June 21st, 2007

I don't really like to talk about it, but I spent a period of my young life in extreme privilege as a traveling musician—a singer in a world-class choir. With this choir I traveled Europe twice, the US, and Canada frequently. I started this interesting and exciting-sounding life when I was 12 and was washed up, burnt-out, chewed-up, and spat-out by the time I was 14. (I also played ice hockey then, time permitting, because who wants to be nothing but a singing sissy boy?)

On our European tours, the choir had an accompanist named Rex who played the organ absolutely brilliantly. I couldn't believe how this guy could play ... it was almost intimidating to hear/watch him sight-read a complicated piece and transpose it to another key as he played. And when Rex got his keyboard-playing maw around a piece he liked and was familiar with, he inspired the talents of a bunch of teen and pre-teen boys. I mean, we listened to that guy play. When his fingers were on the keyboard, we turned off the Supertramp, Queen, BTO, and whatever else we carried with us in our cassette tape players as we traveled from city to city getting more and more bored with the architecture, the customs, and the people. (I mean, we were still children for Pete's sake ...)

One piece that Rex played was Charles Marie Widor's Toccata from his Symphony Number 5. It is a popular piece—certainly Widor's most popular—and it often finds its way onto those "Classics Blasters" and "Boffo Organ" CD compilations because it is such a well-loved piece. And I know it well, even bought a piano reduction of it once to play (but it wasn't a very good arrangement).

And now, more than twenty-five years after first loving that piece, I find myself on a quest to find the perfectly-played rendition of that toccata. Because it is classical, MP3s of it can be found readily and legally available for download on the Internet in many performances of it. So I have about 10 versions of it cluttering my hard drive, none of them quite capturing exactly what I imagine it should sound like.

Some versions are too slow, plodding, and/or methodical. Some are played too sloppily. Some have too much dynamic range, some too little. One is tantalizingly close until the ending chords where the player curiously added his own little "ta-da" notes. I also found a version that appears to have been played at a slower speed, then sped up; it is pretty good nonetheless, if you can get over the higher pitch. And one or two of the live performances have too much noisy audience mayhem.

But I think I know why I keep searching for the exactly perfect rendition yet come up short: I am looking for the version that Rex used to play. I want to hear him play it again. And I want it to be as fresh and exciting for me now as it was when I was 13. So I am seeking something that couldn't possibly exist, except in my memory. I want to experience that life again, because I didn't realise how exciting it really was until it was long gone and I was into a more mundane existence.

I seek the symbol of that innocent privilege. I want it back and can't possibly have it any more (um, my voice changed when I was 14, see ... ) but still I seek the perfect version of that song as a representation of what I have lost. It is futile.

And still I search.

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