Like Playing a Flute

   

Photo by Rajesh Kavasseri on Unsplash

  Music has been on my mind a lot recently. My mom was teasing me the other day about how I never performed all the songs from Phantom of the Opera like I promised. I immediately started turning red, thinking about my poor Yamaha stowed away in the back of my closet, where all half-forgotten hobbies slumber.

After that phone call, I looked into the opaque darkness of my closet. I still haven’t installed lights like I intended, and this space benefits from little natural light. 

I plunge my hand into the back, feeling along the rough plaster wall. There’s an old fold up table I still haven’t given my dad, a red dress I thought the washers ate, a box of embroidery threads that also fills me with guilt, and finally the bumpy plastic of my flute’s case. I grope along until I find the handle of the case and pull it out. 

It looks nearly identical to how it did when my parents bought it for me nearly 8 years ago. It has the soft, almost glowing shine of a silver-nickel alloy, in contrast to the tinny and dull nickel flute I started out on in middle school. The metal is unscratched, a pleasant bonus for a flute that was bought secondhand. 

The sight is not completely unfamiliar. I have pulled it out occasionally throughout the years, when I have thought it wouldn’t be such a bother to my roommates or apartment mates for me to pipe out a few notes, and to take it in for maintenance. It’s probably due for another check up even now. I tend to get discouraged easily with this instrument, never having felt like I have a great deal of natural musicality or practiced discipline.

Still, I pull it together again, the three silver pieces smoothly sliding into each other. I put the head up to my eye, like looking through a telescope, to make sure the keys and mouthpiece are aligned. Unable to put it off any longer, I set my fingers on the keys. I know people talk about some skills being like learning to ride a bike, but I was never very comfortable on a bike. But on the flute, my fingers pay no heed to my overthinking. I purse the edges of my lips, adjusting my lip’s position over the lip of the mouthpiece, and conscious of my diaphragm for the first time in a long time, expand my lungs from the bottom to the top. I finally blow out a note, B flat of course, my one true love. I hate it. I hate the sound so much.

Beyond musicality, discipline, and overthinking, lies self-consciousness. I never enjoyed the sound of my own performances. The notes have always sounded too grimy to my ear when I’m the one making them. I can hear the imperfect embouchure of my lips, the inconsistent support in my diaphragm, the hint of spit that all flutists must contend with. 

It helps to record myself sometimes. When I replay it, I can hear what I already intellectually know: it isn’t that bad. 

My tone is deep–for a flute– mostly in-tune, full, and mostly controlled. My legatos are in fact legato, with only the fainting hint of a stop between notes. But it’s hard to remember this as I stop listening through the medium of a phone app. Your own ear is the most dispassionate, unforgiving critic.  As the flute reverberates between my fingertips my ear hears whiny, screeching, and grating, too sharp and too flat in turns.

I found some will to continue. Long notes, arpeggios, scales all felt like finding an old friend again. I put on the metronome to 80 bpm and started sight reading “Think of Me.” I immediately found a few phrases to work on over and over. By the time I decided I was temporarily satisfied, my arms were ridiculously sore from such minimal exercise, and I could feel a mild headache coming on.

But the practice was so fun. It was challenging in a way that felt manageable and lighthearted. I know I’m going to pick up the flute again sometime soon.

Once I forget how sore my arms were the next day.

I don’t know that I’ll ever really enjoy playing the flute the way I did when I started out. There is too much passion that faded away a long time ago. And like many of my other hobbies, I’ll probably forget about it again for a few months.

But it is wondrous to know there is still some joy to be found here.