Remembering Your Own Plans

When I was in 5th grade, my public school offered us to play an instrument in the band or the orchestra. I was choosing between the flute, the saxophone, and drums. I decided to play the flute.

My logic as an eleven-year-old was thus: the flute is the smallest of the instruments, and so it would be easy to carry. Over my life when I go places, I would be able to bring the flute with me easily.

I made my decision in large part based on the size of people’s cases. A few years later when I was allowed to borrow two instruments over the summer, I borrowed a saxophone as well as a flute, and did confirm for myself that I did like the act of playing the flute more than I liked playing the saxophone, and I just was better at it for whatever reason. I liked it enough to keep practicing it (I quit the violin after one semester — I liked bowing, but I could not stand sawdust. I did not like the “impure” sound as I was practicing).

As the flute became part of my identity, I overworked, stopped playing in college, started jamming again years after college after going to a jamming music birthday party in Los Angeles — there came a time when I would want to bring my flute places again, but then would not because “it is too much hassle” —

and then I remembered that it fit perfectly sideways into a carry-on into any plane, and what the hell am I doing, saying that it is “too big” or “too inconvenient” to bring places.

This is different from guessing at the actual probability that I would play it or not. The flute being too big to bring because I will not need it is a completely different question from is the flute too big to bring which I had decided as an eleven-year-old it is not and in fact is the easiest instrument to bring somewhere basically of any instrument in the entire world —

I think there is a lesson here somewhere, about remembering your own plans.

The friction is fake. You already decided there wasn’t going to be friction, you already decided you were going to feel free. What’s with this new self-binding?

Too hard, too expensive, too inconvenient, whatever man.

“I’m not the kind of person who — ”

There are real things that you should finish that sentence with.

I’m not the kind of person who puts my dirty shoes on the bed.

I’m not the kind of person who puts my dirty luggage wheels on the bed.

I’m not the kind of person who puts my outside coat on the bed.

My god stop putting stuff on the bed! wtf!

I’m not the kind of person who is the person who washes the bed in this house is what I am hearing.

But otherwise, just this tying up yourself into ropes, wtf

The flute never changed. It’s the same size. It’s a standard size.

Compared to me, the flute only got smaller as I aged. Its relative size only got more and more convenient to bring places.

The optimistic and practical decision was already made. This neurotic hedging is what’s new.