He
came to the podium in the early morning sunlight of winter. The windows along
the back side of the band room were dripping with the moisture of the breath of
children talking, laughing, and joking in a small sea of adolescent noise and
clamoring. The light of the cold February sun reflected off snow drifts outside,
and came through the wet glass bringing no warmth, only a brighter coldness.
He
didn't sit, he only stood there with his director's baton poised in his right
hand. He was patient, but not amused. And he waited. He waited for a few
minutes and the cacophony of blurting instruments, cracking percussion hits,
and the occasional guffaw began to transform -- like snowflakes under a distant
sun, melting slowly away and leaving only timid echoing droplets behind.
And
then he waited in the silence of the room and only the sound of our breathing
could eventually be heard in the startling tranquility that enveloped us.
Instead of raising his baton, he gently placed it down on the podium in front
of him. He opened a manilla folder in front of him, and from a piece of
handwritten paper he read these transcribed words almost in a whisper:
"Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the
foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than
I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I
see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me
intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me,
O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.[1]"
He
folded the paper back under a page of sheet music on the podium. "That is
Whitman."
He
picked up his director’s baton and said in the same restrained voice:
"We
will begin with level flight; let's say a concert ‘C’."
He
was the only man I ever witnessed with that kind of influence. He could enter a
room and silence it without speaking a word. He used music to reach our hearts,
open our minds, and give us a glimpse of that powerful play that goes on. He
did this there for twenty years between 1973 and 1994 as our band director.
I
sat there holding my mellophone and I thought to myself 'Is he teaching about
poetry or music? And what does 'level flight' have to do with playing band
music?' I looked over his shoulder at the chalkboard on the wall behind the
wooden upright piano. On the green chalk board, he had written:
'Mr. Frenz - Class: Instrumental Music, Date: Wednesday February 5, 1986.’
[1] O Me! O Life! By Walt
Whitman, Leaves Of Grass, 1892. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51568/o-me-o-life
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