Fluid Joy

I remember the very first time I saw it... as mine. As something belonging to me... that I could own.

Mr. J opened the case, and I caught a glimpse of gleaming silver, and I remembered all the other people I had known who could play the flute. And I was scared. Scared of trying something new. I didn't think that I was musical, besides being able to sing.

But the shine of the silver, and the velvet of the case was only the beginning.

He tenderly extricated the pieces, pushed them into one another and played a simple scale.

And I was hooked.

That sound... like liquid silver moving through the atmosphere to reach a listener's ear with a message of pure beauty.

Yes, he was a master, but I knew that I wanted to be able to do that.

And I learned to. It took work, but under his gentle hand, my fingers started moving faster, my eyes recognized the notes more quickly, and my tone came more smoothly.

Soon, I felt confident. I owned the sound that I could make on the instrument. I felt like I had mastered it to some degree.

And then I saw the Senior High Band playing, and learned that the next year, I would have to learn to improv.

My heart sank. I started to dread.

But I trusted him when he said that I would pick it up, that it wouldn't really be that hard at all.

He was right.

I remember the first time I closed my eyes and improved off of a blues scale... one note with different rhythms.

And I was hooked.

Besides writing, being musical is one of the ways that I express myself, and I had never realized the invisible boundaries I had formerly felt myself acquiescing to.

But now those boundaries were gone, and I felt free. Sometimes, when I get tired of playing the same songs over and over for practice time, I still just play a song I make up.

It's just like poetry.

It's fluid joy to hear a flute played well.

And for so long, that joy has been missing. It hasn't only been with the absence of Mr. J, although that does contribute.

It has to do with life getting busier and busier and my priorities looking elsewhere. Soon, Band practice became more of a duty than a joy.

It didn't help when I got braces and couldn't play until my mouth had learned how to readjust my embouchure.

But as I played Christmas carols tonight, and sang a trio with my father and sister, that joy came springing back. We have more complicated pieces to work on now, and I find myself returning to my love of my instrument.

I think it has to do with my viewpoint as well. I'm starting to return to seeing the little as significant, and the looming as little. And I play... for fun.

To hear a simple C, and at the same time physically hear the sound of fluid joy.