Drum Corps and My Late Night Jim Croce Album

This is for my Atlanta friend. 

I have an old Jim Croce album I found in a back alley record store years ago and sometimes late at night I pour myself a glass of wine, turn the lights down, and play that old album, while enjoying the peace it brings to hear the honesty of the guitar played through each crack of the needle to the record. If it were up to me, everyone would have an old Jim Croce record so for a brief moment, we could all feel something of total bliss. If you close your eyes you can hear the words that are untarnished by technology and media. You can see him sitting on a couch somewhere in solitude playing his guitar and singing, "There never seems to be enough time to do the things we want to do once we find them." Jim Croce's music is music that makes you feel something. He speaks to love and life. His words are simple, but they aren't ordinary. If you let him, he reaches into your heart and speaks to your soul.

I just returned from my yearly trek to Atlanta. It's the one drum corps show I get to see every year and I always come away from it with something I need to say. Maybe it's the inspiration from the shows or maybe it's the lifelong friendships or maybe it's the memories I hold dear from days gone by. I'm not sure what it is, but each year I certainly feel poetic after that show. When it comes to drum corps, I don't follow along like others do all season. I like to watch the shows with a fresh perspective, untainted by others opinions. This year though, I was fortunate enough to see the shows in Nashville the night before Atlanta. I took my nine year old son and 69 year old mother. It's refreshing to sit with people who don't know "the sheets" or know the history of the corps. My mom gets to see about one drum corps show every eight or so years and my son...well this was his first. He's been to WGI and countless winter guard and band shows, but this was his first summer show. If you ever want to see the activity in its purest form, watch it with a nine year old. What a nine year old sees is very different than what we see. A nine year old has an opinion that is natural and based on feeling, as opposed to intellect, but don't be mistaken in that. A child forms opinions and can speak to concept and costume. They just respond by emotion first and intellect second. A nine year old see's drum corps with their soul before their brain. It's how Robin Williams encouraged us to view poetry in the Dead Poets Society. Throughout the show, my son shared his opinions through his immediate reaction to the moment. He didn't analyze the guard work or technicality of the percussion. He could have cared less about transitional moments. He just simply enjoyed the shows for what they were and he found that he had some favorites and some not so favorites. He loved...LOVED...the Blue Devils. That shocked me and I'll tell you why in a second. His second favorite was the Madison Scouts. After they finished, he turned to me and said, "Wow mama! Wow! That was loud!!" I asked him if they were his favorite and he said, "Oh no. I liked the Blue Devils the best." I asked him why and he said that they looked like a Broadway play. He said they were weird. He said that they were fun. Those were his reasons and then he said that he wanted a tee shirt.

I really liked the Blue Devils, but more so on an intellectual level. I spent their entire show analyzing it and to be honest, I didn't get it 100% in its intent and I don't really know anyone else who did either. Josh however, didn't care. He didn't try to get it. He just simply experienced it. Driving to Atlanta the next day I realized that is what most of us old timers do. We analyze the shows until the very essence of art is sucked out of them. I don't completely blame us...the audience that is. For so long at the national level with WGI, BOA, and DCI...so many teams force us into intellectualism over emotionalism. That's blatantly clear at Independent World Finals for WGI. The books and shows have become so "artistic" that many times the designer has forgotten that art is supposed to move us. Art should make us feel something. As human beings we want to feel something. Human beings want to laugh. We want to cry. We need to cry. Reflection and the need to reflect is another human emotion we don't always give enough credit to. Anger and love. Sadness and happiness. That's what art is ultimately supposed to do. It is to make us feel. Our need to express gets suppressed so often by a world asking us to think way too much.

When I left Nashville for Atlanta, I hadn't really formed an opinion on any of the shows. I would wait for Atlanta to do that. I thought about Josh on the way up and his reaction reminded me of my Jim Croce album. Jim sings a song called Operator. It's one of those songs that everyone with any human soul can say they have experienced. He was left by the one he loved and calls to speak to her, but decides that he's better off without her.

Operator, well could you help me place this call
'Cause I can't read the number that you just gave me
There's something in my eyes
You know it happens every time
I think about the love that I thought would save me

Oh my those lyrics. Who hasn't wanted to have Jim Croce playing that on guitar in the background while we laid in bed at night crying our eyes out over the love we lost to another? The lyrics. The guitar. It makes me reflect. It makes my eyes water. You see, when we listen to music in the silence of our homes, we let it wash over us like the ocean Josh saw with the Blue Devils. I decided that when I got to Atlanta I wouldn't analyze anything. I would watch the shows in the way I listen to Jim Croce or the way a nine year old experiences music. I was either going to like it or not. I was going to absorb the colors and engage in the sound. I would analyze nothing. Ironically, I found that little experiment was harder than I thought it would be, but as the night went on I got better at it. When I did that, I found that my favorite drum corps were not necessarily in the top 5. I let the Academy make me laugh. I let the Blue Coats take me to what I saw as the coolest playground ever. I experienced a western shoot out with Crown. I listened to the Scouts in a way that made my son say, "Wow!" At times I closed my eyes and just listened. 

When the night was over, I found that I didn't really know who did what in terms of guard work or the best drill. I didn't care. To be honest, once I let go of the idea that the corps have become so homogeneous to the point identity is no longer a driving factor for many, I was able to relax. Once I decided to not judge, but enjoy...I found the art inside the intellect. I found that my favorite corps was not first or second or even third. It was Santa Clara. Oh my how I loved that show. The word I used at the time was "lovely." It was simply lovely. They did a show that was somewhat simplistic in concept, but in no way simple in its presentation of the four seasons. That concept has been done...and done...and done...and done. They however, had a way of conceptualizing it so it made you feel something special as the seasons moved from spring to summer and summer to fall, but you had to let the seasons happen, just like the leaves change and fall from the trees in the autumn.  I barely even acknowledged Santa Clara the night before. The night before they were just a show about the seasons. In Atlanta, I saw art and I saw it in the form my nine year old son saw it. As I watched the show, I thought of the many seasons I've spent in Atlanta with WGI, BOA, and DCI. The before show drinks and after show conversations are many. I thought about how many performances were held in that dome and how many people missed the artistry being presented, but I also thought of the moments designers missed to move an audience, because their version of art is hidden within ego and competitive drive. I will certainly admit that I've missed a moment or two, because of my need to "judge" the teams surpassed the need to feel. I thought of my friends and the special moments we've had in Atlanta at the Omni and through conversations in parking lots around the dome. I thought of the thousands upon thousands of kids that have walked into that dome as an artist, but left the audience feeling let down as we couldn't get out of our own way as an activity and just let them be the art. I thought of the times when I dropped my guard and let myself just feel love through the friends I hold so dear. It's the same love I have in my old music albums that take me into a realm devoid of politics, intellectualism, and the weight of all that is wrong in the world.

I attend a lot of concerts and plays. I have a ritual in the moments leading up to every event. I drink a glass of wine, listen to the music of the band, read about the play, or listen to an interview with the artist. I try to get in a mindset of art. I love art. Being originally from Music City, I especially love music in all of its forms. I let it flow over me like Josh let drum corps flow over him Friday night. So, I can't help but wonder what happens to us that doesn't let us enjoy the art of pageantry. We all admit we appreciate it. We value it. We see it,  but I'm not sure many of us truly see it for art that makes us feel. While sitting in the dome, I wondered what the placements would be if a poet was the only judge and the only criteria read, "Make the audience feel." I wondered who would win. I wondered how the poet would rank and rate. My guess, is that the poet would throw out the rating, throw out the ranking, and just enjoy the night. She would come home and write verse upon verse of her experience. She would put on some Jim Croce and let the night speak from soul to paper, without thought. She might hear him sing, Walkin' Back to Georgia.

I'm walkin' back to Georgia
She's the only one who knows
How it feels when you lose a dream
And how it feels when you dream alone

She might come home and think about an old friend or two and look back on the trip as the sheer joy it was with all of its laughs, conversation, and love for something that has been a part of her life since she was 14. She would think of the community she is a part of. She would think of how it has made her a better person, because the art made her feel as in this classic verse that will stand the test of time.

If I had a box full of wishes and dreams that had never come true. The box would be empty, except for the memory of how they were answered by you.

I write this for all of us out there who crave to feel, crave to love, crave to touch, and crave to be human.

As Another Summer Fades to the Roses

It's coming up on the end of summer and for those of us who live our lives by the seasons of the marching arts, we know that our seasons don't follow the traditional norms of the Gregorian calendar. Our winter ends in April and our summer ends in August. Winter starts in October and Fall begins in July. We are forever beginning one season, before the current one has ended. For me, summer always begins the weekend of the running of the Kentucky Derby. It's the start of a new season that cycles us through the Triple Crown, Memorial Day, and hockey playoffs. It's the signal to a new season and the questioning of what lies ahead. The end of summer for most us reading this, culminates on a Saturday night in August, when the new drum corps champion is crowned. Not long after that, we will be looking toward a new school year, football, marching band, and winter guard. It all cycles through and just like that, summer fades to autumn and it is season's that dictate the meaning of time in our souls. It's DCI week and it's the week we start to say goodbye to another year of drum corps, as we change our profile pics on Facebook as a tribute to an activity that has meant so much to so many. 

I was thinking today about the kids who have worked so hard this summer to bring us the next phase of drum corps. They are achieving feats on the field that most of us could only imagine. I often wonder if Nadia Comaneci feels as I do when she watches gymnastics and how her sport has developed into a world she couldn't have imagined when she stood on the podium accepting her gold in 1976. I had the privilege to see not just one, but two DCI shows this summer. Living in Florida doesn't afford me the pleasure to view drum corps without significant travel and money, but this year I made a point to see two shows. I relished in the music, talents, pageantry, and friendship. I spent time visiting the past as I greeted old friends in bars and coffee shops for long felt hugs and conversations of times gone by and present day struggles. The beautiful thing about drum corps is that time stands still during those moments. I've noticed...and I'm not the only one this happens to...that during a weekend of drum corps, you feel as if you have been lifted into an alternate universe that can only be described as a gigantic bubble that wraps you up in laughter and music. It's our own world and it allows us to time travel while we tell old war stories as if by telling them, we can connect with a piece of ourselves that got lost somewhere in the concept of the "real world." In the weekends lost to drum corps we forget about the bills, the madness of politics, our careers, and the struggles daily living brings to each of us. Returning on Monday is like a cruel time warp awakening you to a dystopian society.

When the summer began for me back on May 2nd, during the 141st running of the Kentucky Derby, as I watched the first of three races that would guide the nation towards hope as American Pharoah raced to toward the roses, I knew this summer would be more than any normal summer for me. Life as it always does, can catch up with us and sometimes we have to stop and pay attention to the crazy and dirty details, whether we want to or not. It was important to me this summer to connect with a part of me that has so much. Saturday, August 8, is our activity's run for the roses while characteristically and notably ending what we know as the summer of 2015. 

Dan Folgerberg once wrote a song about the infamous race called, Run for the Roses. In his typical eloquent fashion of writing songs, he describes a horse that is born into the sport as if the universe told him upon birth, "This is your calling. This is your time." When I hear the song, I always think about the kids starting their season in their time and how this song perfectly encapsulates growing into the champion they become by August. 

"They never can prepare you for what lies ahead" he says. What an understatement that is. You can't possibly prepare for the emotional roller coaster that leads you from May to August. The internal struggle as you fight to become better than you could have imagined. Your sore boyd and exhausted mind makes you feel that you can't do another day, but you do and you wake to enjoy one more day in the sun of a mid western football field. 

"Your fate is delivered your moment's at hand." When Secretariat won the Derby in 1973, he did it in a little less than two minutes. Your entire life comes down to two minutes around a track and all your training and all your life's energy exists to live up to the gift the universe gave you when you came into the world. It's right around two minutes that the performers stand on the field staring up at an audience that's staring back at them, waiting for the drum major to signal the start of their ultimate moment. In their hearts they know that their moment is at hand and they must deliver.

"It's the chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance." It seems to me that the older we get, the less opportunity we seem to have to take the chances of a lifetime. Maybe that's why in middle age we start to look at our lives as what we have settled for and what we have grown to tolerate. Life as precious and beautiful as it is, seems to get harder the older we get in its series of give and takes. Taking chances becomes harder as family and finances become priority. I'll never forget the night I stood on the field in Buffalo for finals as the announcement was made, "Star of Indiana...you may take the field for competition." It all came down to a single moment where my entire life seemed to have lead me to this one moment in time, where I could feel my heart as it connected to the beat of the first note. Every practice came down to the breath I took as I started the show with my fellow performers. I wanted to win. I wanted to take it all. 

"It's breeding and it's training and it's something unknown that drives you and carries you home." You know, the beauty of the American spirit is that we will always strive to achieve more than could have ever been imagined. We look to push our bodies harder than we thought it would go and our minds into creative realms that forces generations of the past to scratch their heads and wonder aloud, "Isn't that remarkable." I have to personally thank the Star of Indiana for its breeding and training it gave me in the short two years I competed on the field of drum corps. I realize now that it wasn't drum corps I trained for. It was life. 

Two years on a football field that lead me to a championship ring taught me so much more than how to spin a flag. I learned perseverance to stick with it when life got hard. I grew a backbone that allowed me to stand up for myself and for my beliefs, when no one else would. I learned when to cry and when to suck it up and push forward without fear. I learned how to hold on to the people that mean the most and to not throw away the moments the universe hands you randomly and indiscriminately. Because of two seasons of drum corps, I know how to stand on my own and then pick myself up when I have fallen down and recover in a count or less.

I have almost a quarter century behind me since I stood on a football field with a flag in my hand and I can't help, but acquiesce to the love that I carry inside me to this day for the people and the moments they helped me create. As I look at the profile pictures on Facebook as they change from our daily lives to the lives we lead during the Summer Music Games of the past, I look at them with longing for times gone by, the connection we have to each other because of this silly activity, and love for a life we have been so lucky to have lived. 

I

Love and Time...I Think I Get It Now

It's 1:00 a.m. in the morning as I sit here staring out of the window of the 9th floor of the Omni Hotel in the city of Atlanta, contemplating the last 9 days that took me from DCI San Antonio to DCI Atlanta and from the real life of professional work to band camp. Work to marriage. Friendship and love. As I stare out the window looking down on a city that has over the years offered me so much, drinking a glass of cabernet and listening to music from artists that speak the language of love, I find comfort in an activity that hasn't just defined me, but supported me and loved me, even when I haven't always felt supported and loved and when I haven't always loved myself.

Love.

As a writer, love is the one topic that keeps me writing. What is it? What does it mean? Where does it come from and why does it seem that some are more deserving of the emotion than others? Love. What are its forms and why do we spend a lifetime trying to define it? I think, for the first time in my life, I understand love. I found it in a form so different than the normal love we all have in family and friends...I think...in the moments of stillness while moving from one pageantry activity to the other. 

The first time I came to Atlanta for anything related to the marching arts was in 1997, to see a BOA regional with Ron Comfort. Ron called me up on Friday morning and said, "Hey girl...take off work we're going to Atlanta." So...being the irresponsible 27 year old I was, I did take off work and we did go...to Atlanta that is. It was a weekend that was not just fun. It was epic. We still talk about it to this day. Over the years, I have returned to Atlanta for more BOA, DCI, and WGI. No matter what the season, I keep returning to Atlanta and when I leave on Sunday, I always leave with a story and a memory. I have so many people to thank for my many Atlanta's, as they go so beyond the marching arts. It's about the hang. It's about the Omni. It's about that awful TacoMac. It's about warm ups and the dome and music and twirls. It's about watching this activity/sport of ours progress and grow. It's about friends who hold your hand throughout life.

I sat tonight watching drum corps from my club level seat on the 45 and couldn't believe how in my lifetime, I've seen this activity move from some dorky marching "thing," to art. It's art that is unmistakable and remarkable.I teared up watching the Blue Devils and reveled in the awe inspiring works of friends I once shared a field with back somewhere in the 90's in the bug filled, heat driven madness of the Midwest. 

During my DCI weekends in San Antonio and Atlanta, I had many a cocktail with great people and long time friends. The meetings were random and they were special.

The absolute randomness of the moment with friends, which create those moments that you know will never happen again. The ones between friends. The deep conversations and random acts of hugs and touch that occur during the unplanned laughter over a glass of wine and the intimate conversations about our lives. It seems that the older we get, the fewer those moments appear, but the more special they seem. It's in those moments when we fear to say, "I'm so tired, but I have to go to sleep now." Knowing once that sleep comes, we will wake up to the monotony we call our lives. Drum Corps weekends give me that randomness and lately in life...I need it. It's those friends you see on a concourse headed to their seat that has your history. They know your past. They know you.

Time. 

To live in the moment is probably the greatest lesson drum corps ever taught me. There is no tomorrow and there is no yesterday as you stand staring into the the sea of a thousand faces with your head lifted waiting for the momentous words "you may take the field." It's in that moment when you know you're alive, feeling your heart beat as if its on the outside of your chest. Of course today, they don't tell the performers to take the field, but it's still there. It's whispered in the air to those of us who lived this activity many years ago. Its a brief moment of silence while the performer waits for the announcements to stop and the music to start. It's the stillness that tells you that you are alive and living, while you wait to give your all to thousands. There were approximately 18,000 attendees in Atlanta watching young people give their all and the only thing I felt for them was love.

I watched two young performers tonight walk in front of me on the concourse of the Georgia Dome. They were wearing their corps jackets with shorts, sandals and a tan that screamed Iowa, Illinois, and every other mid western marching field in the middle of nowhere. They must have been just a mere 18 years old. I wanted to walk over to them and beg them to hold on to this. Love it and get to know every soul on that field you march with, because one day life will take hold. The jacket will be tucked away in a box somewhere and the Midwest tan will be just a memory. I wanted to tell them that they will find that in life, they will have to pay hefty bills to the debtor known as career, spouse, children, and time. I wanted to reach out to them and touch time. I wanted to say that one day, many years down the road, they will watch as their parents age and die. I wanted to tell them that they will go broke at some point and that their heart will get broken multiple times as they struggle day to day to find meaning and purpose in this thing we call life. I wanted to hold them and say, "You were beautiful on that field today." I wanted to hold on to them like they were a time capsule whisking me away to a moment in the early 90's when I heard the words, "You may take the field." I wanted to know if their heart raced like mine did and if the feeling of performance has remained unchanged with the art that has developed throughout time. I wanted to tell them to remember the silence of the seconds between when then announcer's voice ended and drum major's hands lifted into the air to signal the start of a memory.

So as I give one last hug to life long friends and look back to see them move off into the distance, here at the end of my two weekends of drum corps, I am reminded of my moments on the field of pageantry. Those moments however, were almost a quarter century ago and as in life those moments are gone; tucked away as a part of my soul. I carry them with me, though. I carry every person, every laugh, every tear, every hug, and every kiss into the hard moments of life. They get me through. The friends and lovers are why we live and why we keep coming back for those moments of silence within the hugs.

It's love. No matter what corps, band, or guard you marched in, it's love. I get it now. We search so hard for love in our lifetimes, but we were given such a gift within the marching arts and that gift is love. We are so lucky! One day many days in the past, each one of us woke up to some random act of universal madness and found that our destiny's would be found on some football field in a corn pasture in Iowa. We woke up to love and what I have found is that it's the only love that personally...has been unchanged and has gone unwaivered. When life got hard, it was the friendships that existed in the Atlanta's and the Georgia Dome's that have kept me going. It's those friendships that remind me to live as Federico Fellini once said...spherically and with wild abandon. 

My wish is that we carry that palpable feeling of "you may take the field" with us throughout time. When life gives us those life changing moments when we don't really know they are life changing until time has passed into the distance, then years later we can truly say we lived and in the end we will say that the greatest gift the universe handed us was the gift of now, when we stood upon the drum corps field and heard the words "you may take the field." Because as it is in life...there is no tomorrow and there is no yesterday. There is only now and regardless of tomorrow it is now that matters and now that is real. You know, all the hours of life add up. I'm just happy mine adds up to the love I found in the pageantry arts. 

The Intoxicating Aroma Called Drum Corps

DCI Atlanta has come and gone. For those of us in the most southern parts of the United States, it’s the only chance we get to see live drum corps without a significant amount of expense and travel. For those of us in Florida, we long for the days when DCI finals was in our back yard of Orlando. We miss shows that use to be in Clearwater, Daytona, and Miami. The times have changed, though. For most of us down here in the alligator swamp land, we only get the one show in Atlanta. We get the corps as they are starting the finishing touches headed into the push for Indy. By the time we see the shows live, we have already watched them on our computers and the big screen. Nothing is truly “shocking” by the time you get to the last weekend in July. 

Saturday night as I sat in the Georgia Dome, a place I’ve watched my share of the marching arts, between BOA and DCI (and in one exciting instance the SEC Championship), it occurred to me that it had been four years since I had seen a live DCI event. It wasn’t out of a lack of interest, but a weekend that unfortunately falls traditionally on a busy work week for me. This year, I made the decision back in May that I would go to Atlanta and figure all the work stuff out later. I’m not sure I went because of a thirst for live drum corps, as much as it was the thirst to see old friends. Regardless of the reason, I went. 

Seeing old friends all along the journey from the moment I checked into the hotel, to the first cocktail among the randomness of the activity, and even at a gas station in the middle of nowhere Georgia at 11 at night, made the reason I attended immediately apparent.  Before I even made it inside the dome I was having a true drum corps experience. To me though, it wasn't very different than a weekend at WGI or BOA. Friends, cocktails, laughs, and memories make up any one of our many activities of pageantry. It wasn’t until I stepped on to the big escalator heading down to the entrance of the Georgia Dome when I got my first scent of drum corps. It was sun screen. It was the smell of sunscreen. The escalator was packed full of people and somewhere in the midst of the eager drum corps fans I got a whiff of sunscreen. Living in Florida this isn’t a scent unfamiliar to me, but there was something about that smell of coconut that brought my senses to life. Research has shown that smell is the most significant memory trigger out of all five of the senses. In an instance, I was transported back to summer days on a practice field in the middle of some no name town in the midwest. I was 20 again and I could taste the smell of drum corps. The smell of drum corps woke me up to a journey I made a lifetime ago.

All of a sudden, all around me were people wearing drum corps jackets in 95 degree heat…a tradition I never could understand, but none the less, there it was. There were people in tee shirts representing drum corps of days long ago. Drum Corps I had never heard of were still being represented. There were the hordes of marching band kids standing with the band moms, having just finished a week of band camp. There were the girls who follow the Cavalier boys around and there were the old timers in heated debates trying to make sense of an activity that has left them behind. After four years of being gone, it was clear that nothing had changed. As I approached my seat in the dome, I felt alive again. I felt alive in a way that I hadn’t in quite some time. I watched corps after corps, having strong opinions about what was occurring on the field below. I would turn to friends between corps and debate what we saw. No one ever agreed with each other.

"I loved that. Did you see that moment when...?"

"Girl please. It was trite." 

Even the debates had been stalled in time. 

It wasn’t’ until a shot on the Jumbotron above showed a guard member performing her heart out. Her face was sweating and her eyes had a look that drew me in to a world that was once mine. Her eyes were sunburned right below the line to wear she clearly wore sun glasses. It was that red burn mark that you get when you consistently forget to put sunscreen on. It was the mark of a summer spent rehearsing in places like Lisbon, Iowa and Elko, Nevada; places no person in their right mind would ever go to on their own. Her eyes brought me back. It was intoxicating. It was visceral.

For a moment in time, she was me. Twenty some odd years have gone by and I could still feel the soul of the performance. I could feel her. I could feel the adrenaline that raced through her body and the thrill of performance. My pulse raised with her and for a brief moment we were one. The performer and audience member became one as if time had stood still like a caricature of the never changing times called drum corps. I realized then that the shows might evolve (thank God) and the criteria they are judged against might change, but the activity remains just an amalgam of all of us who stood on that field with a painful sunburn.  Fans still bought their favorite corps tee shirt. People still rose to their feet when they witnessed something incredible and the crowd roared when their faces got blown off by a wall of sound. 

Nothing had changed. 

Later in the bar, there were complaints about the judges and the old curmudgeons grappled with shows that just seemed a bit too “artsy.” For me? I just drank my cocktail. Things hadn’t changed, because the cocktail conversation was still just a part of the culture as the corps were and the cocktails were still the same. Drum Corps was still the same. We were still the same. The passage of time might have changed what we see, but it hasn’t changed who we are and for that I’ll be back.

When I got home, I went into the garage and took out something that had been in a box for twenty years. I opened the box and removed my old corps jacket that had been folded neatly with my memories from so long ago and placed in the past. I held it up, with my name embroidered on one side and “colorguard” embroidered on the other and I took a deep breath. With the touch of the jacket and the fragrance of old times, it was 1990 again. I could smell the bus fumes and years spent passing through no name towns. I remembered friendships formed in the battle of victory and defeat and could taste the bad food and feel the long hot summer days. Mostly though, I could smell the sunscreen and thought about that young performer on the field Saturday night as she pushes through to the end and hoped she could feel the echos of the past through an old drum corps guard girl sitting in the stands enjoying the moment with her.

When The Sun Sets On The Field In Bloomington

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.” 
― Yoko Ono


It's drum corps season again. While the city of Dayton says goodnight to another year of indoor pageantry, an entire activity opens its doors to planning, training, and designing. One season ends and another begins. From winter we move to summer; from winter guard we move to drum corps. It's been this way for decades. It's what we know and it is how we live with this activity of ours that we call pageantry.

I was one of the fortunate ones. I was lucky and I can say that without a doubt, drum corps is the activity that made me who I am today. My strength, commitment to excellence, and refusal to never quit was shaped on the hot field of drum corp and specifically on the field in Bloomington.  Drum Corps was such a powerful force, that years later when I entered the Navy and went to boot camp; it was drum corps that gave me the strength to manage everything the United States military threw at me. It was drum corps that taught me how to use my mind to manage the physical, emotional, and mental challenges that is asked of you not just in the military, but in life as well. It was boot camp though, that made me realize how powerful of a force drum corps was, because as people would cry and struggle through the pain, I didn't. I took whatever was thrown at me and was quickly able to realize what was real and what was a game. There were multiple moments at boot camp where a member of my division would pass out because of exhaustion. In my mind, I would simply say, "Please. We've only been standing here 5 minutes." Having done both, I can look at it now and emphatically say that there isn't much difference between the two. Both require its participants to have personal discipline and the ability to manage anything that is asked of them, no matter how difficult. Both require teamwork and an understanding that it is only with the team that the highest of goals are achieved. Sleep is practically an afterthought as you exist on the lowest rung of Maslow's Hierarchy, until YOU make the choice to start climbing the ladder of self-love, self-esteem, and finally self-actualization.

I marched with the Star of Indiana for 2 summers...1990 and 1991. When I auditioned for Star I had almost no grasp of the activity I was auditioning for and absolutely no idea of the journey I was about to embark upon. So I titled this post, "When The Sun Sets On The Field In Bloomington," because  it is the setting sun that helped create the person I am today.  I remember summer days that seemed like they were never going to end. I remember sectionals with the guard where we never saw the rest of the corps until after dinner and when the entire corps met for ensemble rehearsals, I would just pray I could remember everything taught to me that day so I wouldn't get yelled at in front of 100 plus people. Into the night we carried our sunburns from the day. We were sore and tired. Our bodies were exhausted and our minds on auto pilot. You could smell the lingering sun screen mixed with sweat as a staff member up top utter the words, "Again." We had fought with bugs that at the time seemed like the size of rats, and what we looked forward to our few piddly hours in a sleeping bag on the floor...THE FLOOR! (At least at boot camp we got beds.) But damnit...we loved it, even through the silent tears and that single prayer asking for the ability to get through to another day.

Talking about it makes it seem like it was torture. Who in their right mind pays to deliberately run around a football field in places like Lisbon, Iowa in the hot summer heat spinning a flag?  What about the rain? What about showers? Those questions have been asked to every person who ever participated in a drum corps and everyone I know answers the questions differently. Many people say that it was all worth it because of the shows, the friends, and the crowds. Many talk about the travel and the hilarity of moments on a bus late at night.  All of those answers are true and very real, but I don't talk about any of that. I talk about something different. I always talk about the sun and how it would go down as we stood on the field looking up at our staff guide us to perfection. I tell people about the nighttime dew and how it would start to gather on the grass and how our flags laying in wait on the sidelines would gather a bit of moisture and we would get just a little cold because of our sunburns. It was at that time when performers would grab their corps jackets from their bags to wear for warmth, but mostly to wear for pride. That was the time when I loved drum corps the most. You could feel a sense of accomplishment as the clock ticked toward the end of a long day. There was a sense of camaraderie that didn't exist during the hot peak of the day and it was at night when a performer seems to come to grips with the personal demons they faced throughout the day and sometimes even, the demons living inside their spirit. It was the setting sun that made the weary performer believe in herself.

I loved sunset in Bloomington. I loved that feeling you get after a hard day of work, knowing that each moment is just one tiny thread of an entire seasons accomplishments. I loved seeing the entire staff come together and work in perfect harmony to give us a product we could be proud of. I loved more than anything getting to see how my little piece of the puzzle fit with the bigger picture.




It was when the sun went down, when a performer starts to realize how drum corps is really a microcosm of the bigger picture of life. It was at night when I felt the most in touch with my fellow performers as well as myself. It was the night time rehearsals when we came together as a team and as we pushed each other and told each other that yes, we can do it one more time. When your body was giving out from exhaustion, it was the members on the field who helped you find your strength to manage the final run through. Watching the sun go down in Bloomington was when I felt most alive and most in touch with life's rhythm. It is truly what I miss the most and I would do anything to stand on that field looking out into the setting sun as I held my flag awaiting the next instruction.

There is nothing like drum corps and no final placement or score would have ever changed that feeling the sun gave me as it fell below the earth every night behind the voices of our staff. I wish every performer this season a wonderful experience. I hope you realize the strength that exists inside you and inside the person marching next to you. I hope you realize that whatever happens to you this summer, will make you an amazing person to know 20 years from now. Because of drum corps, you will be the person people want to work with and hang out with. Because of drum corps, you will find you are some of the most interesting people in the room. Something years from now will happen to you that will test your strength and possibly your will to go on. It will happen. Life will slip up on you and test you in ways you can't imagine right now. Know this, though. When that day comes it will be the spirit of drum corps that will get you through it.  More than anything, I hope that wherever you are, you find your practice field sunset and recognize its beauty and know that its beauty exists inside of you.