Speech for December 21, 2014
East Brunswick High School National Music Honor Society Induction Speech
Make sure your fly is zipped.
Don’t wear that snakeskin jacket.
DO NOT USE THE STEWIE VOICE!
STAY ON SCRIPT!!!!!!
Do not ask questions like...
Who here has a favorite teacher?
Who here remembers their first crush and the song that you forever tied to them?
Anyone married? Did you have a wedding song? Do you remember what it is?
Does everyone here have a favorite song or album?
Hi there. Hello. Yes, um, I,.... uh, yeah, hi. For those of you that do not know me, I am Michael Kovacs and (wait for screams of applause, etc then continue) thank you, and I am, no please stop screaming. Please stop. Thank you, I am flattered, but... what, oh, wait? Someone IS hurt? Please, can someone call an ambulance or is there a hematologic oncologist in the house? There is? Okay, great.
Well, to continue! (Feel better, okay?)
Thank you to Mz. Lopresti and all of you who asked me to be here tonight. This is a deep and humbling experience and all I can say is that I am deeply honored, though I really feel like a third string basketball player getting a lifetime achievement award.
I have thought about this speech a great deal, every day since being asked, and the only way I could figure out what to say is via lists so please bear with me.
List #1 John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Albert Camus, Salvador Dali, Michael Jackson, Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Brian Eno, Eric Satie, Michael Hedges, Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, Sharon Spitalney, John Cage, Joseph Cornell, Amy Ray, Bob Mould, Mark Eitzel, Robert Moran, Thom Jones, Marie Howe, Buddy Wakefield
Okay, this first list of people are the ones who changed my life, the ones who inspired me. Now that may seem overly simplistic, so let me take a moment to explain the gravity of what these people gave to my life. This list contains the names of the people whose work literally changed the direction of my life because they created works of such beauty, passion, and honesty that I could not look away. Some of these people on this list I am friends with. Others I have met. The majority, however, are as distant to my life as the planet Neptune.
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that you, like me, had no choice in all of this, in the decision to follow Music as your passion. This is not the “National Young Welders Honor Society” This is MUSIC and something or someone came along in your life that had your soul resonate like nothing else. If there are any young welders in the room tonight, please see me after this for some after school home improvements I think you can help me with.
Say it loud and say it damn proud:Music changed my life.
It did mine. It was the only thing I was good at when I was your age. Back then I was an overweight and way intense and idealistic high school student and I was pulled to guitar by curiosity and default and, I must be honest here, I was not the best in my class. But I did practice all the time because I was amazed by the seemingly insane magic that occurred when someone would play a song I loved.
All of us here have one thing in common: Music chose us, not the other way around. Please, for the love of your own greatness, never forget that. Something inside you awoke when you heard some piece of Music. Never ever ever negate that. Why? Because THAT is your gift, what makes you unique and amazing. Not because of the gift you have but the fact that you rose to the challenge that the voice inside you could not silence.
My heroes may not be your heroes. That does not matter. All that matters is that you had the courage , yes, COURAGE, to chose that over wasting your life in things that did not make you happy.... but more on that later.
List #2) Arthur Braga, John Benthal, Br. Robert Ziobro, Br. Matthew Scanlon, Cary DeNigris, Glenn Alexander,Noel DaCosta, Ari Voukdys, and Jim Oestereich
This, my friends, is a list of the teachers who changed my life, and they are not all Music teachers. No. Some were French teachers, some religion teachers, some comedy improv teachers ... whatever. But all of them were great teachers. ALL OF THEM! But I must say one thing here before anything else..
If you choose a life in Music, there is a very very very very very very very good chance you will be asked to teach the instrument you play for the simple reason that you play it. My deep deep fall on my knees prayer to you is this: Please DO NOT TEACH!
I will let that sink in for a minute .....(lights on stage hookah)
You, all of you, this amazing pool of talent, please hear me out. I need all of you to know that teaching is a skill you learn just like your instrument or welding or nursing or real estate sales. You very well may be blessed with the gft to teach but please, out of basic human respect for what is within the souls of your students, please take it seriously. I never ever ever wanted to teach for one reason": I was not 1% of any of the people in the above list. But someone by the name of Matthew Kloskowski said he heard I was good and wanted me as a teacher. I charged him next to nothing for three years and he became the youngest jazz guitar student on the roster of the famed guitarist Pat Lehey. I had no idea. I just taught in the shadows of my teachers. And all of you, EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU, owe it to the teacher or teachers who changed your life to be, at the very least, as good as them.
Allow me to let you all know now, we, as full time Musicians, are not respected by the masses unless we are, at the very least,wealthy and, to some extent famous. My grandfather carried with him the card of a master craftsman in shoe making. Give him a sheet of leather and he could, via his tools and skill, make YOU A PERFECT SET OF BOOTS OR SHOES. Perfect. Why? He was a master craftsman. That is all you and I can ever, and I mean EVER, hope to be, a craftsman or craftswoman, of Music. This, I hate to tell you here and now, is a trade, a skill, an artform like anything else. Painting is an ART. Writing is an ART. Medicine, my fine feathered fellows, is an ART! If you want to call yourself a professional Musician or a composer, you must work as hard as a surgeon does to be called as such.
What we do SEEMS easy, the same way putting in a new furnace or taking out an appendix or administering chemo SEEMS easy. I no way am I denigrating the skills of a doctor. But, and hear me out, my biggest nightmare is a world full of "artists" and "Musicians". I need, we all neeeeeeed, others who are NOT what we do.
This thing we call "Life"?? What is it about? There are countless books and people paying six figures for seminars and retreats to see "who they are". Well, you know who you are because you are in this room tonight. You... You are a lover of Music.... a parent.... a teacher. This is WHO YOU ARE. Hands up, is anyone here a hobo who happened to stumble from a railway car for shelter and free food? Anyone? Okay, to all of you students, I ask of you the following: always remember to keep the place that Music holds within you sacred. Okay, now the tag line...
I have beloved friends who are oncologists and pediatricians, and they LOVE Music. LOVE LOVE LOVE Music. Music is a part of their lives the same way air and the internet are. Their being SINGS with Music, either hearing it or, in their cases, performing is on guitar and flute respectfully. Music is in their souls and nothing can replace it. Nothing. However, they loved the art of Medicine more and excelled at it, healing countless people and winning many awards for their passion and service.
If all of you follow a career in Music, all the better. But, and hear me out on this, it would seem to me standing here that Music is A PART OF YOUR LIFE.Please, never negate that. EVER. I stand here, a man who made Music the center of his creative life, but I have written a book, done comedy, and art. I cannot negate ANY of those parts of me because they are who I am. You, all of you, Music is a part of you. If you think this is a joke, ask yourself if you would rather be taking photos of spiders in the jungles in Brazil rather than playing your instrument or writing Music.
Maybe, just maybe, you will want to do the spider/Amazon forest thing. Fine. If so, all I ask is that you do it with as much or more passion as you do Music. All you will ever have in this life, once you touch it, is the Truth of the Passion that makes you feel alive.
List #3) Lois Nettelton, Mary Ann Wilson, Mark Empire, Robyn Bauman, Pete Haider, Katharina Woodworth, Josie Coyoc, Peter Vajtay, Steve Hajdu Nemeth, Jilleyn Gordon, Christine Zadravec, Greg Gualtieri, Catherine Onder Caplan, Rebecca Tarlazzi, Lisa Kowalew, Ilana Kein, Elizabeth Kalfayan, and Christine Kossol.
My friends, this is an edited list, and perhaps the most important list. I am truly humbled to be able to call all of these beloved to me, the last of which being my amazing wife.
One day this past year, I awoke in a lucid moment and looked at those people who are beloved to me, those who have, for reasons I may never know, love me and call me their friend. I was stunned. Wait, no, I was actually floored at what I saw. These people in my life are way way way way more talented than me. I stand in their shadow. One date this past year, I looked around and truly saw the collage that were my true friends and loved ones. I have said and shall forever say that everyone of these people i way more talented than me. And they are. But, I am the most stubborn out of them all. the tortoise on Red Bull and Ritalin and espresso who kept walking towards a finish line they had completed long ago.
You, and by which I mean all of us, are truly a reflection of our friends. Likes do attract and people can poison the well. In my life, I have been truly blessed to have beautiful and annoyingly talented people that I can call friends. They love me so much they will call me out on bad work and praise me for good. Such a blessing is a true blessing. I have people in my corner who are both stupidly gifted and honest that I am not allowed to let anything out unless they go, "Yeah.... that works."
All but one of the people on that list are in some way famous for their work. I my view, they all should be showered with cash and professional recognition for how talented they are. Why Mary Ann Wilson, truly the greatest musical genius I have ever known is not able to buy her own island, is a cosmic mystery to me. All of the above people have written Music or produced some art that is miles beyond the majority of the garbage buffet that seems to always be the majority of what is out there. Still they persist, still they create. Still, they inspire me.
If any of you are to become famous, always remember where you came from. Always. As alluded to before, you never chose this path. Also note, if the Bible. the Torah, just about all holy texts, the writings of the Marcus Aurelius, St Augustine, Shakespeare, Albert Camus, Steven Tyler, People Magazine, and Spongebob Squarepants have in common is that fame and fortune do not make one intrinsically happy. Over and over again, with annoying predictability, every Behind The Music Screams that message. And reality TV is really the final stop on this self delusion. Who do you have more respect for: any Kardashian or your favorite band or maybe even the person you admire as a great local musical hero?
Please have integrity, please I thank God every day for the honor of being taught by the late Noel Dacosta and the very funny Jim Oestereich. These two men demanded of me one thing and one thing only: do not compromise one single note. EVER. You are ALWAYS to serve the Music, not yourself. If you try to be clever or cute or flashy because you think it will make people like you, stop and do something else. All of you are better than that. And to this day I cannot do anything creative without having to answer to what they taught me.
For the record, this is not to say that everything you do is this torture and that you should agonize over every note or word. No. I would much rather listen to AC/DC or the Ramones than to cranky classical hipster Music that sounds like broken toys being hit with by mouse traps by a vision impaired clown with turrets.
And, let me say it here. You may become famous and wealthy and loved by the masses. But if you are creative person, the greatest feeling you will get is the act of creating, that indescribable feeling that you know when it arrives in your soul. You band will break up, your manager will betray you, your fans may turn on you, no one will come to your shows after you have traveled 2896.7 miles to play a “big” festival. But if this is what you were called to do, the purest joy will come when you you are either playing with your band or simply writing alone in a room. That is all you will ever have, the joy of creating. And I don’t mean this tragically stupid “wow, life is so perfect like, when you create” it i like the best ad I am one with the cosmos” No. It just feels good without the help of any herbs, liquids, or chemicals.
Speaking of which, this super depressed, super tortured artist thing... let’s stop that here and now. You are not allowed to be a jerk because of what you have chosen to do. Period. Also, there is nothing romantic about depression, drugs or alcohol abuse. Nothing. I have lost friends, dear and beloved friends, to all of these. To watch someone you love and who has more talent in their small toe than you do on your best day after a full night’s sleep, suffer through these and then lose is... beyond language. Take care of yourself. Get help if you need it.
There is a legendary jazz singer by the name of Tony Bennett who was going through a bad time when his career failed. He was doing drugs and booze and the whole bit. One day he went out to lunch and the former manager of the comedian Lenny Bruce was there. The gentleman said that the thing that killed Lenny was not the drugs, but the fact that he sinned against his gifts, the drugs killed what he had within him. That despair threw him over the edge. Being the good Catholic by Mr Bennett is, he took that to heart immediately and got his life together. Always protect your gifts, what you were given that brings you true happiness.
Last List:
You, me,..... us.
We are in this together. All of us.
You are going to have days so bad you are going to want to tear off your head off your shoulders and throw it like a bowling ball into oncoming traffic. You are going to be filled with doubts, severe doubts. You will, after a bad gig or lesson, want to rend your garments and curse God’s holy name. Know that you are not alone in this. Support each other. Respect each other.
This road is not easy but nothing that has any value is easy. Fate may be amazingly kind to you, but you will have to work and face disappointment. My aunt was the actress Lois Nettleton. She won two emmys and was nominated for tonys for her Broadway work. I grew up seeing her on TV and in the movies. But even she, after all these, awards and work, STILL got turned down for auditions and it always hurt.
Your talent may or may not be rewarded by the recognition of the masses. This is all the more reason to do honest, good, uncompromising, and passionate work. And use your gifts for good. Make things that are beautiful. I do not mean videos of kittens riding a skateboard dressed like Johnny Depp. Your expression can be angry, happy, funny, whatever. AC/DC, Rage Against the Machine, Erik Satie, whatever, they all make beautiful things that are radically different.
If you put yourself out there, you risk being hurt deeply. But know this, while failure is a deep wound, regret is a growing stone. Try to be your best self always. You are in this room tonight as a result of your decisions and the decisions of those close to you. Never ever forget that you did not make it by yourself and make sure you are grateful to everyone who helped you. Thank your parents, your teachers, all those who believe in you when you do not believe in yourself.
I hope you learned something from what I said and I hope it inspires you to dig deep into the road that lays before you, one that will be unlike the majority of anyone you meet.
While I loath quoting myself, I want to read part of a work I wrote that my ensemble performed at the New York City Poetry Fest. It was inspired by the leaving of a young woman who went here named Lizz Bailey. She is intense and amazing and was leaving for a new life in California. So I wrote something for her. Here’s the last part
Everyday you will wake
planning hoping, wishing, but
most of all dreaming that any possible there
is better than the singular here.
But in the end you will follow the truth
to thousands of stories you were
born to experience and to tell.
And you will see that it was worth it
all of it
all of it
but you cannot do that here
you must go,
now,
go.
Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for this. May God bless you. Be good to each other.
