A Madonna song? Who knew?

I hit replay on the lead track from the new album I just downloaded. It opens with a powerful brass line and screams attitude. The instrumentation I'm hearing probably came from a synthesizer, not a real brass section, but I can't help imagining how great it would be to put a horn to my lips and unleash that sound from the other end. I know it's a ridiculous proposition, but "4 minutes" would make great marching band music. It's just nasty. Imagine that sound coming down the street per force of musicians in tight lines and crisp uniforms. Yeah, watch out. Here come the band geeks.

Marching band is where I learned to put up with just about anything. Hot day in a wool uniform and dark colored hat? Drink lots of water. Carrying heavy horn? Part of the deal of being a musician. Belt a song out at the top of your lungs while maintaining alignment? Hell, I've got good pipes. It's not like we're in Africa and starving. I can do this. Besides, not taking a musical instrument is just not an option in my family. In my third of six years in marching band we started holding our french horns differently, so that the bell was up in the air and the sound went straight out toward the spectators and, of course, the judges. I started being positioned on the right end of the row so that mine would be one of the louder sounds they got.

And they did hear it. After the spring competitions our band leader started showing me he adjudicator's sheets of written notes. "Look, see? he said 'nice job french horn'!" I didn't think that meant me. There's lots of things euphemistically called 'horn' in the ass-end of a marching band. I didn't imagine the sound we made was in anyway comprehensible. But we started winning competitions. We got darn good. Where once the adjudicator's audio taped comments were a walk of shame, we started listening to them with, well, less dread. The director would nudge me when there was a compliment about the horn playing. He kept trying to get me to accept compliments, but I was a teenager and this was far too embarrassing.

For some reason I hit replay on this song again, addictive personality maybe, and the visual hits me. I've always remembered marching band through a veil of sweat dripping down into my eyes. But now I get a glimpse of what that horn player must have looked like. She's wearing a uniform meant to play on the style of late nineteenth century military dress uniforms. There's a double row of brass buttons down the front, decoration at the waist and wrists, gold ropes on the shoulders, thick stripes down the sides of the pant legs. But the colors don't suit the period style. The trim on the jacket is purple, as are the hats, and the stripe going down the sides of the pants is a mustard yellow. She looks like soldier out to guard a nation of the color blind. And there's my silver colored horn in the air with the loudest sound blasting out of it. Oh yeah, she's got a tough set of pipes in her chest.

And just then my visual is interrupted by the sensation that something has just stepped on my spleen in a chunky heeled shoe. I'm having a feeling and bust out crying with no clue as to why. Did I loose hold of some vital life line when I sold my horn for gas money to move to Chicago? Was it suddenly remembering that I put up with marching band because Dad demanded that we have a musical education? Was it suddenly remembering who I would have inherited the tough set of lungs from? Was I seeing how I looked to my dad, standing beside the road, and getting a taste of what he felt at that moment? What's bundled up in this rush? Fear? Hope? Pride?