Strike up the band

Eyes up! Dan has raised his baton. Watch the conductor, he tells us, but listen to the percussion. Right now most of us, raw beginners in the New Horizons Band of Toronto, are happy to make it to the end of the line when the conductor does. But eventually we want to make real music together. Take a deep breath, keep the breath flowing, count through the bar, pay attention to the dynamics, keep your fingers close to the holes, practise at home every day. Apparently rowing teams make great band members. They understand teamwork: starting, stopping, and keeping time together. If you really want to learn teamwork, join a band.

On the clarinet my low notes sound like a mooing cow, the middle notes sound kind of like a car horn, and the high notes sound like a wounded coyote. I don't have enough fingers. The rest of the band can go for coffee while I try to get from A to B. What's that ear-splitting squawk?

And yet it's exhilarating, being a total beginner at something in old age, with no expectation that I should know anything. I'm free to screw up. Mind you, all it takes is one rude squeak, one unplanned solo, and I have to fight to keep at bay all those memories from schools and workplaces and remind myself that it's okay to make mistakes here, we're all in the same boat, this is a safe place to learn. After all, I don't have my sights set on Carnegie Hall. I just want to learn how to get something musical out of the clarinet, to weave my notes into the tapestry. It's a long, slow process, painstakingly building new habits, a bit at a time, day after day. But the process itself is so engaging: your attention, memory, breathing, and fingers are all on high alert. You're totally involved, totally alive, heart, mind, body, and soul. And every once in a while, I can take a line of notes and shape it into a scrap of music. I'm starting to make friends with that licorice stick.