Tag: clarinet

Revisit abandoned spiritual practices; you may be surprised

Not long ago, I played my clarinet in a concert. It was the first performance I’ve been in for over 30 years. I used to play a long time ago, and although I never got very good, I stuck with it as long as there was a group to keep me going. It always made me a little sad to come across my old, broken-down instrument and wish I could be in a band again. So this past Christmas, my husband bought me a new clarinet, and my daughter spotted an ad for a community band, and away I went.

And guess what? I’ve gotten better. Not a lot, but unmistakably, I’m a better player than I was 30 years ago. This is somewhat counterintuitive, because, at age 48, my fingers ache in a way they did not when I was a teenager, and my lung capacity is certainly worse. I now need reading glasses to see the notes, and sometimes I still can’t see the measure numbers without sticking my face right in the page.

But my sight reading is much faster than it was, and my posture is better, too. My musical sense in general has matured. And there are more subtle things: I don’t get my feelings hurt when I’m stuck playing the harmony, rather than the melody; I’m patient with my own mistakes, and just try again, rather than getting frustrated and embarrassed and giving up.

I find it easier to listen to the director and accept that she knows what she’s talking about, rather than rolling my eyes because she’s bossy. I’m better at listening to the band as a whole, and trying to play my part as it’s written, rather than impress anyone. I also try my best to play all the music well, even if it’s not my favorite, because I’m just not as bratty as I used to be. These are things that I’ve learned to do in the last few decades, even while never so much as touching a clarinet. So now I’m a better musician.

The clarinet is not the only old hobby I’ve revisited recently, and it’s not the only thing I’ve discovered I’ve gotten better at, simply by taking several decades off and growing up a bit.

A few examples: I used to be the world’s worst baker. My biscuits were dense, my cakes were crooked and flat, my cookies were rubbery and always burnt. I could make cornbread, because it was almost impossible to do it wrong, but pretty much everything else was garbage. I resorted to mixes and store bought baked goods for decades. But then slowly, gradually, I recently started to experiment with baking some simple things from scratch— french bread, basic cakes—and guess what? I can bake fine. I’m no expert, but I’m completely competent, and the things I bake usually look like the picture on the recipe page.

How did this happen? For one thing, I’ve gotten better at assessing which recipes are going to be suitable for my skill level, and only attempting trickier ones when I know I will have the time and energy to focus on them. In the past, I would have approached an outrageously difficult recipe with the attitude of “but I WANT to” and then predictably ruined it, and then gotten angry and disgusted, and then had my confidence shattered for next time, making it harder to do well with a recipe that really was within my grasp.  I’ve also just gotten my competent in the kitchen in general. I’ve spent countless hours cooking, and many of those skills translate to baking—and the confidence and sense of self-worth absolutely translate. I don’t get flustered and distracted as easily, and if I make a mistake, I don’t automatically panic and make things worse. Some of my terrible baking was, I’ve discovered, due to me straight up refusing to follow recipes because I thought I knew better, based on zero evidence, for no reason at all. Now I know better. So now I’m a better baker!

The same thing happened with drawing. I used to desperately, achingly long to be an artist, but I hit a plateau in my rendering skills, and it became a miserable exercise because what I drew never looked anything like what I imagined in my head. Now, I can choose a subject, get an idea of what I would like it to look like, and render it pretty faithfully in a reasonable amount of time. Not every time, but fairly reliably. I haven’t had any lessons in the intervening years.

What has changed is that I’ve calmed the heck down. I have reasonable expectations, and I no longer feel like my whole identity is riding on what turns up on the page. I also don’t draw to impress anyone, but simply because I enjoy the process, and therefore focus better on the process. And that often makes for better work.

There are other examples, but you get the point.

Guess what? You can do this with spiritual exercises, as well: You can revisit long-since abandoned spiritual practices that you gave up because they weren’t working for you, or you didn’t like them, or they didn’t fit into your life, and see if they might work better for you now. Sometimes you just need to grow up a bit, and that makes a big difference.

Is there some saint that everyone loves, and they never really clicked with you? Maybe they’re not the saint for you—or maybe they were simply not the saint for younger you. Might be worthwhile taking another look and seeing if there’s more there than you realized. If not, that’s okay, too. But if it’s been a decade or more, chances are you’ll have changed so much, it will hit different this time around.

Maybe the rosary always felt like a terrible, pointless slog when you were younger, and you very reasonably set it aside, because it just wasn’t meaningful, and some other form of prayer was. But if you’re once again casting around for something to help anchor you to Christ, don’t be afraid to go back and try old things again. Relationships change, and prayer is about your relationship with God, so maybe it will strike a chord now.

The same goes for any spiritual practice that is licit, but just wasn’t working for you a long time ago. Things can change! People are supposed to change. If you let something go because it was hurting you, or because it’s associated with some trauma, that’s a different matter; but if you simply didn’t get much out of it, or it felt like you weren’t getting the hang of it, maybe give it another shot. Maybe you’re ready now.

One of the great things about the Catholic faith is that it’s so varied. There are countless ways to make and keep and renew contact with God. What works for one person may not work for another person, and that’s perfectly fine, because there are very many options out there.

But it’s also good to remember that what didn’t work for you once may work for you now. It’s thrilling and illuminating to find something new, but it’s even more gladdening to discover that something that once felt stiff and unnatural is now fruitful and profound, because you now have more capacity to appreciate and understand and receive it. This is part of what it means to grow spiritually: Discovering not only more about who God is, but who you are.

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A version of this essay was originally published at The Catholic Weekly in May of 2023.

Image by Reuven Hayoon from Pixabay 

In which I am old and join a band anyway

Last night, I caught an old, familiar smell: Wood fiber plus the humid heaviness of human breath. That is exactly what it was. It was from a clarinet reed clamped to the mouthpiece and hovering just below my chin, waiting. I’d been sitting on a metal folding chair tensely counting to four for sixteen measures while the brass and percussion labored away, seventeen-two three four, eighteen-two-three-four, nineteen-two-three, then a sharp intake of breath and I’m in! But not before I got a sharp whiff of the reed.

I started playing clarinet in fifth grade. It seemed like the ideal instrument, and it still does. Like a human voice but smooth like water; black and lovely with shining silver keys in abstruse shapes, some long and angular for alternate fingering, one short and to the point, like a little spoon. Elegant little rings over the finger holes to make the little pads work in concert with the motions of your hands. Blow too hard and it squeals and honks like a duck; but tuck your bottom lip over your teeth, plant your top teeth firmly on the mouthpiece, hold your cheeks taut, sit up straight, employ your abdomen, be brave, and the sound comes out like a human voice, but smooth like water. 

Mr. Faro, the stooped, nearsighted music teacher who taught us all was terribly patient. He must have known I wasn’t really learning the names of the notes, and he certainly knew I wasn’t practicing in between lessons. I had enough musical sense to fake my way through the book, and our terrible little band of beginners sat on the stage on folding chairs and breathily trundled our way through “Theme from The Surprise Symphony” and “Grandfather’s Clock” and “Londonderry Air” and, when the time came, we Jingle Bell Rocked.

Mr. Faro’s office was a supply closet about five feet wide, and that’s where he taught probably thousands of dopey children, one by one, to coax a sound out of their chosen instruments. He was a tall, oddly broad man, who dressed like he was planning to sell encyclopedias door to door. His trousers were hemmed too short and his thick, wavy hair was parted with aching precision. Coke bottle glasses made his eyes look tiny. One time I came into the storage closet classroom late, clutching my plastic Bundy rental clarinet and my marked up lesson book, and he splayed out in his folding chair, whaling away at his clarinet with no mouthpiece on it, lips pursed on the neck like a trumpet, and doodling an improvised jazz number like Dizzie Gillespie. His head popped up when I came in, and he said, “Oh, sorry.” I said, “That’s okay,” and we started in with “Oats, Peas, and Beans.” 

I tried it later, on my own, and you can make a sound that way, but I definitely couldn’t make it sound like Mr. Faro. I don’t know if he used to play in a jazz band or what, before he started teaching kids. 

So I wasn’t good, and I didn’t work hard, but hard enough, but there was something about playing in a band. Going from sitting down for that first wretched mess of a read-through to something we all have a handle on, something with a form and a color and an idea. I played in the school band all through elementary school and most of high school, including the marching band. I unabashedly loved marching band, even as I moaned and complained because it was the thing to do. I loved the terrible white vinyl strap-on spats and the crushingly heavy shako hat with its beautiful red plume. Loved parades, loved marking time, loved marching and turning in synch; loved crouching on the bleachers through blustery autumn football games that our team always lost, blaring out fight songs to roust up the crowd that ignored us.

I made a few stabs at going to All State, but high school is where my lazy ways caught up with me, and the judges could tell I had chosen the middle movement to audition just because it was the slowest one, and I never made the cut. I picked up sheet music where I could find it through college and a bit beyond, and I could play as long as there weren’t too many sharps or flats. But more and more time elapsed, and I put the instrument together less and less often, and once I ordered some reeds, and made a stab at some things I half remembered, but there was nothing bringing me back to try again. Then the mouthpiece went missing, and that was that. 

This Christmas, my husband bought me a new clarinet. I’m 48 years old. The original plan was to fix up my trusty old Bundy, but the music store in town is open such odd hours, I guess they never got around to working on it in time, so he just got a new one. And that is how I found myself sitting again in a metal folding chair, correcting my spine position, anxiously tapping my foot through a long rest, then filling my lungs with air, and smelling again that familiar smell of the reed, remembering everything.

I’m in a band for adults. Some are absolute beginners, but most are like me, people who used to play a long time ago, but let it go for one reason or another. Everyone is there because they want to be, and everyone is just doing their best to make a decent sound and learn a little something and help each other out. It is the most friendly, encouraging group of people I have spent time with in ages, and oh, how familiar those band jokes are. There’s a tricky syncopated passage we have to keep returning to, and one random misplaced honk sounds out, and the conductor drops his hands and stares reproachfully at the brass. They all point at each other and giggle. Everyone is giggling, everyone is gray and paunchy. Everyone is wearing reading glasses so we can see the tiny little measure numbers, and everyone is painfully stretching and flexing their fingers out in between sessions, because somehow, in the last 35 years, these instruments got heavy.

And yet they are so much lighter. Last time I was in band, I was a teenager, filled with angst and irritation and guilt and self-doubt. Now there is nothing but just what it says on the group’s website: Your best is good enough. They really mean it! And do you know, music sounds really good when it comes from people who are making it just because they love it. 

What a delight. What an absolute gift to sit in a borrowed basement and feel that beautiful flow when you’ve got it, you’re keeping right up, you’re adding your flavor to the harmony and you didn’t get lost with the tricky codas but you made it right through the crescendo to that long hold, and now this is the fun part, where the woodwinds take over and everyone can hear what you can do. And you do it just right, and the conductor drops his hands and says, “Okay, good.” How lovely. 

And it’s also lovely, in its own way, to get hopelessly lost, to know that we’re somewhere between the key change and the finale, and you’re just gong to have to jump in when it gets familiar. There isn’t a lot of shame or panic like there would have been years ago. I got some of it this time; I’ll do better next time. That’s all. It’s just such a good way to spend time. 

And do you know, my fingers remember. I did fake a lot, 37 years ago, but I also learned a lot. I remember alternate fingering, and I remember all kinds of articulation markings, things I haven’t though about in decades. So much is automatic, and more and more returns to me each week. Do you know what it feels like to have something return to you, when you’re 48 years old? 48 is when things start to fall away, one by one by one. But music, my clarinet, is coming back to me. I think it’s going to be a good year. 

Image © DrKssn / Wikimedia Commons