Marching season is out, but the competition is only heating up.
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Section leader applications for the next marching band season at Halston University are officially open, and percussionist Bay Rodriguez wants the role.
Bay's only competition is Ca...
noun. a specialized rehearsal for sections in a musical ensemble.
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SUNDAY'S BAND PARTY WAS A perfect example of the 'little barbs' phase in the rivalry cycle.
Callum and I weren't viciously hostile in the lead up to an argument, nor were we ignoring each other in the wake of a argument. We can unhappily co-exist. Though I'm pretty sure it was because there is an entire summer and a week of non-stop band camp between our last fight. A few months of time-out can do wonders for the temper, though I wonder whether Callum would have helped me like he did (bringing me water, relinquishing clothes and his bed and his space to me) if he'd been mad at me.
He probably would have. I know he's a good person. Ugh.
So it goes: little barbs, big barbs, altercation, radio silence. Like a oceanographer tracking tides, a volcanologist tracking hotspots, an astronomer tracking the planets' orbits, I have expanded our rivalry into its own little scientific study, with its own factors and equations and axioms.
Fall semester begins on Monday. I sink like a stone back into the rhythm of classes and marching band. Differential Equations III, Linear Algebra III, Modern Political Philosophy (studying all the white liberalists of the Enlightenment era) and Climate and Environment Philosophy (anthropocentrism? Don't know her). Our drill rehearsals are Tuesday and Thursdays; section leaders have to run a minimum of one sectional, usually on Wednesdays, and the band leadership meets briefly on Friday to review the music, summarize the progress of our sections, receive updates and plans from Keller, and (sometimes) do a little team bonding exercise or two. I'm dead busy, but I like it. Being swept off my feet by a hectic schedule means I don't have time to fall down on my own.
The first show sits like a half-formed hunk of crude marble before me. We still need to chip, clean and polish before it's ready to debut on a halftime field. Sun, with bright, cheerful music, speaking to the power of positivity and hope. A unifying force for the world in these end-of-times days. The environment is dying, human rights are being violated in all cardinal directions, and late stage capitalism is choking its labor base towards apocalypse but—
Positivity!
Jazz hands!
Batons! (All derision aside, I actually think the dance squad and color guard have put together a fucking impressive routine.)
I'm the one to call an extra sectional for the drumline on Thursday.
We rig up our drums and find a shady, secluded corner of the Music Department to march in, marking time, and run through our pieces. This courtyard is fringed by oak trees and smells like late summer, like soil and leaves, humming with cicadas. Callum's two spaces over from me, wearing the t-shirt that I slept in.
