baggage

I have re-read this Meghan Daum article every year or so since the spring of 2000, when I used to flip through Harper’s in one of the big green leather chairs in the King’s College library (bless King’s for its devotion to atmosphere).  I love it.

I too played the oboe, albeit very briefly, and in junior high music class rather than as an “extracurricular activity”.  I had no idea what it would mean to play the oboe when I signed up for it: I only knew that I loved the way it sounded on classical recordings — the theme from Swan Lake and that sort of thing.  I also recall hearing “The Young Lutheran’s Guide To The Orchestra” and hearing the oboe jokingly abused for its mournful sensuality.

I was only allowed to start oboe after a semester on clarinet, since oboe was deemed too difficult for a beginner to woodwinds.  There was only one other kid in my Grade 7 music class interested in playing the oboe, a girl I’ll call Kim, and while the rest of the class practised by the stage of the school auditorium, we were sequestered in a dusty back room to do endless iterations  of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” and rhythm drills.

Beginner oboe is not sensual.  It sounds like a duck — a pissed-off, monotonous duck.  I had no patience for it.  Kim fared better; oboe requires stubbornness, a dogged determination to stick to plans, and Kim radiated moralism and discipline, from her face-yanking ponytail to her sensibly sneakered feet.  She liked to watch me in class and point out when my behaviour fell short of community standards: “Just because you’ve helped yourself doesn’t mean you can’t help others.”  She wrote stories for English class about bad children who watched TV and ate junk food instead of doing their homework; I think this was literally the worst thing she could imagine.  She also had almost no musical sense, which I think helps when you’re trying to teach yourself beginner oboe.

I quit oboe and went back to clarinet, which was less punishing to play and also allowed me to join the rest of the class instead of hanging out in the back with Kim.   Being able to play more than three notes, and bored with the workbooks, I would pick out tunes by ear; I’d play the first few bars of “Dove sono i bei momenti” and well up with adolescent sentiment.  (Meanwhile, one of the boys in my class would repeat the first three bars of “Das Deutschlandlied” on the trumpet.  I must say he became very good at that.)

I did not, however, practice.  I was easily frustrated and used to another major source of Music Is My Bag culture — choir.  Singing was so much easier; when you failed at a piece it was because you did it badly, not because you couldn’t do it at all.  I had a tiny, squeaky voice, but I could sing in tune.  My choir uniform was probably one hundred per cent polyester and straight out of the Dress For Success era (floppy bows!), but I loved it.  The choir went on tour to British Columbia when I was eleven and sang in what I recall as a series of church basements and community centres.  (I developed a vicious case of stomach flu and started throwing up in inconvenient places.)  I wore my oversized souvenir T-shirt with pride.  Later I would realise that all children’s choirs do pretty much the same material and that we were mostly singing to an audience of relatives, but at the time, my gosh, I felt special.

A couple of years later, there were the trips to youth orchestra concerts in who the hell knows where to see my high school boyfriend perform — oh lord.  I recall listening to “Fall Fair” and an orchestral medley of music from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Bryan Adams, rearranged for the oboe.  At the end of one concert the youth orchestra played the Hockey Night In Canada theme song.  Oh, the knowing adult chuckling.  It was just such a hoot, so very amusing, a little irreverent, you know, but seriously stop joking around Music Is Srs Bzns Okay.  You could swing your hips to the Hockey Night In Canada theme song; it was a slippery slope.

Honestly, I don’t know how actual classical musicians — most of whom do not carry Mozart-themed tote bags or wear T-shirts that say “Voice: The only musical instrument created by God” – come out the other side of Bagdom, or if they even have to go through it; I associate Bagdom more with people who don’t become musicians, who instead put their youth orchestra experience on their CV and brought it up in scholarship applications.  Music taught me the value of discipline and hard work, blah, blah, blah.