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?
