LETTERS FROM HOME: HANGING OUT WITH THE AMERICAN WIND SYMPHONY

June 29, 1995

Dear Julie,

The thing I like about musicians is that they speak a foreign language all of us understand.

It reverberates off the breastbone and goes straight into the heart. We listen with our ears and critique with our heads, but in the end all that matters is whether it moves us -- figuratively and literally.

Some young classical musicians stayed with us and other families last weekend. They're part of an itinerant group called The American Wind Symphony. Usually they play on an open-faced boat moored at the edge of quart-sized river towns that have to panhandle the money to bring them in.

This was the seventh time they've been to Cape Girardeau. The boat stayed home this time because of flooding. I have a feeling lots of people are glad the musicians came anyway.

They played wonderfully -- four encores and two standing ovations at the big concert that continued late into Saturday night. Early Sunday morning at a Mass in Old St. Vincent's Church, after stifling yawns that I'm sure were no reflection on the sermon, they played a piece so beautiful and so beautifully that chills leapt up my spine. By the end of it the conductor had closed his eyes and folded his hands as if in prayer.

Another lovely thing about musicians: The better they are the quirkier.

Our contrabassoonist, a Rhode Island loner we quickly grew to love, can remember long passages of intricate music but forgets to put the curtain inside the bathtub while showering. A water spot the size of her home state on the ceiling of the den below the bathroom may only hint at the paroxysms of raising a contrabassoonist.

Our quiet percussionist has two tattoos and plays in a Minnesota rock band when he isn't performing symphonic classics.

DC and I particularly noticed how often our musicians practiced. And not just as a group.

Marci, the contrabassoonist, was out on the front porch, jamming with the rap music and basketball sounds from the park. Paul the percussionist spent half of one day perfecting a newly transposed marimba part, then came home looking for a place to rent roller blades.

DC was inspired to play the piano a bit for the first time in many months. And I hit lots of golf balls at the driving range, but DC doesn't think that counts.

Our third guest, another Paul, is the symphony's technical director. He's Dutch and our age, in fact was DC's boyfriend when she traveled with the symphony long ago. She thought it convenient having a husband and boyfriend under one roof.

Cape Girardeau now has its very own occult shop. Had my tarot cards read there. The reader said I'm with the wrong person, that I should be with a woman from my past.

DC got upset when I told her about this, even though I assured her I don't know who the woman I'm supposed to be with might be. She then suggested the problem might be the length of my list of choices. Think I'll stick to fortune cookies.

We're doing fine, actually, though the house now seems a bit empty without the cultivated bleat of a contrabassoon trolling the hallways and the dinnertime chatter emanating from the corners of the compass.

We understood every word.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer with the Southeast Missourian.