My grandfather on my daddy’s side studied to become an architect but after finishing the university, he soon succumbed to his real calling and went on to become one of the best known operetta composers of 20th century Hungary. My dad was an engineer and we all picked vocations that had nothing to do with music. One might think that granddaddy’s talent was somehow lost along the inheritance highway. But looking closer, it is clear that it was not… it only manifests itself in different ways. My brother could tell you his story confirming this but until he does, let me recount how I discovered the presence of this special gift in our family.
Being a Zerkowitz kid in school was not always easy, not least because my music teacher at first was incapable of accepting that I had absolutely know feeling for music and sang in a way for which many will pay… so that I would stop. After a while though she accepted the inevitable but was very nice about it and from then on instead of singing, I had to learn by heart the short life story of selected composers. This was a deal very much to my liking and I played along happily, getting full marks in music class.
Our Hungarian language and literature teacher was also a very nice lady and when she realized that I could throw together a 4 page composition on any subject whatsoever in just a couple of hours, I became her favorite. She took me to author-reader meetings and I think some of the stuff I wrote actually ended up being part of speeches the school principal made on special occasions. But here again I was the cause of endless frustration because of my initial, rather lax, use of the grammar rules. I always felt that my ability to express my thoughts and also abstract constructs like nobody else could in the class did give me some latitude in ignoring certain grammar rules the logic of which always escaped me and which were difficult to remember in any case. I do remember to this day seeing the marks at the bottom of some of my compositions: 1/5 and 5/5. The 5 was for the composition, the 1 for the grammar of course.
In time I did catch up and realized why grammar rules were as important as the way I expressed things and I guess if she were to mark a paper of mine today she would probably scribble at least a 4/5 for grammar.
But I said we would talk about talent and indeed, we will. As I grew up I realized that what made grandpa write music was also working in me except that for me it meant writing about things, putting on paper my own thoughts and also the thoughts of others.
This ability is something very useful on the one hand but it also feels very nice on the other. On the usefulness side, I discovered early that I was able to write up even the most complex subject in a manner that was understandable but short… something my bosses often wanted but rarely got from others. Writing meeting reports was another area where I had an edge… In most meetings, if you write down what people said, you will get a lot of comments and you have to make a lot of corrections. I always tried to write down what they thought they said… and they loved it!
Why do I say that it feels nice to be able to write? When a thought occurs to me that I think could be the subject of an article with which to bore you all, it feels like opening a Coke bottle after you have shaken it well. At first bubbles rush to the surface and they mean little but slowly the real substance arrives and then you know you are drinking a Coke… Same with writing. When the cap is off, I have to write whether it is the middle of the night or the middle of a formal dinner… the bubbles, the words rush out and they must be caught on paper. An hour later is too late, they are gone. Once the bubbles have been taken care of, it is ok to return to whatever one was doing before and continue the writing bit later. Handling that first, pleasant rush is crucial and it means the difference between a good article or one that does not get written at all.
Air traffic control is not easy to understand even for those on the inside of the perimeter fence but not directly involved in the business of ATC itself. Having always been in love with my profession I wanted others to understand it also. I remember the frustration I felt when the press was (and to some degree still is) incapable of understanding that air traffic control was more than just the tower at the airport. The other, less visible, units were simply ignored not least I suspected because they simply did not understand what we were doing in those well guarded dungeons.
I have always felt that it was easy to write a very serious, comprehensive paper about any subject and indeed scholars in all walks of life had been doing just that to the mutual fun of their peers but doing little to help others understand what they were up to.
I was convinced that we could do much better than that in air traffic control.
The company paper at our airport in the 70s was called Air Traffic and they published news items and other relatively harmless stuff that was thought to be of interest to the employees of the airport company and our friendly local airline. The very first article I submitted to them was entitled: No Entry. It was about the mysterious dark room housing Budapest Approach and was one of the first, if not THE first, article published about our APP in a paper read by a general audience. As time progressed, other articles followed covering international meetings, bird strike issues, traffic counting methods… Subjects which might sound boring and dry but by putting them in the actual context of “our” airport, they opened up the hitherto hidden or ignored territory to all the readers of that little bi-weekly news paper.
My aim was to create material that would interest a pilot but also the ladies serving our lunch or working at the reception. The feedback was very positive and of course this gave me added incentive to write even more. In time a few poems and other, less technical, pieces also bubbled to the surface and were published alongside the more serious stuff.
So, I was not writing music but grandpa’s genes were hard at work nevertheless… One of the nicest moments was when on a flight to Paris the Malev purser recognized me and she introduce me to her colleagues saying “this is the guy who could explain even why we are always delayed on this flight”.
I am sure grandpa was smiling on his lofty perch looking down on us and my kind of music….