t cross it off.” I told him to mark him as here because he most definitely was with us at that moment. Evidently someone in the main office felt the same way and that’s why Liad’s name still appears on our attendance printouts.

The attendance roster of life

How much time has to go by before we erase the memory of those who have passed on before us? I guess that depends on their closeness to us, or on the profundity of their passing. Who among those alive at the time will ever forget the death of John Kennedy? I’ll remember Liad because of that moment in our class.

Four years since…what?

On December 9th, I auditioned to attend The Berklee College of Music. I think that this is one of my more important milestones and the results will substantially influence the direction my life will take over the coming years. So it comes as no surprise that Continue Reading »