june 11, 2017 | 1:27am, 5m | raga

i used to come from indiana to new york city during my music school days, and i can’t remember why. it started after 9/11, when i really thought i might turn my attention toward composition. during these times i consumed the music and writing of la monte young, who i’d known about since high school but whose work i only really encountered at college. growing up in vermont, one couldn’t just pull up the ‘well-tuned piano’ on the internet, or amazon ‘sound and light.’ but at IU, i sort of could; they had a great library. young’s creative outlook pointed me forward in a particularly confusing period, just after the passing of my grandfather, the musical patriarch of our family, whose funeral happened the morning of 9/11. (i should have flown that day). young’s conviction, openness, and somehow comforting dispassionateness toward tradition gave me a sense of purpose and direction during a moment in history where studying music in a conservatory felt, at least to me, impossibly superficial and self-serving. i wanted to participate in, and indeed create, art that barreled through tradition like a bullet train. art that demanded. i sent him fan mail, unsolicited scores (that i also dedicated to him), and eventually emails and proposals to study his work under him—all into the void. still, i visited young’s dream house on church street a number of times through the years, and would bring anyone i truly cared about into its walls to feel the deep generator vibrations and see how they’d react—a kind of litmus test, i suppose. do you feel that? when i finally saw young perform a couple years ago in that space, i think i expected him to somehow know all this backstory and sweep me away, to carve out a moment where i could confess that i’d sent him love letters and souvenirs, and so would begin our creative love affair. but instead, like a yogi, he appeared, performed, and left. the evening indeed had nothing to do with me but i’d gone in hoping for it to scratch a million itches. in essence, i wanted for it to be all about me. i left feeling rejected and disillusioned. seeing an announcement for a series of similar concerts this month, i felt compelled to go again. so i attended tonight with managed expectations and only the desire to experience the evening fully. the waiting. the smells. the sounds. the heat. the duration. his utter joy. his utter indifference. it was electrifying. i want to go again. leaving, i heard an usher say to an older gentleman that he was of course invited to a small get-together downstairs. the man declined. in-between flashes of jealousy, i wondered what i might even say to this hero of mine if given the chance. i realize now, i’ve never actually heard him speak.