Beep Beep Beep Beep. The piercing siren of my alarm clock jars me awake. It’s still dark, and I stumble around my room trying to turn it off. I can’t believe it’s even morning yet. It doesn’t feel like morning. I am between time, in some place where nothing stops or starts, where no one moves or thinks. I turn the water in the tub as cold as it will go. As I reluctantly place my head beneath the faucet, all my drunkenness is washed away. A few thoughts later beneath the water and I am still hungover, but that is how it should be on Saturday game day. My mind is mud, so I stand in front of the mirror for a few minutes. Focus. Focus. Focus, I say to myself slowly and assuredly. Today is going to be a great day. I grab my trumpet and my keys and hop on my bicycle. As I ride to Mickey’s to meet my best friends for breakfast, the city is quiet. There is a glow coming from the street lights. I become entranced and ride down the middle of the street. Riding in a straight line is difficult this early. The wind cuts right through my jacket. It feels so good, and I can feel my legs pumping hard as I ride up the hill. I am still beat from yesterday’s practice and all the drinking, but the wind, it feels so good.
I hitch my bike up to the old red picnic table next to the old time dairy bar. The door jingles as I step in, and a waitress walks by and smiles, ‘Good morning!’ I take my usual seat on the stool at the high table next to the window. I can see the stadium across the way and I get a chill all down my back. Soon everyone arrives. We don’t have to say much because we just spent rank dinner together the night before. You can tell which moment someone is remembering by the way they smile. When we threw beer cans at Jared. When Nate yelled, ‘Do you know Jackie Chan?’ at a suddenly baffled Asian in the street. When Nate said, ‘I’ll get it down to here!’ and then did. Any space between us has come down in the anticipation of this day. We order our food and pick at the eggs, the greasy bacon, and down lots of water. It’s hard to eat when you can just taste the PBR right in your mouth, and when you can feel it still burning in your loins.
Another bike ride and we are at the practice field. A game of trumpet ball starts up. Running routes really helps limber up these old bones. I even manage to catch a pass. Suddenly the whistle blows. My heart skips a beat. I race across the field and grab my trumpet out of my case. Rachel yells at us, ‘It’s Saturday!’ as loud as she can. Katie used to do that. My heart is pumping like crazy now. I rip my pants and my shirt off and run out to my spot for attendance. Line Four baby. Our director Mike calls out, ‘Good morning, Elm Drive.’ I guess the only one to hear us this early is the city streets. As we play that chorale my whole body is shaking. The field is still frosted over, and there is a gray haze coming out of the east now. The lake waters look so calm. After the last note, my eyes meet Mike’s. He raises his hand towards me, and after a deep breath to steady my horn, I play the tuning note. Some people look over at me, and for one note, I feel important. Pretty soon everyone is ripping their shirts off, even though it’s freezing bitter cold outside. It takes a certain amount of crazy to make it in this band. We circle up and start hopping around on one leg and stretching our hips around. We get to the eighteenth jumping jack, and from our good friends across the way comes a long loud ‘Eighteeeeeeennnn.’ Their loud noises do not stop until we reach the 70th and last jumping jack. Rank 25 tackles our leader Chuck to the ground, and we line up again. Michael Stone tells me some bullshit about keeping my hand on my horn, and then it happens.
Drums. Drums, In the Deep. Penetrating and unrelenting, the Drums In the Deep. Boom….Boom Boom….Boom Boom Boom….and on, and on. But of course we fucked up the first run on. ‘Line it up,’ Mike screams, ‘Again! Again! We’ll go this time!’ Every week we run on to the field twice to start Saturday practice, and every time I give more than I think I can the second time. It is the level of respect Mike commands and gets from everyone in this band. Now it’s in to the downfield. ‘Stop at the top, stop at the top, stop at the top,’ I hear Mike crackling on the sound system. Get your game on, Madison! I think the whole city can hear him up there. I look up and he is standing right on the edge of that tower, no rail or nothing. We grab some water, take off some more clothes and line up for the halftime run through. I am in Line Four, and today I get to lead the front half of the rank onto the field. I jump up and down and kick my legs up high to get pumped. I look across the field and see our badass drum major wielding his mace. I will never forget his words before we stepped onto the field at the Rose Bowl, ‘Drive, Drive, Drive, ….And Never Forget.’ One long sounding of the whistle and four tweets in time, and it’s those drums again. I have goosebumps hearing them clear as day, even now. Our Marine gunnery sergeant turned field assistant yells out, ‘Let’s go people, less talky, more shut the hell uppy!’ with that classic sarcasm. Just ‘Do your job,’ that’s God damn right. This guy is all in. One time he got right in face, my first practice, freshman year, McClain Center, after my pitiful about face: ‘That was anemic,’ in a low, throaty stab he says. If I had to choose any moment those first weeks, that was the one I knew I wanted to be a part of this band. Before I know it, I am singing and smiling along to all the songs in our halftime show. ‘Bah-Bah-Bah-Ba-Barbara Ann, Bah-Bah-Bah-Ba-Barbara Ann!’ My rank leader is next to me singing ‘My Girl’ up the octave as loud as he can, and I can’t stop cracking up. I’m not harmonizing so well either, and neither are the other 225 people on the field with me. Keep singing and save those chops, boys, you’re going to need them for the main event. I think about how I want to thank Mike for introducing me to the wonder of all this music we play.
Now we are done running the halftime show, and we hurry back to grab a taste of cool water. Mike yells something, and I can’t even quite remember it now, what he says, but I’ve still got the feeling in my head. Because when he yells it I jump, I mean I jump over my trumpet case and sprint across the field. Everyone else is running everywhere and I nearly get t-boned by a trombone. Those drums are playing again and leading me on. The tubas take us through the downfield one more time, and everyone has their horns raised above their head. Like nothing can stop us, train city, bitch. As we march through the pregame routine, the field assistants are on our case like usual. But Garvey is just giving us that look, that old sly grin of his, like we earned our keep for the week. Just a little wink to kick off the celebration of another week’s grind. I talked to Garvey a few times here and there over the years, a joke or two between all the marching on the field, and he cared about us in a very special way. I remember when we realized we both ran the Milwaukee Marathon. That was pretty cool. Mike carries his ladder out to the middle of the field and blows his whistle. Everyone rushes around him into a big circle, trying to get a good spot. And man, it’s those drums, again. We jump up and down, ‘Go….Go Go….Go….Go Go.’ At least I think that is how it goes. I can’t believe it, my memory is already starting to go. Because we are in a circle, we can make eye contact. My whole body is literally steaming with sweat. I can’t see shit through my glasses because my face is so damn hot, and the sweat is burning in my eyes. I can feel the cool winter air on my soaked skin. Mike gives another winning speech. ‘You will never meet my expectation,’ he says, ‘You will never achieve perfection.’ But every one of us knows we’d die trying, and judging by the light in his eyes, I think he knows it, too.
I ride my bicycle back home along the lakeshore path without a thought in my head. Maybe the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, or the color of the leaves strewn about the hard-packed ground. When I get back home, my roommates are still sleeping. This is the time when I set my alarm clock to go off in about an hour, throw on my headphones, crank up Led Zeppelin, and enjoy the most glorious, fleeting nap I can imagine. You really have to earn a nap this good.
What I always lived for in my time with the band was that Saturday practice. Especially when we used to be at the stadium. And the long sun would come up over the bleachers, and you would get that squint in your eye. Like it was too much to take in all at once. And no one else was there. It was just us, the band. There were times I wanted to cry it was so pure and easy and beautiful. So to me the rest of the day was always just like a dream, even the game. We’d play a concert at the Union, and everyone would crowd around to hear. I play my tuning note for Mike just like the way I did this morning. We march through the old Civil War grounds, through the arch, and into the tunnel. That pathway to victory. The whole band sings ‘In Heaven There is No Beer’ with a kind of comic irony about it. Because a whole mess of students are drunk out of their mind just past that tunnel, that doorway to transcendence. Our rank gets in a circle. Everyone yells out something to remember for the day. ‘Okay heyyyyyy……Guide!……Okay heyyyyyy……Give it everything you got, one shot!……Okay heyyyyy……Throw your hammer!’ and on, and on. Now we are lined up in the tunnel, four across. I look at my line mates, and they look at me. We don’t need to say a word. The air is not just electric, it’s a goddamn storm just waiting to crack the fabric of space. The drums. EAT. A ROCK. BOOM BOOM BOOM. EAT. A ROCK. BOOM BOOM BOOM. And once that whistle blows it’s all over. The ecstasy is incomparable. My heart beats out of my chest. I can’t see straight. I march with all the fury I can muster. I know we are just musicians trying to fill up a great stadium, just a small part of the game day experience, but to me it doesn’t particularly matter. I think a lot of people give up on their dreams because they don’t think they can be the best. It doesn’t matter so much if you are the best as much as if you become the best that you can be. And that is a funny thing because I think most people can get pretty damn close to being the best if they could just see that there are no limits. As I march across the field, I can feel that, too. To press up against your limit to the point where you can feel it is not there is one of the most beautiful things in the world.
I have beheld sublime fleeting visions at Camp Randall. When David Gilreath returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown against Ohio State. When my rank and I sang ‘Sweet Caroline’ in the upper decks under the stars against Northwestern. The last time I looked up under those lights, playing ‘Varsity’ with how many people waving their arms in the air. All the times I saw Mike standing on that ladder, his arms outstretched, begging us to hold the last note just a little longer, and my lungs on fire. Just catching the eye of a fellow rank member in the middle of a performance. Kicking leaves around the bike path on the long march back to Humanities. Being a part of something greater than myself. These are moments I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Mike calls these ‘moments of happiness’. It’s like I said before, it was all a dream. And I felt this incredible pain when it came to a close. Every Saturday afternoon on that long walk home. The magic of the city I felt on my bike ride to Mickey’s was all spent, all burnt out. Everything was so bitterly ordinary again. This year I was not in the marching band for the first time since I came to the university. Five seasons in the band and it has long been over now. As I write now it is like trying to remember another lifetime. The thing that strikes me now is how no one else could ever understand the meaning to be found in being a part of this band. How could you know? Looking down on that field from far above, it’s hard to see the light in their eyes, or the extra hitch in their step, or the fire in their lungs. It is just a band, performing a few songs, in at least a student section that is not listening particularly closely. It’s hard to see this is a band straining to be the best that it can be. But it doesn’t diminish their force. When you get right down to it you have to make your own meaning. Meaning is created by and between people who agree to spend way too much time together, doing something so silly that often even they forget why they started doing it in the first place. TOGETHER: these people are capable of breaking into the great limitlessness of the unexplored, that plane of experience touched by the lonely few.
