Wind in My Sails

This cornet is exactly like mine (including the case)
You can get one for under $100

After 20 plus years, I recently picked up my cornet and started playing. It's not a fine instrument, my cornet. It has age, and character. The first valve sticks sometimes. The sound is a bit bright, a bit stuffy, and the mouthpiece is bowl-shaped instead of the more typical V you want for a cornet. On the other hand, I haven't had so much fun in years.

What's fun, oddly, is the discipline of doing something that has no professional purpose or possibility. Writing used to be that way, and then I got the crazy notion of trying to publish some things (not that I try that hard, but I do try). On cornet, I'm just a guy in his forties blowing sound out of a brass pipe.

But the process of learning to hold the instrument to my lips, and create from my body a sweet sound, is its own reward here. Most of my playing is done in a practice room at the college. If other people can hear me, they mostly have my sympathy. I'm not there to impress anybody. I just want to do it right, not because of some duty but for the sake of creating a pure sound, a sweet and clear tone.

Not many things in life are like this, I think. Most of what we do is for duty--that's been my experience. Why else do I get up at the crack of dawn? Why else do I read certain books and put in my hours and go here and there running around in the car? All of that--a good chunk of my life--is for nothing but duty.

But playing a horn that nobody can hear, and disciplining my body to learn to breathe, and my lips to buzz, and my jaw to stay in position ... all this is just completely outside of any necessity whatsoever. I'm doing it because I want to. And nobody else wants me to ... er ... expects me to.

I guess writing is like that still, even in spite of my feeble efforts to publish what I've written. I don't do any of that because I have to. I'm not a starving artist with no other skill set. (Maybe that's why I'm not more driven to send out my work.) Nobody's expecting me to write something or put it in the mail. The closest I get to that is writing I do for work which, partly for that reason no doubt, feels like drudgery and toil. And I suppose disciplining myself to learn the craft of fiction, how to shape a narrative, how to hone description and bring out voices and delve into the red blood of a character ... all that is for the sake of doing it right, getting that "clear tone," too. I do want to make my stories sing, for myself first and foremost. And here comes the other reason I don't send things out as diligently as I should: I can hardly get a better rush than when I know the story is right, in the quiet of my own study. (And more often it's something far worse than a rush that I get back from my endeavors to interest an editor in my delicacies.)

At some point, I know, I am going to want to step out of the practice room and play a few tunes in the hearing of human ears. I'm not there yet, but when my horn is responding to me the way I'd like it to, that moment won't be far behind. Even then, it won't be performance that I'm after. I'll want the joy of playing with other musicians, contributing my horn's voice to a larger whole, on the sweet sounds set down by a genius. If writing could somehow be more like that, I suppose I'd be less timid. But every bit of words scratched on paper--even this half-random blog post--feels like a performance, even if only to me. When it's read, there's a finality to it that a musical rehearsal doesn't have. That's not always true--critique groups break the rule there--but it's often enough true. And out there in the world of professional performance, there be wolves and dragons.

So maybe that's my last hurdle, the reluctance that keeps me close to the vest. Who knows? Who cares? What matters tonight is that I've found little gusts of joy that, in spare moments, refresh me, like a cool wind on the sea, filling my sails.

Quietly Writing

"Solitude" (Flickr: vonderauvisuals)

In this loud culture of "all talk, all the time," where even taciturn writers like myself are asked to "create a web presence," network like high-powered corporate types, and "market yourself relentlessly," I'm learning to pull back and enjoy a nice long steep in solitude.

This summer, I spent a lot of time reading, joined a critique group, bought a one-person fishing kayak, edited like mad, and sometimes wrote new material. It was nice to give myself permission to enjoy what we in our house call "alone time." That's where we all go when we get overstimulated, stressed, and in need of a recharge. Maybe you have your own version of alone time. Maybe you golf or go for a jog. My version often involves reading or writing quietly in a chair.

It occurs to me that one cannot read or write loudly, or in a vivacious and extroverted manner. A writer, alone in a room, with the implements of his trade--laptop or paper--before him, all distractions tuned out. The door closed. This, as we all know who write, is how you get things written. There is, as the old proverb has it, a time for everything under the sun. A time to speak boldly in front of others, a time to be gregarious and delight new acquaintances. Even a time to promote oneself. But of course the quiet labor of writing belongs to a different time from all of that, and can only happen where that separate time is set aside and the outside world is shut out.

Or, actually, not the outside world per se. The world of nature, the colors and sights and sounds, all enter into the thing. And even the world of human society, from which I will have retreated for the sake of doing the actual writing, nonetheless leaves its echo on my mind. In fact, I think of this tendency to become overstimulated as a gift, because it makes human society vivid in my memory. The brilliant impression of being around others helps me see human interaction clearly when I'm alone in my study, like a well exposed photograph. And that in turn helps me be true to it when I'm writing in solitude. It's a gift, because, again, I can't write except in solitude. And it usually happens that there are going to be people in whatever I'm writing--people I'd like to get down on paper, now that I've taken their measure out there in the real world.

When I'm out in the world, if I've had time to recharge quietly--like I did this summer--I'm more alive to what I'm seeing. I take all this human flux into me, and all the texture of nature, or city streets, or the thick air of a summer afternoon. When I can get it like that, I can distill it within, until I'm full and it's time to retreat again.

I wonder what it must be like to ride on the surface of all that sensory input? I'm so deep in its throes that I get overwhelmed. But again, that's a gift, because from where I am down in the pounding pulse of that cacophony of noise and color, I might get lucky and see what drives it.

Of such good summers are rich autumns made. I expect to be more fully alive to the people and things around me, and so all the richer in my interior life. And that can only go to improve the quality of what I write, or think, when I'm in that solitary place. Quietly writing.

The Saturday of Spring

You know it's been a rough spring when your baseball team is 10-4 and you haven't watched a single inning, haven't looked at a single box score, don't know who's new on the roster, couldn't name three players still on the team with any conviction at all.

Such has my spring been. The grass in the back yard--did I say grass? I meant clover--is mid-calf. The squash I planted in the greenhouse has grown to monstrous proportions, and yet I haven't started peppers. I haven't mended the garden fence, which I destroyed after seeing deer in the yard. I haven't even bought the supplies to do it.

Ironically, part of the blame falls to baseball. I have two boys now in the littlest leagues, one still hitting off a tee and daydreaming on the infield, and the other hitting real pitches hard (sometimes) and trying his darnedest to throw like a man. Fabulous quantities of practices so far, with the game schedule creeping inexorably toward us. If you've been there, you know. I won't see a clear Saturday until June.

Ah, Saturday. You my lost friend. Leisurely time to mow the lawn, mend the fence, hack at old tree stumps, light a pipe, whittle, toss a ball … Will I never know you again? The quiet Saturday of Spring, the dull chatter of baseball announcers, the hum of the crowd in the background, the exaggerated crack of the ball in the mitt or on the bat, the roar of the Fenway faithful as the ball soars out toward the Green Monster.

So that's what I'm missing. Time to kill. The leisure of a game that says, "Hey you! Slow down and watch this pitch. Nothing may happen. Or everything may happen. And there will be three hundred of these pitches today, over the next three hours. And you will watch every one of them. And feel not one ounce of guilt."

As I said, it's been a tough Spring.