Day 97.

I miss my Conn8D....Why do I always forget it at school over breaks?

Also, college essays are weird because they make you write about every aspect of your life in positive realizations and lessons learned.
For a brief minute you become high off the sensation that yes, you do have everything figured out, yes, you are a fully realized person, yes, everything has turned out for the best and you are a god of everything!!!!! EVERYTHING!

.....And then you remember what you're writing and for what purpose and your head deflates and you feel insignificant again.
What a relief!

TIME FOR A DRAMATIC BAND ESSAYLETTE!

The stage lights are blinding at first, but they always are. It helps me forget I'm playing to people. I pick up my French horn, breathe, and release the opening bars of Zdechlik's Chorale and Shaker Dance. My section has a soli coming up. I cannot back away: the future is approaching like a hurtling glacier and there is no avoiding it, I can't even spare a moment to wonder if I'm being too dramatic because being in band involves a certain type of dramatic honor; a responsibility to the whole band, to your section, and finally to yourself to not fake it. So I play, and hope it comes out with all the feeling I put into it.
One of my music teachers once told me his theory that we pick the instruments we play because on some level we identify with their sound. I didn't pick French horn at first; I played flute for three years, but middle school bands typically overflow with flutes. When my old band director asked who wanted to switch to the less popular horn, I instinctively put my hand up. It has been exciting, because a French horn is a little like an explosive. All the parts can be in order, all protocols followed, but there's still a certain degree of unpredictability. The closeness of partials on the instrument mean that to play a note, you have to hear it in your head first; even then, injured moose sounds and ungainly squawks are not uncommon. That beautiful, aching undertone you heard in a symphony was a French horn, but so was the accidental atonal blare at your local high school concert. Despite the hazards of horn and the parts written for it (three pages of offbeats, eighty measures of rest and a single whole note) I wouldn't switch for anything. French horn is a Dickensian instrument, containing the best of sounds and the worst of sounds, and when I play it, the best and worst of me.