"Thank you India

Thank you terror

Thank you disillusionment

Thank you frailty

Thank you consequence

Thank you, thank you silence"

--Alanis Morrissette

Have you ever been really, really thankful...for EVERYTHING???  

Here's a short list of what I'm thankful for.....

The table on which I'm currently propping my feet.

The wool socks on my feet.

My feet.

The legs to which my feet are attached.

Coffee.

Coffee.

And Coffee.

Friends who think the wacky stuff I sometimes write on coffee cups is funny.  

The Sharpie with which I write said wacky stuff.

Cranberry sauce.  

My momma's cornbread dressing on which I pile said cranberry sauce.

The spandex that is woven into the nylon pants I'm wearing...the extra room is needed today.

Antihistamines.

Drugstores that operate under capitalism which allow for me to buy said antihistamines.

The sound of Jack laughing in his bedroom.

Jack.

His sister Ashlyn.

Their brother Grant.

All their family, for without them, they wouldn't exist.

My stopped up nose...for without sometimes being sick, we wouldn't really know what health is.

Airplanes.

People who work in airplanes.

People who know how to fly, and most importantly, land airplanes safely.  Without them, there would be no OTMD.

The Spotted Cat.

The dollar I left there.

Melaine Marcella. 

Second chances.

Music.

Getting to play music.

Getting to teach music.

Getting to watch people I taught play music.

Movie theater butter popcorn.

Coca-cola from McDonalds.

Marco Polo videos from old college friends who just wanted to say "Happy Thanksgiving!"

Books.

People who write books. 

People who recommend me books to read.

Friends who have my back.

Rides in Corvettes.

The beach.

Hammocks tied up at the beach.

Sunsets.

Sunrises.

The fact that the sun rises.

The stars.

Ham sandwiches made with the ham you cooked for Thanksgiving.

Motorcycles.

Hot showers.

Cold showers.

Forgiving.

Being forgiven.

Employment.

Ibuprofen. 

Being reminded of when I'm right and when I wrong.

The opportunity to make someone's day.

Having my day made.

Sleep.

Insomnia, for that is usually when I sort things out.

Homemade vanilla ice cream.

Homemade vegetable beef soup.

Farmers who grow the ingredients for homemade vegetable soup.

The rain that makes those ingredients grow.

Gasoline.

Comfortable bed sheets.

My new mattress.

Ice makers in freezers.

Silence.

Sound.

The sound of Ashlyn's voice when she says "Daddy."

Getting to be a daddy.

Trees.

Trees that turn color in the fall.

Trees that don't.

Spicy BMT sandwiches from Subway.

Plagal cadences. Music folks will get that one...The one at the end of Maher 5, adagietto is divine.

Watching someone be completely happy.

Watching someone struggle, for in this there is an opportunity to help.

Winning.

Losing, for in losing, I grow.

Photographs.

Mercy.

Freedom to express all this crap.

Hope.

The center biscuit.

TJ Blackburn's syrup to go on the center biscuit. 

Feeling safe in my house at night. 

Late night talks on the phone.

Schilke trumpet mouthpieces.

Harmony.

The crust on the edge of piece of pecan pie. Lord yes.  

Honestly, this could go on forever, and that's the point!  EVERYTHING is something to be thankful for...even the random "trivial" stuff.  

Confucius said "we can be thankful today because we learned a lot.  And if we didn't learn a lot, we learned a little. And if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick.  And if we got sick, at least we didn't die."  Let that sink in.  

I think thankfulness is mindset more than it is anything.  We must train our minds to find the thing for which to be thankful, because sometimes that can be very difficult.  Life can, and often will, throw some real curveballs our way.  Sometimes, they are less curveballs, and more gigantic avalanches of STUFF! And when those days come and stay and turn into weeks or months or years....thankfulness might be our only escape.  I hope I can become more thankful than I am.  For everything.  

Have a great day folks!

"I miss those days."

--Frank Foster

I'm not a big country fan, but I've heard a song several times called "Miss Those Days" by Frank Foster that is pretty good.

I guess that I, like Frank Foster, and probably everyone else, really do miss "those" days.

I miss those days when my grandparents were still living and on Saturday mornings, I'd walk across the street to their house and my papa would make coffee, always poured in that jade green cup that I hope to inherit one day, and toast and I would dip the toast in the coffee while sitting in front of the window unit air conditioner in the dining room.

I miss those days when my dad helped me learn to roller skate by holding me under my arms so I wouldn't fall as I plodded awkwardly down the walkway to the street.

I miss those days when I'd walk down the street to Desmond Mott's house or he and Jason would come up to mine and we'd play baseball in the vacant lot beside the house where I grew up and where my mom still lives.

I miss those days when Vernell Craig would beat four of us in basketball all by himself.  And I miss Vernell Craig.

I miss those days when my Aunt Doris and Uncle Lloyd lived in Bay Minette and we'd ride down Highway 29/31 on Thanksgiving and have lunch and spend time with our cousins Janet and Kathryn. Susan and Mary would be born later on after that.  I always remember the guns that Uncle Lloyd had over this freezer on a gun rack.  They looked old even then, and I miss old guns.

I miss those days when Friday nights would roll around and we'd watch the Dukes of Hazzard.

I miss those days when my brother and sister and I would lie in the floor in the front of the furnace because the warm air was like Heaven on earth on a cold morning.

I miss those days when mom would take us to Fort Walton Beach on a whim for the weekend and we'd play in the pool and not on our phones.

I miss those days when I was 13 and I mowed grass all summer with a push lawn mower, sweating like a pig and learning independence and I was awkward and girls were like uncharted territory and Valentines Day was scarier than a Steven King book.

I miss those days when  Elmore Lewis would just be Elmore Lewis.  He was so great.

I miss those days when the JCPenney or Sears "Wish Book" would come to the house in the mail and we'd fight over getting to look through it.

I miss those days when Camp Wiregrass was my second home and the friends I made there were like anchors in my childhood.

I miss those days when I got my drivers license and a car was freedom and the open road seemed endless, even it was only just a lap around the bypass or when I got rear-ended in front of the fire department and Melanie Foshee was in TC 107 with some friends decorating for a party watching the whole thing unfold.

I miss those days when Keith Grissett and Grey Sharpe and Christy Smith and David Bodie and Larry Burnette were still with us.

I miss those days when I was a senior with absolutely no sense of direction for my life...it all turned out OK.

I miss those days I played in the LBW Ensemble and Jerry Padgett would tug at his right ear every time the horns were out of tune and when he would walk into music theory, hold out his hand and say "suture," like a doctor...because he had LOTS of homework mistakes to correct.

I miss those days when Kim Dyess gave me a chance to teach the middle school band for a couple months when I was completely unqualified.

I miss those days when I joined Southwind.

I miss those days when I moved to Troy and met Susanna and Doug and Art and Michael and Sena and Casey and Rocky and on and on....

I miss those days when I graduated and my mom was in the audience but my brother couldn't be because the Army.

I miss those days when I got my first job as a band director and when I got the job at the college.

I miss those days when Grant and Ashlyn and Jack were born and the world was perfect, if only for a moment.

I miss those days when right was right and wrong was wrong and it didn't seem so convoluted as to which was which.

I miss those days when I didn't miss those days....



....................................................



The past is really all we have to look at. But I choose to believe the best days are actually ahead, so maybe one day I'll revisit this blog and write another post about things that outshine those days I mentioned above.  But until then....I miss those days.

"Could you wanna take my picture, 'cause I won't remember."

--Filter, "Take a Picture"

Recently, I noticed something strange about my Apple Music....it is FILLED with songs that have the word "picture" or "pictures" or "photograph" in the title.  To wit....

The Cure:  Pictures of You (3 versions...hey, I like the song)

Mussorsky: Pictures at an Exhibition

Flock of Seagulls:  Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)

Nickeback: Photograph (don't judge)

Def Leppard:  Photograph

Filter: Take a Picture

Miranda Lambert: Picture to Burn (we did it in Ensemble years ago--cut me some slack)

And then are songs that are about pictures, chief among them "In Color," by an old friend of mine named Jamey Johnson.  

We're obsessed with pictures...photographs...portraits.... Whatever you call them, we love them.  I mean, Instagram exists because we love to share our world through pictures.  

But something about pictures struck me this summer while I was on the road with Southwind.  

We were in Buffalo/Niagara Falls for a few days, and on the last day, we had some free time at Niagara Falls.  As you can imagine, everyone was snapping selfies at the falls. It's a pretty amazing place.  I had never been there, so I took some pics there myself.  As the staff and members all kinda stood around admiring the view, I thought about how I was about to catch an Uber to a hotel and my involvement with Southwind would end for 2019.  And then, I thought "well, the pictures will be a good reminder of a great week on the road."  And it was that word....reminder.....that stuck in my head for days on end.  

The truth is that a picture is just a reminder....and it is ONLY a reminder.  Nothing more.  We take photos in an attempt to stamp our place in time so we can say "I was there." But the picture isn't "there." It's a just a reminder of "there." Now, don't hear what I'm not saying!!  Take the dang picture!! Take as many as you want!! But the key, I think, is this:  don't let the camera get in the way of what is really going on, which is THE MOMENT.  Be IN the moment.  Pause for a second and look around you.  Take it all in!!! And be PRESENT in the present reality.  

You see, we can look at people's pics and we can tell "what" they were doing.  We might can tell "where" they were doing.  And just maybe, we can tell "how" they were doing.  But that's still our own inference, and our inference may be way off!! The picture is only a "snapshot" of the reality that was.  And to me, the reality that was is what is truly BEAUTIFUL!!! My memory of an event that was captured by a picture is FAR, FAR, FAR better than the picture.  A picture is two-dimensional.  My memory is infinitely-dimensional.  Pictures can't capture the smell of perfume....or the sound of a waterfall....or the freezing cold you felt on that skiing trip....or the blistering heat you felt on the 11teenth time you repped that part of the show.  

Jamey Johnson's words say it so perfectly:  "if it looks we were scared to death.....you should have seen it in color."  

The pictures of my kids that sit on my cabinet at work are all great pictures and I wouldn't take anything for them....but they pale in comparison to my kids themselves.  REAL life was found in the moment the picture captured: not in the picture itself.   If it looks like Ashlyn was beautiful in that red dress at Miss Middlusia...you should have seen her in person.  If it looks like I was happy as could be to be sharing that moment at church with Grant...you should have seen it in person.  If it looks like Jack and I were tired and worn out standing on that bridge...you should have been there to smell us! LOL!!!  

I'm sure one day, I won't be able to remember anything at all--God forbid.  But for now, my memory works, and the memories I have of all the moments these photographs captured are absolutely priceless.  The truth/meaning/significance that we infer from events in our lives is up to us to determine, and whatever that is, is our reality.  If you ask the people in a picture how they remember the moment, they'll probably all have differing stories...but they'll all be right!!  That's kinda cool if you ask me.  

Have a great day. 

"The language of friendship is not words, but meanings." 

--Henry David Thoreau

How does one even begin to define a friendship?  With what words?!?  

The people pictured above have shaped my life.  They have helped sculpt me into what I am today.  I owe them a debt of gratitude.  Maybe this post will be a small down-payment toward what I feel I owe to them.

Left to Right, after me....

Chad Faison.  Mobile, Alabama.

I met Chad Faison in December 1991 when I auditioned for Southwind.  We weren't terribly close simply because I played mellophone and he played baritone.  The dude is an insanely talented graphic artist--he designed our tour shirt for the 92 season.  Wish I still had mine.  I'm not sure Southwind means more to anyone than Chad.  He was involved with the Montgomery version of the corps as well as the Kentucky version, if I remember right.  He's also an alum of Atlanta CorpsVets, an all-age DCA corps.  Chad personally ensures that all our brass instruments work and he teaches our baritones.  He's a band director, like most of us, and at one time, he ran the art program at Fairhope High School, as he has a bachelors degree in art.  Chad and I have taught at Southwind since Dave Bryan brought us in in 2014.  He's also a pretty great Cards Against Humanity player as well.

Dell Trotter.  Gulfport, Mississippi

I met Dell when he came on board in 2015.  I was the caption head at the time.  It didn't take long for me to realize Dell would make a better caption head than I, and I openly admit that, and told him as much.  He's a heck of a teacher.  Dell and I have so many similarities....children...working at community colleges....we're basically the same age, although he will tell you I'm WAY OLDER.  We hit if off real quick in 2015 and when the corps decided to change caption heads for 2016, we became even closer, I think.  No telling how many cups of coffee we drank at Starbucks in 2015 when the corps stayed at McGill-Toolen.  When Chad and I were marching Southwind, Trotter was on the field with Spirit of Atlanta.  I remember Spirit's show that year well.  Those hot pink bodysuits the color guard wore....whoa.  But I digress.  

Michael Roy.  Foley, Alabama

I have only known Roy since last December.  Roy was in the 2008 Phantom Regiment...the year they won it all playing Spartacus.  Wow, what a show.  Roy works at Foley High School and he teaches Southwind's baritones with Chad.  He's a giver, having offered to keep some of my gear at his house for a while once after a camp when I was on my motorcycle.  

Don Bell.  Laurel, Mississippi

Don Bell....this guy is as quick-witted as they come.  Just about everything he says is hilarious.  He teaches our mellophones.  Don went to Southern Miss and lives in the same town that my dad was from.  He works at one of the more successful band programs in MS, Petal High School and was a member of Forte.  Don joined the Southwind staff in 2016.  He was there for the infamous water break teaching fiasco.  He stood by me, though, through it all, and I haven't forgotten it.  Lite ice.  Always lite ice.  LOLOL.  

Aaron Fiveash.  Southaven, Mississippi.  

A-A-Ron also joined the staff in 2016.  He taught mellophones with Don that year, but has helped me with the trumpets since.  AARon and I have been through a lot of crap together.  We've had 6.02 X 10^23 conversations about stuff ranging from, well everything to everything else.  Aaron and I both were taught by Jim Zingara, although at different universities.  We both were affiliated with Teal Sound, though at different times.  He won a world championship with Memphis Sound.  Like Don, he  counseled me through WaterBreakGate 2K16.  I owe you buddy.  Oh, cereal is a soup. 

Bethany Presley.  Bay Minette, Alabama

Bethany (Queen Bea) came on board for the 2019 season.  She's just about done with her music education degree from Auburn--War Eagle!  She was a member of Pioneer in 2014.  Bethany teaches the trumpets with me and A-A-Ron.  She quickly fell right in with our merry band and has been on the entire tour this summer with the hornline.  She's been running the upper brass section the last couple weeks of tour, and is doing a great job with that.  #BrassStaff!

Ashton "Tuba" Cain.  Orlando, Florida

Ashton was a tuba player at Teal Sound in 2012 when I taught there...they year Teal folded.  What a hard time that was.  Ashton went to college at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and his apartment was next-door to Victor Wooten.  Lawd.  He joined us in 2018 as a tuba/baritone instructor. One thing about Ashton is that he is going to crack you up.  Even without saying anything.  But he's dead-serious about music, and he's a heck of a bass-guitar player.  I mean, bruh went to Berklee!

Daniel Herndon.  Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Last but certainly not least is Herndon.  Weighing in at 104 pounds soaking wet, Herndon will kill you in breathing block. Like DOA.  He teaches the mellophones with Don, although on this summer's tour, he's basically been running the entire low brass section, and is doing a killer job with that.  Back in February, he and Bethany and I went up to do an audition clinic at Jacksonville State University.  One thing I remember about that trip was that neither of them had been to Mount Cheaha before, so I took them.  Herndon studied music education at Southern Miss and took lessons from Jacqueline Adams, who I know from the PSO.  

There are others I've taught with at Southwind who aren't staff this season, but are still Southwind.  Jorge Alarcon, Ryan Lastrapes, Colleen Hulihan, and even Nathan Shuffitt, who is now our visual caption head have taught the horns in the past.  

We've piled in the car to go get food at random burger and BBQ joints all over the gulf coast.  We've taught in tiny classrooms and huge gyms.  We've wondered why the horns were on the 15.  We've slept on air mattresses on the floors of more schools than we can name.  We've walked miles and miles around football fields all over the United States telling kids both the good and the bad of their playing.  We've watched our respective kids grow up (those of us that have kids).  We've laughed with each other, and most definitely at each other.  We've shared struggles in personal life and professional life.  We've helped rebuild a drum corps that has meant the world to so many alumni and fans.  We've grown together as teachers and as people.  

There is no way in the world I'd trade anything for any of the experiences I've been afforded through the people in the Southwind organization.  The people are always at the heart of the drum corps experience.  The people who you get to create art with.  The people who refine your skills through their own skills.  Those people are priceless and they make the experience priceless.  I struggle to remember tour sites.  I struggle to remember how the opener was in its original version.  No way I can tell you what the opening set looked like in 2018 or any other year.  But I can guarantee you that I remember the people.  In fact, I'll never forget them.

In that picture is nearly 100 years worth of teaching experience.  In that picture are three DCI world champions. In that picture is a wealth of musical experience.  But more importantly, in that picture are eight people I'd do anything for.  

Hey, let's do it again in 2020.  You hear me, guy?  

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.  Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

--Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias"

Bev Smith taught this poem in ENG 262, English literature II, when I took it 25 years ago.  I have no recollection of whether or not I did well on that exam,  nor do I have any idea why it suddenly popped into my head while out walking recently.  I must have stored it in my subconscious during class. 

Shelley was an atheist.  This wasn't uncommon during the Romantic period of English literature--the Romantics thought nature was God.  Romantic era literature, painting, and music all depict this intense love for the natural world, so it isn't really accurate the say Shelley was an atheist, for, as David Foster Wallace puts it,  "everyone worships something."

And it's in "Ozymandias" that Shelley comments on mankind's most often-worshiped god:  SELF.

The poem goes like this:

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast, and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert.  Near them, on the sand

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

So Ozymandias (Ramses II) makes some giant, stone monument to himself and sticks it out in the Egyptian desert for all to see.  To show how great he is.  To make himself the center of the universe...or at least the amount of the universe that he knew about. Ok.  

Looking back on Egypt and its greatness through the lens of 2019, it is easy for us to just shake our head at the audacity of the pharaohs.  Where you at now, Ozy?? Huh??? What then???  

But we do the same thing, don't we?  Look around....humanism everywhere!  Monuments. Skyscrapers.  Statues of coaches who haven't even retired yet.  Buildings on campuses with peoples' names plastered on the outside in 12" letters.  I've even joked with Greg Aplin before about having such success with the Ensemble that the only thing left to do is decide what font we want our names in when they rename the Dixon Center after us.  Of course, that's all in jest, but it speaks to two things that live in our deepest heart of hearts:  we like to feel important, and we want to be remembered. 

The fact that this blog even exists in the first place indicates that I think people care what I think.  That I'm of some importance.  I might be.  But I'm probably not.  One day when I was a band director, I missed a couple day of school due to sickness.  The day I went back to work, Mrs. Henderson said to me "Mr. Brewer, I didn't even notice you were gone."  That was humbling.  And it speaks the real truth: none of us is THAT important in the long run.  

In the poem, right after the line "look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair," something amazing happens:  Shelley basically says "hold my beer."  Boom.  The next line:  "nothing beside remains."  Nothing.  Nothing but a colossal wreck.  The greatest ruler in the history of the Egyptian empire became nothing.

 He wanted to be eternal, and yet he was reduced to a broken statue, half-covered by barren sand standing in a desert commemorated by a poet who most 

people reading this probably don't remember studying in an

 English class taught by someone who's now dead. 

All that "greatness" reduced to nothing because of too much self.  Too much self because of too much pride.  And pride goes before a fall.  So I'm going to work on being less prideful because I don't want to be like Ozymandias--relegated to being remembered ONLY when someones opens a literature textbook in a class they won't even realize the significance of until years and years later.  

God Bless.  

"To boldly go where no one has gone before." 

--Jean Luc Picard

It's September 28, 1987.  My mother and brother and I sat and watched our 19" television light up with a brand new version of the USS Enterprise, complete with a Klingon security officer named Worf, an android named Data (fitting), a mind-reading counselor, the dude from Reading Rainbow, and a bald-headed captain with a French name...Jean Luc Picard.  In true modernist fashion, "where no man" has been changed to "where no one."  Ok....

I grew up watching reruns of TOS, or The Original Series.  Kirk. Spock. McCoy. Chekov. Sulu. Scottie.  Uhuru.  But what I saw that night early in my freshman year was light-years ahead of anything Gene Roddenberry put on the screen back in 1966.  The music was better. The effects were better.  The acting was better.  The storylines were way better.  But one thing was the same:  they both absolutely captured my imagination like all science-fiction does because they were both about what might be possible.  

I'm a dreamer.  Always have been.  I guess it began when I used to dream my dad would come back.  Been dreaming that for 42 years now, and I guess I will always dream, or hope, to see him again one day. 

I think that mankind has always known there is something more out there...something more than we can experience with our five senses.  I think we, as a species, innately know that there is something beyond this life.  I think it's part of our mass consciousness.  I think it's been in us since creation.  Adam and Eve knew they were immortal.  And I also believe they knew they lost immortality, at least in a sense, and I believe that we've been searching for it since the Fall.  The Holy Grail.  The Fountain of Youth.  Shangri-La.  On and on the myths go that speak to what we all know: there is something beyond all this.  

So back to Star Trek....

Do not all the great TV shows in a way take us away from the mundane, boring, ugly, white-knuckle existence that is daily life as an adult and place us into a world of fantasy?  We're all seeking an escape: an escape into a world that is better than the one in which we currently live.  A world in which that which we dream of most actually happens.  A world in which there's enough food.  Where people don't die too soon.  Where relationships don't end.  Where we can make anything we want to happen, happen.  And regardless of the characters, the sets, the costumes...the metaphors are all the same.  They all represent the possible.

C.S. Lewis once told his niece that she'd one day be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.  My question is "why'd we ever stop???"  

Why would we ever, for any reason, stop dreaming????

As we grow up, we are told to stop daydreaming. We are told to think more concretely.  We are told to...grow up.  Ironically, when we reach a certain age, we want to be a child again.  In fact, we'd give just about anything to be a child again.  I think it's because when we were children, anything was possible, at least in our minds.  But then middle school and high school happen, and physics happens and we are taught that the world operates according to certain physical laws that cannot be broken....man that sounds boring.  Couldn't we just beam ourselves to our vacation locale, instead of driving X number of hours???  After all, quantum theory says two things can be entangled across time and space...but I digress....

And so we dream. We wonder.  We look at our kids and see the future.  We look at the stars and see God.  We look out our fantasy/escapist TV shows and we envision a life that is better...that is more.  

And while I freely admit that there is a fine line between this wonderment and the slippery slope that can lead to the "tyranny of comparison," as Louie Giglio calls it, I still refuse to quit dreaming.  I refuse to give up on the idea that the best days....ARE AHEAD!  As hard as it is to see this truth sometimes, I do believe it.  Deep down, my soul knows it to be true...I simply have to choose to remember it. 

Sometimes it's so hard to see what is plainly right in front of us. 

Hey, I think Picard is about to take on the Borg, so I better go and watch.  "Don't stop believing." 

"No amount of money ever bought a minute of time." 

--Tony Stark

Once upon a time, a colleague of mine told me that I would one day get to the point in life at which my time was more valuable to me than my money.  Well, I've been there for a while now....

Time.  That most valuable of commodities.  Most valuable because it is the ONE....the only one....that we can't make more of.  It seems like our entire lives center around our awareness of time, and specifically how little we actually have of it.  

Think about how many times we begin stores with "one time....".  I began typing this blog post with "once upon a time."  Ask someone how far it is to such and such a place, and they'll probably tell you how long it will take you to get there.The Bangles began Hazy Shade of Winter with the lyrics "Time, time, time."  And countless movies have been made about time, the best of them all being the Back to the Future films.  Ecclesiastes says there there is a time for every thing. I guess Solomon was as much into time as we are.  

What if we could make time stand still?  Would you?  Would you "pause" a moment so that you could look at it for as long as you wanted to?  Can you even imagine having that much power?  Where's that time stone???

I guess that's why people take photos.  I know for a fact it's why I do.  I whip out that phone, and snap that pic, and to help the preservation process, I post that Pulitzer-quality photo to Facebook! And boom!....saved forever!  Except...it's not.  Every time I look at an old photograph, I'm reminded of how much time has passed since I took it.  Pass the Wellbutrin...300mg please.  

Last night, I sat outside talking with Grant for a while about life.  He mentioned that one of his friends is leaving after graduation to learn to be a lineman for an power company.  That led to us talking about how he remembers vividly being in elementary school and how they'd get to go to the playground on Fridays in the 2nd grade.  And that led to his amazement as just how fast he got from 7 to 17.  Just wait, kid....you'll be 46 soon.  

As I sat there listening, I got the feeling that Grant might be as nostalgic as I am.  Pity....it can be debilitating.  LOL.  In all seriousness, though, looking back at the past is often fun, but it can also be very saddening, and not only because the past might be sad.  It's because we long for the past because we don't want to grow old.  We'd love nothing more than to render childhood eternal, to quote Charles Hazlewood...but we can't.  Our kids grow up.  Our parents age.  We age.  Life goes on.  

So we can't pause time.  But we can dang sure be more actively engaged in the moment in which we find ourselves...and this is what I want to do.  I think it means being more intentional with things like the dinner table.  Or the ride home.  And it means less screen time.  Starting with me.  It probably means planning ahead better so that there IS more time and so I don't feel so rushed.  And I also think it means being extremely conscious of just how fleeting time is.  Patch Adams comes to mind.  

One of the best things I'ver ever read was about tombstones.  They have a birth year and a death year and a hyphen between them.  It's what we do with the hyphen that matters.  What are you doing with your hyphen?  Hopefully not just taking pictures.....

“What In The World Are We Doing Here??” 

—The Colony House

I spent most the day building my son a bed.  It was his Christmas wish and I am obviously four months late. Better late than never, right??  I chose cypress because, well, I like cypress.  It's naturally rot-resistant, just in case Jack decides to move his bedroom outside....you never know.   After that I took a nap in the yard because the weather was so amazing. 

Yesterday, I spent the day in Pensacola with Ashlyn and one of her friends.  Ash just needed a fun day, and I was so happy she asked me to take her.  It was the first time I'd ever been in an Ulta store. I guess makeup can indeed cost as much as all the things I like to look at at Cycle Gear. Man, that Sedici Strada helmet with built-in Sena communication is only like $11 more than the eyeliner at Ulta!  

A long-time friend of mine's mother died recently and her funeral was today.  God willing, I'll play music for his wedding to another long-time friend of mine come next January.  

Another friend of mine is getting ready for his oldest son's wedding and his third son's high school graduation and shortly after that, his leaving for boot camp for the National Guard.  

Another friend informed me today that he bought his wife a new car...a Tesla, in fact.  I can't wait to see that thing.  

Another friend of mine, Garrett Pass,  was cleaning out stuff today and found this pic.  

Garrett texted the pic to me and Robert McGhee and then to Mark Craig, and then I sent it to Alphonso Simpson and Jason Walker.  I don't have cell numbers for the others.  How amazingly random that just as I started walking this evening, I got a photo taken 33 years ago in my inbox.  In case anyone is wondering... front row, L to R:  Robert McGhee, Jason Walker, Donnie Weaver, Doyce Colvin.  Back row:  Alphonso Simpson, Mark Craig, me, Garrett Pass, Demond Mott, and Clint Veasey.

At some point today, as I lay in the grass looking up at the sun, the thought crossed my mind:  "what in the world am I doing here??"  Seriously.  How is it that I am 46, with three kids, 4 years from retirement, building my son a bed, on the day before Easter???  Of all that could have happened in my life, this is what happened.  And no, I'm not complaining!  I'm just fascinated by life, and by how we never really know what is coming down the pipe on a given day.  I built a bed.  Someone buried a mom.  Someone no doubt spent much time in thought about his sons' futures.  On any other day, the roles we three played could be switched out.  Is is random?  Is it like roulette? Is God's providence at work?  Do we have free will?  Am I here randomly? Or am I the product of every choice I've ever made??

Russell Crowe said in some movie that "what we do echoes in eternity."  Just....good God.  Let that simmer a bit....

#'s 42, 24, and 34 in that pic above....their dads all took up a lot of time with me when I was a kid.  Boyd Pass and Vernell Craig coached me.  Philip Mott fixed my bike more times than I can count.  I don't know if they ever thought about the effect they were having on me and many others, but their choices will echo in eternity, even if by no other means, through me.  

Dave Matthews said it this way.  "Lying in the park on a beautiful day, sunshine in the grass, and the children play;  sirens pass, a fire engine red, someone's house is burning down on day like this."

John Bradford, upon seeing someone being led to execution out his cell window, said it this way:  "there, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.  

I could further illustrate the point, but it's clear enough: on any given day, it could be our day to lie in the grass...or deal with tragedy.  It could be our day to relive basketball 33 years in the past...or attend a funeral.  And because I never know which day it will be, I must always be thankful for the good days, and live in the good moment when it comes.  And I must always try my best to remember God in the tough moments.  He makes it rain on the just and the unjust.  

Yes, I believe I am the result of my choices.  But, I'm also the result of choices made by others, namely Christ.  Without Him, it wouldn't matter what I did today.  Or 33 years ago when I attempted to be a basketball player....I mean, look at those socks!  His choice--which we will celebrate tomorrow as Christians--gives meaning to all the meaninglessness.  It gives focus to the blurred.  It gives prominence to the obscure.  It gives hope to the hopeless.  And it echoes in eternity.  

Have a great Easter, folks.  

"I've been looking so long at these pictures of you that I almost believe that they're real."

--Robert Smith, of The Cure

This morning, I was listening to Pandora and "Pictures of You" by The Cure came on.  As is almost always the case, the music took me somewhere in my soul, somewhere far removed from the normalcy that is brushing teeth and shaving and dressing for work.  And it is there I remain, at least mentally.  

A blog is usually about words.  But today, I offer pictures only....

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but...which words???  

"You still wanna be principal trumpet tomorrow?? 

Don't mess that solo up again."

--Ralph Ford, late 1996, to me, in his office.

The day that my trumpet teacher took me in his office, looked over his glasses that rested near the tip of his nose, and said, as bluntly as possible--while yet smiling!!--those words to me, is still etched in my memory.  And to this day, I am ever grateful that he was brutally honest with me that it be like that sometimes.

22 years ago this very night, I was on stage in Crosby Theatre rehearsing for a concert that the Symphony Band would go on to play the next night at Troy's annual Southeastern United States Concert Band Clinic, an event created years ago by Dr. John M. Long.  The SEUS Clinic, as it is affectionately known, is a big deal at Troy.  It's a huge recruitment event featuring honor bands, and guest bands, and bands, and band directors doing band things with bands about band with some band on the side, with band salad.  Band.

And it was THE event for the Symphony Band to pull out all the stops and demonstrate its prowess.  For 1997, Dr. Long chose to do this with Ottorino Respighi's masterpiece, The Pines of Rome.  Just typing those words makes me shudder a bit.  If you played it, or attempted to play it, or know anything about it, you know why.  It's hard. Damn hard.  Stupid hard.  There are places in it where Respighi obviously found another composer and said "hey, do you think the trumpets can play this many sharp notes, in 16th note triplets, above the staff?  And that composer said, "heck no, man, are you nuts?!" And the Respighi said "you're not the boss of me!!" and wrote it any way.....And that's just the first 20 seconds.  

The piece is four "Roman images," if you will, of the pine trees around Rome:  those near the Villa Borghese, those near a catacomb, those near a Janiculum, and those near the Appian Way.  Musicologists would call this piece a tone-poem.  Musicians salivate over getting to play it.  If played well, it's a feast for the ears.  If played poorly, well, yeah don't.  

I remember the very first time I found Pines in our symphony band music folders.  I was like "Really???? We're really doing this???"  I geeked out a little [read: "still to this day."]   We read through the first portion, and I already knew a little about it, having heard Star of Indiana do this piece five years before....on...a...football field. Still shaking my head about that....

The Pines near Villa Borghese is an absolute frenzy of notes.  There are more notes in there than there is sand on a beach!  Just hang on for dear life!  

The Pines near a Janiculum is pure, calm, tranquil...very beautiful.  

The Pines of the Appian Way paints a picture of Roman legions returning home from battle, relentless as they near the Eternal City.

But it's the second scene, Pines near a Catacomb, that became my nemesis, nay, my IDENTITY, for the next several weeks as we prepared the work for public performance.   As you know, catacombs are underground burial locations for first century Christians.  I knew this, so I had a vague understanding of the concept of the music.  Seems like I still remember some of the other trumpet players looking over at me and saying things like "hey...good luck." Oblivious, I was like "ok...thanks..."  I had no idea that I was about to be required to play one of the most difficult trumpet solos in all of the orchestral literature.  I was about to learn what pressure was all about.  What being a principal trumpet player was all about.  What having 2000 eyes and ears glued on you was all about.  

In truth, I was really a two-dimensional trumpet player in college:  I could sight-read pretty well, and I had some technique.  But my lyrical playing?  No.  My tone quality?? I was WAY behind Shelley Hatcher on tone quality. Wasn't everyone???  And that quarter--we weren't on semesters yet--taught me how to play lyrically.  Or, it tried. LOL.  I slaved over that solo more than I ever have over anything.  I DIDN'T WANT TO SUCK.  At one point, I had to just soar up to A above the staff, in a slur, effortlessly.  That "A" is one of the worst notes to play beautifully.  Thank you, Respighi, for writing it FOUR times in that solo.  Incidentally, several years later, when I played the solo again for an orchestral audition, it was still just as challenging to play well.  

Day in and day out, I struggled with making it sound GREAT.  Some days, it was pretty, some days it was disaster.  And one day, I just botched it, and Ralph Ford took me into his office and said to me the words as the top of this blog post.  

In the end, we played the piece to a packed theatre on a cold Friday night in February, 1997.  The concert was a great success.  I played that concert on a Benge 90B trumpet that I still have to this day.  I don't play it, but I have it.  That horn actually has a very interesting story behind it.  Thank you to those who are responsible for me having it.

I hate to admit this, but there are days on which I actually wonder "was I any good back then?" And I'll listen to that CD for validation.  Why???? Just. Why.  That's really pretty crazy...but I do wonder.  Was I any good at all?  That was a time in my life when I got TOO MUCH validity and identify from my musical abilities.  I hope I'm not quite so much that way today....maybe I am....

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Tomorrow night, the Troy University Symphony Band will perform Pines of Rome at the 2019 SEUS Clinic.  The trumpet section as of late at Troy has been absolutely outstanding in every way.  I contacted the principal trumpet, Landon Grigsby to ask him if he was playing the Catacombs solo. He said he passed it off to another.  Wow.  Humility right there.  Landon is a collegiate trumpet superstar, and I have no doubt that the one he passed it off to, Ben Huston, is equally monstrous.  I am looking forward to hearing the concert so much that I can hardly stand it.  

When I saw the Facebook post that the Symphony Band was playing Pines, it was 1997 all over again. Memories galore.   I talked to two dear friends, Shelley Hatcher and Doug Brasell, tonight.  They were both in that trumpet section, as were Dave Fortuna, Sena Thibadoux Bird, Rocky Wright, Jeremy Barber, Paul Reddish, and Scott Trull.  I hope you all know how much I respect each of you, and how much you shaped me.  I hope you know how much I miss sitting in that old band room with you guys playing music.  And Ralph, I hope you know how much I appreciate that kick in the pants I needed to get me over the hump!  

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I don't really know how it is that some circles, and lines, and dashes, and flags, and dots, and beams on a piece of manuscript paper can so define a person.  But music has defined me in so many ways, and many of them, quite frankly, aren't healthy.  It's just music...right??  

To the 2019 Troy University Symphony Band, I can't wait to hear you lay waste to everyone within earshot of Crosby Theatre tomorrow night.  And Dr. Walker, when y'all get to Appian Way, I want to feel a Roman legion marching right up through the middle of Troy, Alabama.  It's time to put the hay in the barn!