The Night After the Day Before

This is a very odd, very emotionally charged day.

It happens every year, like clockwork. I think I can ignore it, that after all these years of awareness it would lose its meaning, its strength - but it hasn't happened yet.

I don't think it ever will.

Last night, in Indianapolis, at Lucas Oil Stadium - colloquially known as "The Oil Can" - my old drum and bugle corps, the Blue Devils of Concord, CA won their 15th Drum Corps International World Championship.

The scores are shown.

In one respect it's simply "a marching band on steroids", the descendant of veteran's patriotic marching groups after the world wars, now run as 501(c)3 non-profit youth arts organizations.

In another it's a musical group using a football field for a stage, exploring performance mediums. giving students a chance to perform at the highest levels of achievement and communication possible. The sound of a good hornline is visceral, stunning, almost painfully powerful. Drums and melodic percussion are precise, explosive, subtle and expressive. Flags and rifles are balletic, colorful, exact and emotional.

My closeup, courtesy PBS

My major experience came in the Summer of 1977. I performed as a "rook-out", a rookie age-out, 21 being the top year of eligibility. My association with the Blue Devils came by chance a year before at the first National Marching Band championship through connections.

I picked the right group - we had an almost undefeated season (only being beaten in one prelim show when half of us were dizzy with stomach flu - we came back that night to annihilate the competition).

Years later, in the 80's, just out of grad school I spent Summers driving a truck and managing the logistics of equipment - getting things fixed, loading and unloading the massive truck (still in use today) and helping get a circus down the road.

This was a task I repeated in 2001 when the corps came East for a tour up the coast from Georgia to Disney World and thence all the way up to Beverly, MA, where I got a ride home.

It's where I also slipped off the loading table for the rented Penske truck - shown - and cleanly snapped my right ACL. The nice young doctor at Disney World wrapped it (also shown) and now it twinges and stiffens if I don't use it, reminding me of my trip.

My trip, literally....

Especially during my equipment manager years I was keenly aware of what the day after Finals meant. I packed the corps up carefully, took an exacting inventory, locked the truck, gave my keys to the manager - usually Mike Moxley, the only man I allow to call me "Jimmy".

Then, along with other people traveling home from wherever the Championships were held - Madison, WI, Kansas City, KS, Miami, FL, - I would be dropped at the local airport.

As the day after Finals progressed - often blending gracelessly over from the night OF Finals - you could feel the cohesion of this amazing group of fellow performers begin to erode. People were saying goodbye, some aging out, never to return as Marching Members - we're all Former Marching Members, you stay a Blue Devil for life. Others were planning their work for the next year, intent on auditioning again, because, even if we lost, there just wasn't anywhere better to go to than the Blue Devils.

Or so it seemed to me. But I'm prejudiced.

Airports were full of kids - many in corps jackets, chatting each other up, playing cards in the boarding lounges. In the local airport they were no longer part of their corps, but, waiting for their flights, they were still members of an inclusive community, having shared the sacrifices of money, time and energy it took to belong to a corps of any level, having shared the pain and sweat of countless hours of rehearsal, individual practice and work.

All of them sharing the ideal of a perfect performance, complete and total commitment to excellence for a 13 minute show.

And now, as we dispersed to destinations, to hub airports, as we made connections that made us lose connections, we all became travelers lost in the crowds. As I flew further away I would crane my neck to look for a corps jacket, the super-tanned face above it smiling, grateful for air conditioning, fast food and the goal of a soft bed and family to rejoin, a band camp to tolerate, college to attend.

That's what this day is. I always feel it as the end of Summer; a transition, a magical, melancholy, magnificent space where one thing ends and another has yet to begin. You look back and know that this morning you woke on a gym floor surrounded by friends, tomorrow you'll wake up in your own bed and no one is around to tell you what to do.

Except the voice inside, the voice that tells you that after you've had your rest you can get up and do anything, anything you set your mind - no, anything you set your mind and heart - to.

And, if it all goes well, there will always be the roar of horns, the thunder of drums, the snap of flags and the certain knowledge that there are people in the world who get it, in the darkest, loneliest times to come, you know there are people out there like you, who know what being totally alive really means - if only for 13 minutes.

Play your cards right - it could last a lifetime and a half.

Portland, Maine