Exactly 20 years ago, I was completing my undergraduate education in music at a small college in Vermont. I had a few vague ideas about where my career might go and a whole lot of the “ignorance is bliss” mentality that is only experienced by the naïve and self-indulgent mindset of the insular American undergraduate.
I was a tenor of moderate ability (exaggerated in my own mind given the small size of the pond I swam in) and interested in both the glamor of world stages and the minutia of my own world. I had no awareness of that “middle” radius of one’s circle of existence— that thing we call our community. And then, in a most unexpected way, my outlook was transformed by a freshman piano major (valedictorian of her class, as I soon learned) from of all places, Hodgdon.
The early stages of my transformation began when I decided to visit this “County Girl” in her natural environment. Braving January snows in a white Mustang not intended for winter adventures, I traveled the eight hours across Vermont and New Hampshire, up I-95, and through the loneliest stretch of road I had ever experienced (Old Town to Houlton).
Eventually I made it to my appointed rendezvous: “the McDonald’s parking lot where the interstate ends” and nervously greeted this young woman whom I had just driven eight hours to see, but had convinced myself was nothing more than “friend material.” Over the next few days I met her family, visited the Cary Library where her mother worked, saw the new fire station where her dad was assistant chief, visited her old high school, and genuinely tried to take in this community that seemed so far away from everywhere, and with its flat landscape, limited restaurant chains, big box stores, and long distances between towns, so very different from the one where I had grown up.
After my visit, and her parents bravely allowing me to drive her back to college for our spring semester, we began dating and my trips to The County increased. I started to learn about the towns around Houlton, the people and institutions central to everyone’s lives, and the stories of their past. My initial impression—that these were simply rural towns with limited opportunities and equally limited perspectives and interests — soon vanished and was replaced with envy, and with and embarrassment at my initial arrogance. I began to realize that these were an amazing collection of people who were uniquely involved in all elements of their community from school, to government, to church, and sports. The same people who were talking about what the Houlton Community Chorus was performing were equally interested in what the fire department, police department, and basketball teams were up to. I found myself in The County, and I was smitten (and not just by the young pianist). At one point I remember telling Sarah (Dr. Sarah McQuarrie in case you hadn’t figured that out yet) that I really thought I could very happily live here. To which she replied, from her always-practical perspective, “and how do you plan to make a living up here with a bachelor degree in voice, you idiot?”
Clearly I was not thinking about the day-to-day ramifications of moving to Aroostook County. What I was thinking about was the way the people I was meeting valued the arts in their community and the role that a person interested in the arts could play in such a community. I suspect that I had become so used to an “us against them” approach to the arts that I was overwhelmed by the support given to the different arts, sports, and other areas of interest. For the first time I was introduced to people who crossed boundaries I thought could not be bridged. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think I was seeing a Utopia, or an appearance of Brigadoon, but I did sense something different.
The same families who drove to Bangor for “Basketball Tournament Week” also went down to the Bangor Symphony concerts; a single family might have members in the Houlton Community Chorus and coaches of various sports teams; and most exciting to me was to see the high level of music performed by these small town musicians and the state-level success of the athletic teams. You could have both, and I wanted to be a part of something similar.
I didn’t move to Aroostook County after college, but I did enter graduate school at The University of Maine, where I continued my studies and integrated the role of community into both my master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation. I also solidified my determination to make music with both youth and adult learners, and to be an active member of my own little neck of New England. Oh, and I also decided to marry that “County Girl.”
Most recently we came full circle in this story when Sarah and I were asked to come up from our home in Plymouth, Mass,, to lead the 2014-15 All-Aroostook Music Festival. This was a life-long dream for Sarah, and for me it was a chance to play a part in the Aroostook County music scene that had changed my life 20 years ago. We couldn’t have been happier.
We arrived in Presque Isle late on that December afternoon before the festival began, with our newborn son Thomas, proud mother-in-law Laurie, and all our lofty goals all in tow. We would be conductor and accompanist at the festival that meant so much to my wife as a high school musician, and which represented those early Houlton experiences that caused me to take a different path in life. It was thus a bit disturbing when we started to hear murmurings such as: “the arts are not what they used to be up here” or “we are having to make tough decisions with budgets” and even “kids are pulled in too many directions so we don’t have the participation and quality we used to.”
Intellectually, I was not surprised because as a music professor I often hear this from all parts of the country. But emotionally it was a blow to my nostalgic view of the region, and my somewhat selfish desire to be a part of that legacy of well-known and respected guest conductors who harnessed the artistic powers of Maine’s rural youth and added to the reputation of the All-Aroostook. What had happened in the last 20 years?
In the weeks and months after that festival I continued to think about my experiences, to speak with some of the music teachers, audience members, and participants, and to try to make sense of it all. I considered many of the common complaints and criticisms we hear in the arts. Over time I found myself with two primary thoughts. First, the students we worked with at All-Aroostook did not seem much different than any other group of students with the potential to make fine high school music. Similarly, the parents and audience members were just as proud and supportive as any group I had ever met. Therefore, I reasoned, at its core, the potential for musical greatness was no less than it ever was. This revelation naturally led to my second thought, and the reason I have been invited to return to your community to celebrate Arts in our Schools Month.
Perhaps, I considered, the issue was less about the arts themselves, and more about the erosion of intimacy in our day-to-day lives. We often talk about the lack of support and interest for the arts, but could it be a decline in interest and support for “face-to-face” encounters and shared projects? The dominance of the Internet, cell phones, and other impersonal, distancing devices forces the question: is there any value left in all the clubs and groups and teams and churches and ensembles — so small in scale, yet so large in their ways of nurturing the human soul — that Aroostook County has built and lovingly maintained down the decades?
Many voices of mass technology and consumerism are saying No. I say Yes! We need them more than ever, exactly because of the rise of mass technology and consumerism! Our small New England towns have always been the seedbeds of the values that really matter in America: individualism, yes, but individualism founded upon things we can’t purchase online or communicate via text message. The products of working with one another in the spirit of accomplishment: on the music, visual art, and theater productions we do together. On the baskets we score. On the stories we tell one another. On the band uniforms and trips our boosters work so hard to fund, and on the prayers we recite together in memory of one of our own when the fabric of our town is loosened by loss. These types of initiatives define the type of town where Sarah and I want to raise our son, and the kind of society we want his generation to enter and sustain.
Ronald Sherwin is chairman of the music department at UMass/Dartmouth.
