Energies: At Rest (A Photo Tribute to Marching Bands, Part IV)

The fourth and final part of this photographic celebration of high school marching bands isn’t potential or kinetic or unusual.

It’s the end of the show.

The awards ceremonies.

Whole bands sitting in the stands, cheering the winners’ exhibition performance in a display of sportsmanship we probably ought not take for granted.

It’s the entire extended band family bidding farewell to two Millers after thirty amazing years.

Starting tomorrow, for several consecutive weeks, it will all happen again. Some of the same youth and lots of new ones will perform new shows for the first time in competition — and, too soon, for the last time.

Another year of work and discipline. Another season of beauty and grace.

It’s one of the world’s goods.

At Rest

American Fork High School Marching Band

Energies: Unusual (A Photo Tribute to Marching Bands, Part III)

A cello

Part III of my happy photo essay features more images from last fall’s state and regional high school marching band competitions in St. George, Utah. In Part I the energy was potential; things were about to happen. In Part II it was kinetic. Things were moving, happening.

Here the energy is . . . unusual. You’ll see things you might see every day somewhere else — but not in a marching band field show. Are you ready?

Unusual

USS Arizona Memorial
USS Arizona Memorial

Energies: Kinetic (A Photo Tribute to Marching Bands, Part II)

Here is Part II of my amateur photo essay, with more images from last fall’s state and regional high school marching band competitions in St. George, Utah.

In Part I the energy was potential; things were about to happen. Here, it’s kinetic. They’re happening.

As before, I know only some of the bands and a few of the individuals’ names, so I name none of them. You’re welcome to help me identify them, of course. The American Fork High School Band gets a disproportionate share of my attention here, but I am unapologetic.

Speaking of American Fork, how about the altitude on that jump? (You’ll know it when you see it.)

There’s a public service announcement at the end of this part. Thanks for reading it.

Part III is coming soon.

Kinetic

high school marching band

Energies: Potential (A Photo Tribute to Marching Bands, Part I)

Introduction — and My Marching Band Withdrawal

After four years with a mellophone player in the American Fork High School Marching Band, our household is marching band-free. For me there are some withdrawal pangs.

In those four years I visited band camp a few times; made a feature-length documentary about the band and a shorter video tribute to a retiring director, John Miller; dabbled at social media; wrote press releases, blog posts, and newspaper features; edited others’ newspaper columns about the marching band experience; and attended one competition after another.

I worked with parents and other boosters, directors, and staff from print and broadcast media outlets. I even sent the trumpet I played through my first year of college to Grand Nationals and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, to be played, of course, by someone much younger.

Along the way I met more fine people than I can count — and not just band students. Virtually everyone I met seemed to know what I tried to remember throughout: We weren’t the story. The story was — is — the kids, their music, their show.

I am not a photographer, as you will quickly see, but I snapped some photos along the way. Here are a few from state and regional competitions in St. George, Utah, last fall. I offer them to help us get in the mood for marching band, if we’re not already, and perhaps also to relieve my withdrawal symptoms.

The Gift of Marching Band

American Fork

I’m driving south to St. George, Utah, today for my middle son’s last two competitions as a member of the American Fork High School Marching Band. If my youngest son doesn’t change his mind in the next few years, this will be my last weekend with a child competing in the marching band.

Today is the Red Rocks Invitational, which is also the Utah state championship. Tomorrow is the Bands of America Western Regional, which draws fine bands from Utah and other western states, including California.

These are also John Miller’s last two marching band competitions before he retires next spring, after 30 years as Director of Bands at AFHS.

And last week at Pleasant Grove High School, the AFHS Marching Band hosted the final competition of the regular season, the Mt. Timpanogos Marching Band Competition, where over 3,000 students in 43 bands gathered from schools in Utah and Idaho.

All these lasts and possible lasts inspire some thoughts.

Psychosis

I find band parent Mark Standing on the highest row of the stands at Pleasant Grove High School’s football stadium. He and I work with a few others on the American Fork High School Band Booster Publicity Committee, feeding press releases, stories, and commentary to print and broadcast media. We’re at the Mt. Timpanogos Marching Band Competition, so we’re technically working, but it’s that rare sort of work they must mean when they say, “Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Regrettably, we can’t support our families at this; it pays exactly 100% less than our day jobs.

a band at Mt Timp Mark gestures toward the blanket next to him and says, “She’ll be back in a few minutes. She’s from Sky View, and she says she’s a psychotic band mom.”

I am not a mental health specialist, but I understand that psychosis is a disorder in which one becomes detached from external reality.

I look forward to her return for three reasons. Sky View is my second-favorite Utah high school marching band, after my own American Fork. Band moms are dizzyingly high on the coolness meter. And I have some long-standing grievances with reality generally.

The Big, Thumping Heart of American Fork

In November, when the American Fork High School Marching Band was in Indianapolis for Grand Nationals, I wrote something that made lots of band moms cry. Apparently, it did the same for some of the band dads, too — presumably, the ones who are secure in their masculinity. There are three published versions: the original, an edited and dramatically condensed version in a local online newspaper, and this one, which is my favorite.

I was honored by an invitation to speak for a few minutes at the band’s season-ending dinner several days later, so I turned the essay into a speech. It shows the passage of a few days, the shift in audience from the community to the band itself, and some of the things we do differently when writing for the ear instead of the eye. Here it is, approximately as I delivered it to a gracious, youthful audience of champions.

(This was originally published at my old blog, LocalCommentary.com, on November 22, 2013.)

I am well aware that no one in the room tonight has contributed less to the wonderfully successful season you are celebrating tonight than I have. I’m honored to be here with you tonight to say to you, face to face, that the American Fork High School Marching Band is the big, thumping heart of American Fork, Utah.

We marvel at how long and hard you work. Then you work harder and longer.

We rejoice at how good you look. Then you find ways to look better.

And your sound . . . Much as we all adore the color guard, your sound is my favorite part of every show. Your sound teaches us why we have bands at all.

The trumpet I played when I was in school went to Grand Nationals last week with one of you, which is a happy thought for me. I loved playing the trumpet, but I didn’t love marching band. I didn’t even like marching band. Only in recent years have I acquired the taste. I can tell you exactly when it happened. It was the moment when I comprehended how much this band means to this community.

True, the city is full of current and former band members and their families, and most people in American Fork at least have a neighbor who is somehow connected to the band. But what’s happening here is bigger than that. Even people with no personal connection to the band or the school, and with little interest in band music, are somehow drawn into a remarkable world.

How remarkable? I don’t want to sound condescending, but I want to say that the world you have created is more remarkable than you realize. You can sit in the stadium at a competition – I have done this – near the bands American Fork routinely defeats, and hear drum majors telling their bands, “Be sure to be back here in time to cheer for American Fork. They always cheer for us.” Maybe that sounds like a small thing. It is not a small thing.

I wish I could have been in Indianapolis to see you perform. As it was, a lot of people gathered here to watch the live video feeds. You never saw a happier or prouder audience.

Just being good enough to be at Grand Nationals this year or any year was a triumph. Performing well in the preliminary round was another. Giving the best performance of the season in your last performance, which happened to be in the semifinals, was a crowning triumph, even if we all hoped you’d get to perform one more time. Leaving it all on the field or the stage or the court is just about as good as it gets in music or theater or sports. I can’t say I didn’t care where you placed last weekend, but it doesn’t matter much in the grander scheme of things. I value much more what you had already won – or, in other words, what you had already seen and learned, and what you became in the process.

You learned by experience how much harder it is to be excellent than merely good. You learned first-hand, before you ever went to Indianapolis, to pay the even higher price of being great at something, which you are. You learned how to be a team, and how to perfect hundreds of individual performances and knit them into something spectacular and intricate and beautiful.

Your morale and unity are enviable. You’d think that all the winning might make you insufferably proud, but you’ve learned to take success gracefully. You win, then you come home and work harder. And somehow you still walk from place to place, instead of strutting.

We might call the price of these lessons great sacrifice, but you in the band and we parents and neighbors get so much back for the work, the time, the money, and the enthusiasm we invest, that I’m not sure sacrifice is the right word. Besides that, we still remember too clearly that, four years ago, at milepost 49 south of Pocatello, there was a great sacrifice: the life of a teacher for the lives of some of her students. The seniors in this year’s band were only in eighth grade then, but I have heard the name Heather Christensen quietly on the lips of students and parents alike, this season. Long may it be thus.

I happened to see milepost 49 twice last weekend. There’s really nothing for me to do there but keep driving and remember someone I didn’t really know and an incident I’m glad I didn’t see. So that’s what I did. But back to the present.

I join the community in saying: Thank you. You make us proud. You honor your predecessors, your teachers, your families, your neighbors, your school, and your city. You have honored the sacrifice at milepost 49 – not so much by your many victories, but by higher things, for which we usually do not give trophies.

In a world which sometimes seems designed to obscure the best, most hopeful, and most lasting things – such as grace and courage and loyalty and excellence – you have found and embraced them, pulled them from their hiding places, and placed them squarely in front of the rest of us, where we cannot help but see and remember and rejoice. That is a greater gift to the larger community outside the band than you could possibly know from your honored place inside the band.

One more thing. Not only have you done this crucial thing for us. You have done it beautifully.

Thank you.