I remember when teaching at my first
school I used to unwind by tooting my trumpet in the evenings outside my rented
room. There were a lot of rice fields behind the house. I felt I would not be disturbing anyone when
I blew over the large expanse of swaying, breeze-blown padi stalks.
A colleague took exception to my trumpet-playing,
though. He would often snigger and make disparaging remarks as he pranced around
me, mimicking my tooting. He taunted me as a sissy for wasting my time on an
instrument that he deemed too easy to play. I would just ignore him while I
blared out a few haunting tunes into the coming dusk of the evenings.
However, after a particularly taxing day
as I was trying to unwind on the trumpet, he came on at me. I could not take it
anymore and I dared him to play on it.
He snatched the trumpet from my hands and
started to blow hard on it but nothing came out of it. He puffed as hard as he
could, ballooning up his cheeks and turning red in the face. I thought he was
going to move his bowels, but, fortunately, he did not. He could not toot any sound
from the trumpet. There was only the splattering sound of his saliva. Finally,
he gave up. From that day onwards, he stopped teasing me. I guess he realized
it was not that easy playing a trumpet.
ltbs
I
haven’t understood a bar of music in my life but I have felt it.
Igor
Stravinsky
