Coming Clean

Of Sailors and Wails

This blog needs a story. That’s how I kicked this blog off, and it is what’s been missing these past few months. Music has been on my mind a lot – namely how it has shaped my life. I think I’ll be adding a new category under “Uninteresting Me” entitled “The Blur through Music” that captures my life through music. So here’s the first entry.

Most people say they had the most fun in their life in college. I had my most fun in high school. I was on top of the world there. I did everything. I was not the coolest guy around, but I was known and respected – though I did not realize it then. It’s all a blur, and I remember it most vividly through music.

I was a band nerd. I entered playing the flute – I was technically solid, but there’s a finesse that’s needed to make a flute player great. I do not have that finesse. But all it takes to be a great piccolo player is technical ability. So I switched. Solid air support, near pitch perfect intonation, decent vibrato, and mad finger skills made me perhaps one of the finest piccolo players in all Cobb County and perhaps the state. Being a piccolo player doesn’t get you into honor bands though.

My freshman year of highschool, I had yet to enter puberty in full force. My voice was still that of a young boy for the whole year, and I left for summer at the end of that year just scraping over 5 feet tall. When we had to sing our parts, I was a beautiful, boisterous flute part.

There was one particular piece, however, that proved to be particularly problematic and troublesome for me. It is entitled “Of Sailors and Whales” and has an interlude where the band’s parts were to be sung between male voices and female voices. For two weeks I tried to sing the male part… but I just couldn’t do it. It hurt to strain to get low enough to even seem like I was blending with the tenor of the male choir. If I had kept it up, I probably could have really damaged my throat… and so, one day after giving it my all… I raised my hand… and meekly asked the question I dreaded to ask: “Should I sing the girl part?”

Oddly enough, the thought had not entered into anyone else’s mind that perhaps I was having a hard time with it or even that perhaps it would be easier for me to sing the female voice. Once asked if I should sing the female voice, my band director laughed for about 10 seconds then started crying for the next 5 minutes because he couldn’t breath – as did the rest of my friends and classmates. I had single-handedly ended class half a period early. I was embarassed to be sure, but I was more relieved that it was okay that I sing the female part. I’d like to think it was good humor that I was able to laugh along with everyone else – it was funny despite any personal embarasment. From then on though, singing rehearsal was “Girls! …and Spencer *snicker*”

Thankfully, after the summer, 8 inches of height, and a new voice, the jokes of my castrati persona was laid to rest.