Notes from Steve
Last night my band played up in Clear Lake, Iowa. It was an outdoor event - cool vibes, fires going, people having a good time. This has been repeated in a lot of different forms over the past couple of months. Not always with my band, but always a collection of people enjoying each other’s company in cool, vibey settings. I’m not sure I always see this. Sometimes, I think I’m just checking off the boxes in life - looking to the next thing, the next thing, and the thing after that without appreciating what’s directly in front of me. I feel bad for the people who considered going and then didn’t; they missed an amazing evening.
For a lot of my life, I was in a handbell choir (not for the last 40 years). I don’t say this much because it’s like playing the accordion or reading math books for fun … but I did it, and I think it was good for my development. You can’t solo as a bell ringer - pretty much you have to blend in well and have great timing. The bell choir I played in at the University of Iowa was made up of music majors and serious musicians… and then there was me. A business major, frat boy who liked to party and joke around. But - the music we performed was very cool jazz standards and deep classical pieces. I learned a lot.*
I think about this a lot when approaching things that don’t necessarily fit my profile.** I think when we put ourselves fully into whatever we are doing without regard to our unrealized fears, we expand who we are as a human. Who would I be today if I hadn’t tried things that made me initially uncomfortable? A boring, miserable human reading math books for fun, probably.
*Have you ever heard of change ringing? It’s usually practiced in England on ring towers, and it’s a weird mathematical thing (going up and down the musical scale). It doesn’t sound like anything in particular, but it’s an exercise that forces the marriage of math theory with music theory. It’s like Dungeons and Dragons with handbells.
**Will I learn something or have fun or not perish?
