What started tonight as a blog entry turned into a full blown essay. Enjoy.
Whatever It Takes, Sir.
From the moment I rubbed the sand out of my eyes and extended into my initial waking stretch of the day, I could sense that there was something different about this morning. I woke up earlier than normal, and was mildly more alert than normal, and though the weather was cool, the sun felt a little bit hotter than normal. This is not the first time I’ve experienced these feelings; in fact it felt strangely familiar in a way, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint the where and when of these past experiences. That’s when it hit me: today was the first day of summer band, and for the first time in 8 years, I will not be an active part of the Marcus High School Marching Band. If there is one thing that I will admit with pride, it is that I was once a tuba-toting band geek, and it without a doubt changed my life.
I consider high school marching band to be the foundation of my music career, and the activity responsible for taking my love of music to the next level. For those of you that don’t know the amount of rehearsal that goes into this activity, the common schedule is something along the lines this. Two to three weeks before school starts it is common to work on marching fundamentals in the early morning, have an indoor music rehearsal indoors during the afternoon heat, and another outdoor rehearsal at night once it cools off. Once school starts, there is a daily rehearsal either in the morning or after school, football games on friday nights, and then marching contests on Saturdays starting around October. The whole season clocks in somewhere in the ballpark of 3+ months. This is a huge commitment, especially for a 14 year old freshman, but I cannot stress the amount of good that came from my experiences.
From the first second of the first rehearsal, you are thrown to the dogs. Having trouble standing still without fidgeting or wiping away the sweat? Tough. Is that euphonium difficult to hold up for long periods of time? Tough. Is that sousaphone crippling your 105 lb. muscle-less frame? Tough. These are the harsh realities you deal with four hours at a time in the beginning, and you start to wonder why you even bother. But out of seemingly nowhere, and for no reason you can consciously comprehend, it somehow becomes AWESOME. You can suddenly do things that once seemed impossible, such as memorizing pages upon pages of music and playing a musical instrument flawlessly while marching at tempos upward of 160 bpm. Your mind operates like that of a cyborg. You are empowered by what many weaker minds would consider to be “lame”, and you absolutely can’t get enough of it.
Though these feelings of gratification leave you wanting more, you find that the fabric that holds the group together is the camaraderie. By simply showing up, you guarantee yourself upwards of 200 friends who are all facing the same challenges and dealing with the same issues that you are. You walk into the cafeteria on your first day of high school and have the choice of 5 tables of friends to eat lunch with, rather than the solitude of a bathroom stall. These people become your extended family, as a good deal of the time you literally spend more time with them than you do your family. You go from feeling uneasy and self conscious to accepted and confident.
By the time your first season of marching band is done with, you are hooked. You find yourself sitting around after school a month later with nothing to do and wonder what you even did before you started marching band. As trying as it was at times, you still yearn for the bus rides, and the football games, and Popsicle Tuesdays, and the best of all, the performances under the stadium lights. The memories that replay in your mind are of all the great experiences you had, and you realize that the ends without question justified the means. There is a new level of strength that lives inside of you that wasn’t there four months earlier.
Marching band was something I could never get enough of, and when I was offered a position on the field staff post graduation, I came to appreciate it in ways I never thought possible. When our world-view spans no farther than one foot of our person, we operate under the impression that our proudest moments will be one in the same as our greatest moment of personal achievement. However, after having the opportunity to help others progress in their skill over the last four years, I can say that I have never been more wrong about anything. Though I will never forget the best shows I performed under the lights, they all pale in comparison to experiencing the same thing in the third person. I have never felt more gratified than to see the students who struggled at the beginning of the season succeed at the end; to see expressions of defeat transformed into tears of joy. It made me realize how much the teacher is also every bit the student, and served as a reminder of how much there always is to learn from others.
I get asked on a semi regular basis why I wear a bracelet from my high school band, and knowing what I now know, the answer is obvious. To me personally, it signifies that I am a part of something much larger than myself; something that has given me the skill set and motivation necessary to accomplish anything I want to in life. It reminds me that I always have a home somewhere, and a group of people I can identify with even when I am at my most vulnerable. Most importantly of all though, the inscription tells true; no matter what challenges face me in life, I have whatever it takes to overcome them.
-Alex Loughborough (8/3/2009)
