Can you 'make music'?

        How I wish that I could play a musical instrument !

       In previous posts I have written about my appreciation of several genres of music, how I have no rhythm, how even Stan Brown with his great talent and patience could not overcome my limitations and teach me to play the banjo, how I cannot carry a tune in the proverbial bucket, etc.  I also wrote with awe about the talents of Stan, Everette, Willard, Julie, Odell and several other friends.  

    Last week we visited the pottery of our friend, Al, in Seagrove, North Carolina, hailed by many as the ' Pottery Capital of the World'. (Several members of his family are also renown potters.)  Al is something of a Renaissance Man.  Not only world-class potter, he has been a Registered Pharmacist, fiddler extraordinaire, and now he is crafting beautiful instruments.  (If interested, put your search engine on Fiddlin' Al McCanless. And, no, this is neither a requested nor reimbursed commercial.  Al is unaware of this writing.)

      I did not know J.B. Prince who died this past week.  He was a friend and mentor to many musicians.  He was only 58 at his death.  My wife remembered him as a youthful prodigy (although he disliked the term) who sometimes played with the Bluegrass Experience, a band co-founded by her deceased husband.

     Today I preached at a nearby church while the minister is away. Greeting folks after the service, I fell into conversation with Bobby Gales whose family I had known from long ago.  When I told him that he plays 'a mean banjo' (that's a compliment, meaning he plays it well), he said, "Well, it's a mean instrument to try to play sometimes."

    These recent occurrences have reminded me of how I wish I could play . . . and particularly what someone has termed a portable instrument.  My parents paid for me to have piano lessons for seven years, although truthfully (as I wrote earlier), I had one year seven times.  My Uncle Frank Durham played guitar very well.  In the 1920's, he and a group of his friends formed a band called "The Chatham Rabbits" and occasionally performed on WPTF radio in Raleigh.  Why, I now wonder, did I not ask this kind and patient man to help me learn to play.  While largely disinterested in piano practice, had I given just a portion of that time to Uncle Frank's tutelage . . . well, I can dream, can't I?

    Actually, before I became enamored with string instruments, I had made another brief effort at 'portable musicianship'.  I wanted to learn to play bagpipes.  One of my colleagues in the Music Department began a class for learning to play the Chanter as prelude to playing the bagpipes.  He assured us that once we had mastered the fingering on the chanter, we could learn how to inflate the 'windbag'.  After a few lessons, it became obvious that I had three thumbs on each hand, and that was that for talent.

      Retrospectively, it has likely been a good thing for relationships that I do not play that instrument. Hearing bagpipe music is largely an acquired taste for many.  Once I saw a lone piper playing just off a busy highway near Duke University.   I wondered if spouse, friends, family, landlords or someone else had 'suggested' he take his pipes and go elsewhere.

     'Wisdom' would indicate that I make peace with the fact that my  fingers can not decipher the code. At least I can 'pat my foot' as long as no one notices that I don't quite have the  beat.

      Satchel