On a night I should be studying for the midterm I have on Thursday, or typing an overdue essay, or doing the dishes, or any one of a number of things that would be useful and productive---I choose to do this. Muse over one of the best, and most taken for granted, periods of my life. Attempt to express with my feeble narrative skills a thousand different moments, flashes of something that was pure and real and utterly irreplaceable. Moments of time from when I felt truly alive.
Ah, me.
Cut, warnings for deeply personal content that might bring up painful memories for some of you that know me well.
Fooled you, didn't I? You thought this would be a piece about fighting, winning, never stopping. And it is, sort of. But not in the way you think.
The Contender is a jazz song by the inestimable Royal Crown Revue, bless their swingin' souls. It is also one of the songs my high school marching band performed in our show during my junior year of high school.
Have you ever been in marching band? Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. I wonder if yours was much like mine. Mine was huge. It helped that our school was twentyfive hundred students strong; my graduating class alone was 550 people, over half of whom I never knew more intimately than as a face I passed in the hall. My marching band was much the same; counting the guard (color guard, for you ignorant wretches who have never marked time) and the percussion, we numbered over 220 people my freshman year. It's my freshman year that stands out in my mind, but all four years were magnificent.
My band director, one Wayne Markworth, is one of the people who has shaped me most in my life. He looked like the text book pictures of Neanderthals, with his impressively protruding eyebrow ridges that were all the more intimidating when he brought that unwavering stare to full bear on your pimpled insignificant face. I have yet to meet another man who could silence an entire roomful of hormonal teenagers just by standing at the podium and staring at us. I miss him.
I miss the drummers. I miss the way the snare whose name I can't even remember held up his sticks to get our attention, waited for the entire room to fall silent, then bellowed, "SAFETY!" and cut what was quite possibly the single best fart I've ever heard. (Hence the origin of one of my favorite personal quirks, people.) I miss referring to the oldest, crappiest parking lot in the back of the high school as "bandland," due to the fact that this football field sized square of cement was where we busted our asses every day of the week. I miss wearing out a minimum of 2 pairs of shoes a bandseason, relegating them to "mowing the lawn" shoes.
I miss sitting in the rain in our stupid black and gold "parkas" (read: school-issued crap rain jackets) at different football stadiums, waiting to march out and give the best halftime performance of our young lives, waiting to make the OPPOSING stands get up and cheer for us when they couldn't stop stomping their feet to our drum solo in Hey, Pachuco!
I miss the exhilaration of exiting the fielf, when my legs felt like spaghetti and I wasn't sure I could take another step, but I wanted to cry and scream and turn around and hug every single member of that goddamned band.
Today I went through my jewelry box, and I found the dog tags our drum majors gave us for good luck, right before we went to Grand Nationals my freshman year. It has "Big City Jazz," the name of our show, on one side, along with the skyline of a city. On the other side, so worn and faded I can hardly make it out, is a sticker, the ones you get at the mall for a buck where you cram all your friends into that dinky little booth. The picture is of my first boyfriend, Brian, and two of his best friends, Dave and Josh. I don't know where Dave is now. I wish I didn't know where Josh is. All I can make out are their smiles.
I remember the haggard look on Wayne's face when he gathered all of us into the band room to tell us bad news. I remember the way his voice broke when he told us that a member of our band had taken his own life. I remember how old and frail he looked two years later, when he told us that two of our band parents had died in a car accident the previous night. I remember how he told us that if we ever needed him, even twenty years from now, he'd still want us to call him, day or night. And I remember knowing that he meant it.
I learned so much from my four years in marching band. I learned the meaning of committment, of discipline and pain and hardwork. I experienced exultation, absolute delirium from a job well done, the adrenaline rush of that unique blend of music and movement and liquid fire. I learned the bitterness of defeat, and the temperance it brings. I learned what it meant to mark time, jazz run, circular breathe, and so much more. I learned how to read a drill chart. I learned how to lead a good life.
I don't know what brought this on. Maybe it was a chance song playing on my playlist, long-forgotten notes that my fingers still remember, even if I can't find the sheet music anymore. Maybe it was my flute, sitting alone and forlorn on my closet floor. Maybe it's the box of sheet music and drill charts and dot books and squad bags and good-luck notes sitting in a box in my room, or the saxophone in the basement of my mother's house.
Maybe it's the fact that "With Every Breath I Take" still brings tears to my eyes. Like the ones that are there now.
They say you can never go back.
Maybe they're right. But I can try.
Ah, me.
Cut, warnings for deeply personal content that might bring up painful memories for some of you that know me well.
Fooled you, didn't I? You thought this would be a piece about fighting, winning, never stopping. And it is, sort of. But not in the way you think.
The Contender is a jazz song by the inestimable Royal Crown Revue, bless their swingin' souls. It is also one of the songs my high school marching band performed in our show during my junior year of high school.
Have you ever been in marching band? Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. I wonder if yours was much like mine. Mine was huge. It helped that our school was twentyfive hundred students strong; my graduating class alone was 550 people, over half of whom I never knew more intimately than as a face I passed in the hall. My marching band was much the same; counting the guard (color guard, for you ignorant wretches who have never marked time) and the percussion, we numbered over 220 people my freshman year. It's my freshman year that stands out in my mind, but all four years were magnificent.
My band director, one Wayne Markworth, is one of the people who has shaped me most in my life. He looked like the text book pictures of Neanderthals, with his impressively protruding eyebrow ridges that were all the more intimidating when he brought that unwavering stare to full bear on your pimpled insignificant face. I have yet to meet another man who could silence an entire roomful of hormonal teenagers just by standing at the podium and staring at us. I miss him.
I miss the drummers. I miss the way the snare whose name I can't even remember held up his sticks to get our attention, waited for the entire room to fall silent, then bellowed, "SAFETY!" and cut what was quite possibly the single best fart I've ever heard. (Hence the origin of one of my favorite personal quirks, people.) I miss referring to the oldest, crappiest parking lot in the back of the high school as "bandland," due to the fact that this football field sized square of cement was where we busted our asses every day of the week. I miss wearing out a minimum of 2 pairs of shoes a bandseason, relegating them to "mowing the lawn" shoes.
I miss sitting in the rain in our stupid black and gold "parkas" (read: school-issued crap rain jackets) at different football stadiums, waiting to march out and give the best halftime performance of our young lives, waiting to make the OPPOSING stands get up and cheer for us when they couldn't stop stomping their feet to our drum solo in Hey, Pachuco!
I miss the exhilaration of exiting the fielf, when my legs felt like spaghetti and I wasn't sure I could take another step, but I wanted to cry and scream and turn around and hug every single member of that goddamned band.
Today I went through my jewelry box, and I found the dog tags our drum majors gave us for good luck, right before we went to Grand Nationals my freshman year. It has "Big City Jazz," the name of our show, on one side, along with the skyline of a city. On the other side, so worn and faded I can hardly make it out, is a sticker, the ones you get at the mall for a buck where you cram all your friends into that dinky little booth. The picture is of my first boyfriend, Brian, and two of his best friends, Dave and Josh. I don't know where Dave is now. I wish I didn't know where Josh is. All I can make out are their smiles.
I remember the haggard look on Wayne's face when he gathered all of us into the band room to tell us bad news. I remember the way his voice broke when he told us that a member of our band had taken his own life. I remember how old and frail he looked two years later, when he told us that two of our band parents had died in a car accident the previous night. I remember how he told us that if we ever needed him, even twenty years from now, he'd still want us to call him, day or night. And I remember knowing that he meant it.
I learned so much from my four years in marching band. I learned the meaning of committment, of discipline and pain and hardwork. I experienced exultation, absolute delirium from a job well done, the adrenaline rush of that unique blend of music and movement and liquid fire. I learned the bitterness of defeat, and the temperance it brings. I learned what it meant to mark time, jazz run, circular breathe, and so much more. I learned how to read a drill chart. I learned how to lead a good life.
I don't know what brought this on. Maybe it was a chance song playing on my playlist, long-forgotten notes that my fingers still remember, even if I can't find the sheet music anymore. Maybe it was my flute, sitting alone and forlorn on my closet floor. Maybe it's the box of sheet music and drill charts and dot books and squad bags and good-luck notes sitting in a box in my room, or the saxophone in the basement of my mother's house.
Maybe it's the fact that "With Every Breath I Take" still brings tears to my eyes. Like the ones that are there now.
They say you can never go back.
Maybe they're right. But I can try.