Ever heard of Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, François-Joseph Gossec or Anton Reicha?
Probably not.
How about Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig von Beethoven or Franz Schubert?
Sure you have.
Those other guys were great composers in the same era (roughly 1765- 1825) as Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, but outside of hard-core classical music aficionados, they’re pretty obscure.
The proverbial ‘they’ say that with age comes wisdom. I don’t know about that, but if wisdom means perspective, I have learned that chasing a legacy is rather futile.
I have long since given up on any hope I will be remembered by anyone much past my grandchildren.
Sure, there will be thousands of articles floating around out there with my byline on them. My three albums (so far) of original music are somewhere in the dungeons of the National Archives of Canada collecting dust.
And maybe, if there is still an Interior News or a Northern View a hundred years hence, a few trophies with my name on them may still be kicking around.
My Lady MacBeth children’s book may survive for a few decades in the collections of the handful of libraries in which it currently resides.
But honestly, if I died tomorrow, who is ever going to remember me beyond my currently living family, friends and colleagues?
The fact of the matter is, very, very few human beings have the lasting power of a Mozart or Beethoven.
There is a great amount of freedom that comes with this perspective. Unburdened from the shackles of legacy I can live out my life doing the things that make me happy with little concern for what people think of me now (none of my business) much less into the distant future. I started thinking about this (again) as I was learning the bassline for the song Walking after Midnight by Patsy Cline, the video for which, kind of oddly, I thought, included a picture of her tombstone in Virginia.
Cline was a country music giant for a brief 15 years before she was killed in a plane crash at the age of 30. Her tombstone is modest and people still visit it, but she is also quickly fading from popular memory.
She wasn’t the only country star killed in that plane crash.
Remember Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins?
Me neither.
