It was only a dream...

I played this afternoon.

It had been so long since I'd been really inspired to do so that I can't remember with any clarity when it may have been. Months, maybe, since I've tried. True inspiration, much longer. But this afternoon I awoke from a nap with a song in my head, and I wanted to play it.

For years I've been wary of picking up an instrument. Occasionally, I'll fuddle through something on my mother's piano, but that's easy. I was never very good on the piano, so my expectations are rather low. If I can make it through the first half of the Moonlight Sonata without cussing enough to make A chastise me, then I'm content. It's a lighthearted adventure.

But I remember being a flutist. I can still feel the residue of how it felt to form a pure, round, lilting sound that I could manipulate to recreate each and every human emotion at will. I can hear it in my head. I can feel it in my chest. If I think about it hard enough, I can melt into it, and be pulled...or dragged...under its surface to that place where breathing is optional and only the ache is required.

I don't know why it was today that I wanted to play. All I know is that I could not resist.

The horrible Emerson monstrosity sits on a shelf of the bookcase in my living room, optimistically assembled and available at a moment's notice to do whatever it is that it does. My beloved Wimberly is long gone, sold years ago to pay the bills of a man who never could figure out how to stop spending money. But the Emerson was smiling at me, and promised to do its best to match my lagging skills in a joint partnership of Saturday afternoon hijinx.

It only took me a second to wish I hadn't even picked it up.

I closed the keys, and spun air through it to warm it evenly. The keys are clicky and leaky, the action hesitant, and the corks worn. The leaks are the worst part. My low C is almost non-existent. But I gave it a shot anyway.

As an old habit, I always start with a B in the staff. Fill it out, center it, hold it for a moment, and slip down to the B flat. Years of work in a Taffanel exercise book made that permanent. Pause, restart the B flat. Clear it out, find the guts behind it, and fall into the A. And so on down the chromatic scale. When the lower register is in place, I pop up into the next octave. Again with the B, then down step by step trying to hold a consistent strength throughout the range.

My first B died on contact. Raspy and rattling, it lasted less than a second. I licked my lips, turned in, and tried again. Slightly better, but still airy and unfocused. Frustrated, I pulled away and stretched my lips. The third try stuck. I had one note.

Slowly and painfully, I made my way through half an octave. Each note was tenuous at best, hanging on by a thread and threatening to get caught in the lip plate before becoming realized. But I had some semblance of a sound. It wasn't offensive enough to push me away. So I jumped into the song...the one that had been in my head.

It was immediately apparent that this was a huge mistake. Every other note cracked, overblown and uncentered. You could drive a mack truck through the variance in intonation. Everything above the break was tinny, and everything below was weak and unsupported. I made it through the intro once...twice...

...and walked back to the shelf to put my flute away. I would rather bang my head against a wall for the rest of the afternoon.