The Worth of an Instrument

 

I suppose that a lot of people who know me would describe me as a rational person. Some who are mere acquaintances might even perceive me as relatively unemotional. I value thinking carefully and deeply about life and situations. Whether by nature, by practice, or by both, I tend to be highly analytical and this means that I also surely err on the side of calculation and caution. I’m sure it’s been maddening to more than one person or significant other.

Lately, though, I have been watching some epic and dramatic films – specifically the Harry Potter movies. In them, at key moments, the soundtrack rises, often with the distinct sound of French horns soaring with the building tension and into resolution. And as I have allowed myself to be absorbed in these sequences, I have consistently been moved nearly to tears. In one sense it is the music and the connected film that does this. But it is also something more.

I spent the years of my adolescence learning to play French horn and performing with school and community groups. In those years that for everyone have a certain turbulence lurking beneath, playing became a means of connecting authentically with my emotional life. I have often reflected on this way that playing the horn mediated the various elements of my middle school and high school years. I knew even then that passions are not meant to be fully unbridled in day-to-day life. The sum of our experiences teach us that sometimes the things that we feel most deeply simply cannot be expressed at that moment – right living requires self-control as well as self-expression.  If you have ever lived with someone with a hair-trigger temper or someone who is abusive, it is hard not to see that the problems is not the anger but the inability to recognize and regulate it when it inevitably comes to us all.

So as I developed what people now like to call “big feelings,” it was in music where they found their expression. The music did not have to be consistent with the exact type of emotions I was having. But in the moments when, especially in the context of an ensemble, I found myself completely absorbed in the creation, I was fully present. I was not distracted by the winding paths of my consciousness. I was in a place of total emotional yet intellectual expressiveness that was liberating, honest, and true. I loved to create beauty in those moments – and to do so in a group brought a sense of connection with people that was too often absent in the everyday interactions.

I guess I will probably never relinquish the nostalgia and gratitude that I have for those times. And I suppose that is why I have never been able to let go of my French horn. It has traveled with me everywhere I have moved during these past 31 years. It has crossed my mind a few times to sell it when our family has faced financially challenging moments. But I’ve never been able to actually do it. My embouchure is so out of shape that I can’t play it reliably for more than about 5 minutes. Yet it retains its significance for me – a reminder of how deeply music has reached my soul, of moments that marked me in ways that I still don’t fully comprehend.

I am grateful to all who made music with me in those groups so many years ago. You are a part of my story and so is my horn. And when I pull it out, oil its valves, and try to make it sing again, a part of those years lives again.