Band Camp Prologue

The pile of dusty hiking shoes and sleeping bag and dirty laundry from my summer vacation is still a disorganized heap in the entry to my house. I’ve been home for six hours, and I feel like I’m still entirely unprepared for what’s about to begin. But it’s time. September won’t wait for me to get settled. OMB camp begins tomorrow at 9 a.m., and with it all the madness and wonder of this project.

The thing that makes me happy tonight is the thought of the litany of OMB alumni who are important to me: my boyfriend, my housemate, my own high school marching director, my best friend. And a long, long list of other friends and heroes and aquaintances, all of whom had a home inside the green jackets of this group in years past. Many of them took part in different eras of the band, which I can trace like the bloodline of a historical monarchy.

I spent a little time tonight rereading the piece I wrote for Oregon Quarterly about the first band, one hundred years ago, feeling pleased and amazed by the miracles of publication and coincidence and round numbers. This wasn’t planned, this 100-year milestone. But I’m pleased to no end by its existence. My pattern-seeking brain likes things like that.

What it doesn’t like is the idea of the twelve-hour days the next two weeks will require. Back in high school when these rehearsals were last part of my late-summer life, I didn’t have a job and an internship to work in around the edges. And I can’t be the only one whose schedule is turned upside down for these next two months for the sake of this thing we’re all doing together.

This week I want to talk to people about why they’re here. Maybe this is a place to start: what did you give up to be here? What about your life are you choosing to make complex in order to remain a part of this hundredth band?

 

Timeline

Big final immersion piece:

Okay. There’s of course no way to know what the small story is going to be yet, as the reporting is what will determine it. This is of course especially true given that the immersion journalism thing is ALL ABOUT living the small story in order to prove or explore the truth of the big one.

So the small story timeline: a series of events that have yet to be determined, as they have yet to occur.

The big story, on the other hand, is going to be about the ways in which being part of a group that makes music together (especially this one particular bizzare breed of such a group) works on the human mind from as many of these ways as I find relevant and important to the story: neurologically, sociologically, culturally, historically. This feels enormous. And is. There’s a lot of reading and researching to be done this summer, and I’m going to need to be very careful not to back myself into some sort of “needs the scientific method” corner. Instead, I’m more interested in a review or overview of some discoveries people have made about this stuff, and some ways in which my experience in the OMB confirms or challenges or makes complicated those ideas.

This term’s history piece:

This should be easier, but isn’t. It’s not a very narrative-driven (as far as a series of scenes is concerned) piece, which is what I consider a timeline to be about. Instead, there’s one opening scene (invented and postulated and put together through research and photo evidence), followed by sections on the music (instruments and pieces), the culture of music-making at the time, and college marching bands of the time. These main sections will be connected by details about the general atmosphere of 1908, its culture, special acomplishments, etc., which I hope will build an overall atmosphere through which to understand the Boola Band. Oh, and somewhere along the line, the fact that this was “the beginning of the soundrack to being a Duck” should become important and plain. But shown, not told, of course.

 

Final Project Proposal 1.0

What on earth could make a person volunteer to be part of a marching band? The rehearsals are long and tedious, frequently taking place in the foulest of weather, the politics of the group are always complex and often infused with the sort of snarky backbiting usually reserved for reality TV shows, and the undertaking requires such sacrifices as having two Journey songs stuck in your head for four solid months.

And yet, even with full knowledge of the long hours, the sunburns, the shin splints, the bad food, the weird uniforms, the power trips, and the endless repetitive monotony of the whole undertaking, people sign up. Not only that, they love it. They can’t stop doing it.

160 of those strange brave souls are the members of the Oregon Marching Band, an organization that began in 1908 and has been providing the soundtrack to Duck fandom for a century. Unpacking this strange medium, which combines aspects of the performing arts with athleticism, military tradition, and the pageantry of the modern sporting event, is no small undertaking. My tactic: to join up myself.

As a violinist by training who spent four years in her high school’s marching band in the ranks of the colorguard (also known as the “chicks with flags” to the uninitiated), I have some understanding of the fundamentals of marching band’s appeal. But a college band, especially one performing for Pac-10 games every fall, is something far removed from the business of high school marching. The stakes are higher, the goals are different, the audience is larger by a phenomenal degree.

So, this autumn I’ll be joining the the OMB’s mellophone section. My choice of instrument has to do with the fact of its quintessential marching band-ness (they’re rarely seen or played off the astroturf) as much as with its difficulty and suitability to the shape of my jaw. So far, I’m relatively crap at playing the thing. String player habits don’t translate all that simply to the completely different set of muscles requires to play a brass instrument. “The mellophone chronicles,” as I’ve informally dubbed the project, will be immersion journalism at its most basic. What is it about marching band that makes people come back? For me, it’s the need to find an answer to that question. So I’ve come back, with a new instrument, for my first and last season in a college band.

The majority of my field research will be carried out during the intensive two weeks of the OMB’s summer band camp, September 16 – 26, 2008. Other research will be conducted at the the first two home games of the UO season, on August 30 and September 6, when a “pick-up band” of band diehards of all ages will gather to support the team. The home games on September 20 and October 11 will provide a picture of a “regular” home game for the marching band.

An additional aspect of my field research will come as a result of observing the Sherwood High School Marching Band in rehearsal and performance. This high school band is preparing for its first year of existence as the OMB is preparing for its 100th. The similarities and differences in group identity and an examination of how traditions are formed and maintained will be possible through the contrasts between these two organizations.

I have ready and willing support from the director and senior staff of the Oregon Marching Band, whom I worked with last fall for a related project. OMB director Dr. Eric Wiltshire is especially supportive, and has been ready and willing to make use of his contacts in the athletic department and music school to further my research. The marching director of the Sherwood band has also agreed to let me observe and interview his students. Also, I have a seemingly never-ending network of former OMB members, all willing to share their stories and experiences. Most importantly to my mind, however, the student section leader of the OMB’s mellophone section is on board with this unconventional project, even considering the fact that my musical skills will be by far the weakest in her squad.

By undertaking this project, I hope to form a narrative framework through which I can explore the ways in which music helps to form and maintain a sense of identity and belonging. The marching band, we all agree, helps to create and maintain the mood at a football game. How is that possible? What are the neurological, sociological, and psychological ramifications of hearing your team’s fight song? Why is the appeal so great that it not only brings fans back to the stadium season after season, but can even bring a former marching band aficionado, who firmly believed she’d left all that long behind her, out of retirement for one more hurrah?

 

Revamped opening graph

(Not very rewritten — I like the concept of my lead. Just polished slightly for now. More research may change it later.)

We don’t know who they were. We don’t know how many of them turned out to play for that first gig, or what instruments they carried. We know that several were students, but whether the others were merchants or teachers or bankers, their ages or musical backgrounds: all that is unknown. We don’t know what they wore to perform, or where they held their rehearsals. There are no records of the names of the tunes they played, and we don’t know how those standing to watch the football game on that autumn afternoon felt as the team scored points and the fans cheered and the music floated up into the clear air.

 

The call

Drinking cup after cup of bad instant coffee had one upside: the bathroom was warmer than anywhere else. On this cold, windy October day, the windows of the Autzen press box were wide open so that the announcer could hear the high school marching band competition taking place far below us. I had on long underwear, three shirts, two pairs of socks. And I was miserable.

The night before, my mom had called to tell me that her father had choked to death on his lunch that afternoon. My strawberry-growing, wise-cracking grandfather was abruptly gone. Tomorrow I’d take the train north to Salem for the family viewing at the funeral home. Today, though, was just one more day of graduate school. I had theory to read, notes to take on this odd spectacle, interviews to conduct in my nervous, unskilled way. All of which sounded even less appealing than usual. I was cold and sad and lonely. I just wanted to go home, burrow under my blue quilt and wait for spring.

Far below us, the Oregon Marching Band was lining up in the endzones, waiting to perform. Out of cold or joy or some combination of the two, they were all jumping up and down, making a sea of bobbing yellow baseball caps. It looked … fun. It looked like everything that I wasn’t feeling that day. That’s when the thought arrived. The “I want to do that, too” thought. The thought that started everything.

 

Panning for gold – week 4

Although this fact needs triangulation and backup, I have it from a fairly reliable source that the Autzen Stadium Jumbotron costs about $20,000 per hour to run. The thing requires a lot of juice, to say the least.

Assuming seven home football games a year, and about five hours per, that means that one piece of equipment alone costs $700,000 every year. That amount could provide 12 4-year, full-ride scholarships to the UO.

 

Time and place

My feet are pointed toward one endzone, my head toward the other. I’m lying on my back in the middle of the giant 50-yard-line “O” on the field at Autzen Stadium. It’s windy and chill, a quiet Monday night in late April, far in every regard from football season. But this evening on a walk, an old friend and I found the gate open, and what he calls the “big quiet” of the empty stadium drew us in.

It’s deeply peaceful here. The green turf is softer to the touch than I would expect, and from field level, the imposing stadium walls look anticlimactic, giving way easily to the wider span of the sky. There’s something calming about the ordered rows of empty seats around us. The darkening blue of the evening sky is occasionally revealed through layers of clouds moving above.

The images I carry with me of the public life of this place make this moment all the more oddly poignant. Absent tonight are the noise, the crowds, the security, the violence, the uniforms, the music, the cheers, the smells, the play-by-play, the Jumbotron, the whole circus. The stadium feels like nothing so much as an empty stage, waiting patiently to be called to its purpose.

Four more months.

 

Rest area

Even as the stack of marching band theory books beside my desk grows and grows (amazing that the library lets grad students keep things for six months. Dangerous, too.), other bits of life go on around it.

I recently took my first swing at writing song lyrics. A group of old friends started a collaborative blog back in January, called “Mirth and Matter” (title stolen, coincidentally, from my old email address, which I stole from Shakespeare). Besides offering a good space for a rant, the blog hopes to also inspire/facilitate collaborative creative projects. The music/lyrics Throwdown was the first of these.

Those of us bloggers who identify as “writers” were randomly matched with those who call themselves “musicians” and set loose to collaborate on a song. I luckily was matched with my dear friend Zach, a man of truly frightening talent who lives in Miami. You can find our resulting song here:

http://mirthandmatter.blogspot.com/2008/04/mirth-over-matter.html

The intersection between music and words is an interesting space. Though it doesn’t currently have much of a formal place in this project, I will of course continue to think about it … and Zach has already sent me my next lyric-writing assignment.

 

Panning for gold – week 3

I’ve come back to Sarah Vowell’s work as I begin to consider the shape and scope of the historical piece I’m undertaking. I admire Vowell’s uncanny ability to catch me off guard and make historical events, places, figures, etc. rich with meaning totally relevant to my life right here. And be fairly fabulously entertaining along the way.

I’m working on pulling apart a few of her essays to analyze their structure and tone, but I must admit, I keep getting sucked into the delight of her storytelling voice and looking up, pages later, to discover that I’ve been having too much fun to diagram anything.

Here are the first two sentences from an essay on the Gettysburg Address:

“There are children playing soccer on a field at Gettysburg where the Union Army lost the first day’s fight. Playing soccer, like a bunch of Belgians – and in the middle of football season, no less.” (pg. 1)

- “What He Said There” in The Partly Cloudy Patriot, 2003.

I can’t tell you how much I admire the fact that in those two sentences she’s introduced her subject, a sense of place, and her own sense of humor; given us a time peg; dissed the majority of the world’s sports fans; and made sure that I’ll keep reading. The switch from “the first day’s fight,” which seems so somber – almost like she can’t quite look straight at it – to the mock-angry, dryly witty “like a bunch of Belgians” in such a short space makes me totally envious. No need to pick a single tone, Vowell suggests. Humans usually have several going on at once internally, so why should writing be any different?

 

Ritual

There are two parts. In the first, the feet, placed together, keep time by lifting each heel in succession while the toes stay planted. Eight of these. Marking time. The second part is simply eight steps forward. Forward march. If all goes as planned, the instep of the right foot, finishing the eighth step, should land exactly on the next yard marker. Eight steps to travel five yards. Eight-to-fives. Marching band’s bread and butter. The left foot always, always goes first: to do otherwise feels more than awkward.

The two-part pattern repeats itself down the length of the field. It is the first exercise of each rehearsal. Eights-and-eights. It’s a transitory moment, those first few sets, feeling the group settle into the physical work of the day. There is something incredibly comforting about this simple exercise, any of them will tell you. A sense of belonging, an old muscle memory that stretches back to being fifteen, nervous and awkward in a parking lot somewhere, learning to stand at attention under the August sun.

Sometimes, there’s music on the stereo to help warm-ups along. Eights-and-eights songs are not too frantic, but keep a steady pace. “Higher Ground” by the Chili Peppers is a favorite. Hearing it, out in the world somewhere, they can’t help but walk in time.