Anchored

In the middle of the nineties, in the middle of Utah’s nowhere, a sweaty bunch of marching band kids drew anchors on their arms. Our show that year was on Dvorak’s New World Symphony. What better way to hype music about sailing than by giving ourselves sailor tattoos? Even with permanent marker, we had to trace over the anchors every morning to keep them from fading.

Several days after we returned home from band camp, we found out black markers have a pretty powerful SPF factor… much more effective than any sunscreen we’d been wearing. So we all had blazing white anchors that absolutely held fast into the new school year.

It’s a silly little anecdote I think of now and then. I’m especially thinking of it tonight, as my friends remind me of Heather. She was my first drum major, and when she graduated from high school, she stayed with the band as an advisor. Fourteen years ago tonight, she passed away saving a bus load of band kids.

In the Dvorak show, I played a solo for the song I knew as “Going Home.” Its lyrics were about going to a different kind of new world. I sang it often with my family at funerals, or even alone to myself. The music was beautiful, and the message that our souls would keep living on was comforting. I believed it with all my heart.

And on days like this, I wish I could still. It’s a devastating thing to find church incompatible with one’s beliefs in what’s right. I don’t know what to think anymore. So much has faded for me, but right now I want to believe this part. Perhaps in some ways I am still covered in pale outlines of the beliefs that anchored me before. Maybe that’s okay.

In memory of Heather

If you wanna hear me botching my horn solo a bit at finals (around 4:55), enjoy the show.