Student newspaper – “Hilltops” – at my alma mater Hartwick College ran an alumni piece on little old me. Transcript below:
When did you graduate from Hartwick, what was your major, who were influential professors etc?
I graduated (on time) in 1996. Its jarring to realize that next year’s freshmen class at Hartwick was born when I was a freshman. Believe me when I say that time flies – my mind doesn’t feel a day over 22.
I came into Hartwick as a guitar student, having learned about the music program by attending Hartwick’s summer camp during high school. Since the music curriculum for my specialty (performance) wasn’t too heavy, I also took up Philosophy. So I wound up as a double major.
My closest mentor was music professor Brian Wilson. He left to teach at Sonoma State University a few years ago, but we still maintain contact. He joined Hartwick in 1992 as well, and there was a sense that first year in the music department that neat things were happening, with a lot of new talent and room to grow. Unfortunately the situation didn’t sustain itself – some fellow students left, others lost interest – but I never let that keep my ambition down.
When you think of Hartwick now, what stands out in your mind? Do you have specific memories that you would like to share?
My fondest memories are friends. In just the last few months I’ve re-connected with most of them on Facebook – a website that I openly ridiculed until recently. I am a nostalgic type. Other than that, turning 35 makes you regret futzing around and wasting time in your twenties. Though I didn’t party too hard at Hartwick, I absolutely regret all those hours I wasted training for the track, cross country and swim teams. I realize now that you can’t succeed at several things at once – and I should have woken up earlier to the fact that I sucked as an athlete, but had fantastic potential as a musician. I eventually did wake up, but not after squandering too much of that precious asset: time. Add to that the post-college years spent in existential wandering and figuring out how to concentrate on my passion – music – and you can fast forward all the way to today.
But probably the funniest memory I have is sitting in the Nease computer lab in early 1996, rushing to finish banging out my Philosophy thesis on an old green screen word processor. In the space of a few weeks, I noticed everyone in the lab was staring like zombies at this stupid “Netscape” thing on their computers. “What waste of time!” I thought. So, that’s the biggest difference between me and all the young kids now at Hartwick – I’m old enough to remember – not only being without the internet – but actually ridiculing it as a fad.
What have you been doing since you graduated? Have you been able to go into a field that is related to your major? Do you feel that Hartwick prepared you well for “the real world”?
I earned a masters degree in music composition from UMass in 2000. I did well there and finally found my artistic voice, though even here I feel that I futzed around too much. In hindsight, being at Hartwick and then UMass was like being a big fish in a small pond. Not to knock either school, but at least in my discipline of music composition/songwriting, neither is a “top tier” school. Though I had artistic space and support to follow my own directions, I still feel these days that I might have done better in a more challenging or competitive setting. Then again, maybe its just that rueful 35 year old man in me talking…
I decided straight after graduate school that I had better do the “day job/night musician” thing – since more graduate school and a PhD was too horrifying to contemplate. So I learned how to design websites, bluffed by way into my first legit tech job, and grew from there. After 5 years I had joined an high-end IT architecture consulting company, working on some pretty heady technology and business problems. I’ll skip the whole gory/boring story – since I documented it all recently on my website bio. But let’s just say that by this point (2006) the “night music” half of my existence had been brutally murdered by two lovely but very time-demanding children.
Happily, I successfully resurrected it a year ago and got busy completing the composition and recording of my first album – a suite of edgy, political progressive rock songs titled “america’d”.
You see, in addition to largely ditching my classical/serious music training in favor of returning to my roots as a rock/shred electric guitarist – the last 5 years or so have turned me into a radical libertarian. It was hard not to pay attention to social and political events during the last decade, and my natural inquisitiveness about the truth and distrust of conventional wisdom led me to read and absorb lots of classical liberal and libertarian ideas, in economics, politics etc.
My “eureka moment” occurred when I realized I could both “brand” myself – and faithfully express the two most important aspects of myself – by joining my unique approach to music with my unusual (for the arts/entertainment world) political and social ideas.
So now I’ve established a presence on the web, and begun releasing america’d for free, one track at a time. I’ve begun executing a serious 5-year plan to ditch my day job for my passion – music. So far, my first baby steps on this journey have gone well.
What activities were you involved in on campus? What did you do to make your years here count?
Jazz band, wind band, philosophy club, track, cross-country, swimming, drinking (not too much), swinging violently from vegetarianism to feminism to hedonism to chauvinism. Most friends and observers would probably say my years at Hartwick were productive and “counted” – but as I suggested above, I feel I should have done even more.
Do you have advice for current Hartwick students?
My cautionary anecdotes above should be enough to scare any students still on the fence about whether they’re using their time at Hartwick as wisely as the could be. If your pace feels comfortable, you’re not running fast enough.
