Playing Suicide on a Trumpet

Oct 7, 2006

7:59 PM

I was remembering someone who died. He was the first great musician I ever met—a prodigy on the trumpet. I met him when I was twelve years old. My mother made me sign up for band when I started seventh grade. Although I volunteered to play the drums, I was assigned the trombone. Many times I wonder how much better my life would be today if I had been assigned the tenor saxophone. But anyway…

Ron Carlson wasn't in the Beginning Band. He had already been playing for a year. He came from a public grade school that had a sixth grade band program. I went to a Catholic parochial school. We had nuns. Carlson was so good already that he was placed ahead of the Beginning and Intermediate bands into the Concert Band. We rode the school bus together, and like most obnoxious 12 year-olds, on the odd occasions that we sat together, the talk would become offensive. Carlson was kind of a big kid. He already had peach fuzz concentrating on his upper lip and that you-ought-to-start-using-Right-Guard odor emanating from his armpits. One time he announced that his dick reached all the way to his belly button. Being one of the youngest, and shortest, kids in the seventh grade, I had no choice but to say, "Hopefully you don't have a low belly button." The whole topic struck me as weird actually. I was once eager to find out how he had learned to play so well because I wanted to play that well too, but Ron was kind of aloof, overbearing and not that much fun to be around. I don't think I was alone in my opinion either. Most of the time he had a bench seat to himself for the bus ride to and from school. He would sit sideways with one foot hanging out into the aisle. He would put his right elbow on the windowsill and peer absently at the passing scenery so he would look adequately preoccupied as the people who boarded the bus after he did struggled to pass his Converse All-Star. More than one Thermos met its end due to Carlson's indifferent barricade. Throughout the two years of middle school,  he would sneak a glance as the victims struggled back to their feet. His head would recoil back as a smirk twisted his mouth. Then his attention would return to the passing imagery.

Lincoln Middle School's two band rooms shared a building with the boiler. It was always ungodly hot during winter classes. One spring day in eighth grade, I was looking for my friends during the lunch hour. In the logical process of tracking them down, I cut out one of the back stairwell doors and was going to pass the band building on route to the playground before cutting into the west back stairwell and climbing the eight flights of stairs to the third floor cafeteria. That was my intention anyway. As I got near the band building I heard a lone trumpet playing Flight of The Bumble Bee. Hearing something that fast and flawless (as I recall) attracted me. I had to see it being played. So I walked over to the building and pulled the door open. Ron Carlson had a music book propped up on the banister of the stairwell that led down to a tunnel that joined the band building to the basement of the main building—where all of the shop classrooms were located. This design touch was a stroke of genius. During inclement weather, the band kids would be tempted to use the tunnel to trek pass the shop kids who would routinely torment us. Girls with small instrument cases would be asked if they also played the skin flute. Anybody who played a wind instrument would be greeted by crotch grabbing gestures and entreaties of, "Hey! Why doncha blow this!" Carlson was there in the stairwell and playing his brains out. He was playing as loud and as fast as possible. The classroom doors were open. He could have gone in and sat in front of a music stand and been comfortable, but he was out there in the foyer and he was playing to the bottom of the stairwell. He stopped when he saw me and said, "What's up." I said, "How can you play that fast?" Then he did the only generous, instructive thing I ever recall him doing. He said, "You don't have to start out playing something fast. I sat with a metronome and started playing this piece like it was made out of quarter notes. Then I gradually sped up the tempo until I got it to here." Then he started the piece from the beginning. He was going to keep going. He gave me a quick look that said, "That's all." I smiled and nodded and took off to find my friends. As I left I noticed that he had his trumpet aimed down the stairwell toward the tunnel. He was playing fast and loud and furious. I thought he was showing off to, or assaulting, the shop kids who were in class or milling around the halls. He was saying, "Can your stupid wooden stools, and metal ashtrays, and plastic key chains top this, you morons?" I was sure he was trying to pay them back for all of the insults hurled at the band kids.

We ended up at the same high school, and were in two bands together; the concert and jazz bands. The concert band also marched in parades and performed weak formations at home football games. The jazz band played odd shows and home basketball games. Ron was first chair from day one. Here he was put ahead of all of those sophomores, juniors and seniors. One of those seniors, a tall blond guy, looked wounded and disappointed the whole year. I made second chair in both bands. I think that I was actually better than the sophomore who occupied first chair, but I had a problem with authority figures, and the band instructor, Mr. Gordon, was an authority figure in full measure and sensitive to rebels like me. So I was punished the one-and-a-half years I was in the program for being a misfit. God, that guy hated me. He would have moved either of the other two freshmen trombone players ahead of me if they weren't utterly pathetic. I did my best for the time I was in the program though: I displayed my attitude at every opportunity. Ron Carlson, on the other hand, just played, and played well. One thing though, as good as he was at printed music, he was an indifferent improviser.

There weren't many good improvisers in jazz band though. It was like all of those white kids and their white instructors didn't get the idea behind it. Luckily most of our arrangements didn't call for improvised solos. Owing to the instructor's dislike of me, I didn't get any opportunities to improvise on trombone. It's a pity though, whenever the first chair, sophomore trombone player got an opportunity, he would make nervous little phrases that didn't lead much of anywhere. He looked kind of nervous, and his tone would take on a farty quality. Ron did a couple of solos that were only ok. He was supposed to do a third one in Misty, but he hated it, and protested so much, that the instructor assigned it to the tenor sax player.

I was somewhat happy playing in the bands. We sounded a lot better than the Middle School bands I was in, and we played some good shows. My favorite was when the jazz band played at basketball games because we could look down on the court from the band balcony that was up behind one of the baskets. And even though Rock and Roll ruled, the crowd still responded well to some of the songs we played. Also, we had the opportunity to work out a couple of routines with the pom pom squad. The pom pom squad girls were the also-rans of the cheerleader wannabes. As a consequence of failing to make the cheerleading squad, they were more amenable to dating boys who failed to make the team. They had heart because they too had experienced failure. They didn't look at us as geeks, especially those of us who could play guitar. I acquired one with lawn mowing money in between seventh and eighth grade. So I wasn't just a trombone player. I was a guitar player who played trombone to keep my parents happy. It was good to be a musician and have girls respond favorably to the condition. I still enjoy the effect to this day. Ron Carlson didn't seem to have the same drive. He made a couple attempts at talking to girls that I witnessed, but he would always say something awkward or offensive. I remember thinking that he would eventually stumble onto a girl who was equally awkward and offensive, or at least was willing to school him in manners, or look beyond his gracelessness. After all, there is somebody for everyone. Isn't there?

In the spring of ninth grade the Concert Band gave its annual show. Tickets were sold to dutiful parents, and we played an hour-long program. One of the highlights of the show that year was a trumpet solo. It was a written out solo—not an improvised one—so Ron knew exactly what to do with it. He played his ass off. He hit all of the right inflections too. It would send chills up my spine when he played it. I never tired of rehearsing the piece because of that. I think it was in a Bartok piece. The band director had Ron stand up during his solo. During the show, the fat, old bastard had his chest puffed out, a prideful grin on his face, and he was slightly turned towards Ron during the solo. It was as if Mr. Gordon was playing it himself. It spoiled the show for me. My parents enjoyed it though. They seemed to be proud of me for taking part in something respectable. Even my younger brothers were a little deferential as we gathered on the lawn with all of the other musicians and families after the show. I think it was the last occasion that we attended as a family. My parents divorced that fall.

I devoted the summer between ninth and tenth grade to guitar rather than trombone. I was learning to play by ear. I would sit for hours, picking out notes to an Allman Brothers or Rolling Stones song. I got to the point where I could figure out what key the song was in, figure out the chords, and jam along during the solos. Although, I couldn't play the Duane Allman, or Mick Taylor solos note for note, I could manage to stay in key most of the time, and every once in a while I would be able to play the same phrase, or lick, that my betters played. I learned some time later that the term for what I was doing was called ear training. I also wondered why we weren't taught about it in the Jazz Band at school. I didn't neglect the trombone that summer though. I kept my chops up. I enjoyed having the music written out for me at times. I didn't have to hunt around for the right notes while a song played along at a sometimes too fast pace.

That summer was typically hot, humid, boring, and ended too soon. Like many males of that era, I grew my hair as long as I could, and wore bell-bottomed Levis rather than shorts. It made things all that much hotter. It's funny how senseless it was. We smoked pot, drank beer, and complained about the heat. My parent's marriage dissolved at the beginning of the school year. I was contending with my new status as a product of a broken home, trying to fit in with a peer group, and the most awkward time in a male's life. I was between puberty and possession of a license to drive a car. I hated everything. I scowled the whole time, I made the cruelest jokes possible, and all I wanted to do was find a girlfriend.

The school year began terribly. There were some apparently "clean-cut" freshmen trombone players and they were placed ahead of me in both bands. My response was to show up late for class, and—when I did finally arrive—I would tilt the music stand into a horizontal position and sleep. Mr. Gordon woke me up and ejected me from class a couple of times, but mostly he tolerated it. I suppose he was using me as an example to the other kids of what impure thoughts, unclean living, and questioning authority would lead to.

Carlson was Carlson. He showed up on time, dazzled everybody, and emptied his spit valve incessantly. I had never noticed it before. It was like a tick. Now that I wasn't interested in the music, I would just watch the class when I was awake. Sometimes I would pretend to play without making any sound. I would have impure thoughts about a particularly cute flautist, and if I got an erection I would study the rest of the class until it went away. One day I decided to count how many times Ron Carlson emptied his spit valve. I lost count after a hundred. He would do it at every opportunity. Once, in between songs, he did it more than ten times. What was he afraid of?

Things grinded on through the first month of school, my parent's divorce finalized on October 15th, and I cemented my status as the biggest rebel, and loser, in the band program. One time, during a football half-time, I semi-disassembled my trombone so it would fall apart as we began to play and march. I had a similar goof for when I arrived late to other classes. I would intentionally pull the door open into my foot, and when the concussion from the door hitting my shoe startled the class, I would throw my head back as if the door had actually hit my head. Then I would rub my head all the way to my seat while the class howled with laughter. I was into slapstick at the time.

It was chilly that night, and as the drum major blew the whistle to come to attention, I raised my trombone to my lips and it promptly fell apart. Everything went everywhere, and anybody—it was a definite minority of the football fans—who was watching the band, saw it because trombone players are—out of necessity—in the front row of the marching band. I could hear the little howl over the music. It worked. As the band marched out to the center of the football field, I clumsily collected the parts and sheet music, and reassembled things as I tripped my way out to the formation and my vacant spot. I rejoined the band and completed the show. I was like that. Maybe I still am. If I can't get understanding, or respect, I will at least get a reaction.

Things warmed back up. Summer wasn't ready to give up quite yet. A week or two after my disintegrating trombone stunt a rare thing happened. I woke up on time and in a good mood. I got ready and got to class. There was something odd and out-of-place when I got there. Ron Carlson was not in his usual place. The band director didn't say anything, but there were rumblings and whisperings among the trumpet players throughout the class. Some of the rumblings gradually made their way from the trumpets to the tuba players, then to the baritone players, and finally to the trombone players. I was the first trombone player to hear the news because I had studiously worked my way down to last chair. The first chair baritone player told me that Ron was dead.

I packed my stuff at the end of class. There was a shocking vacancy in my head. How did he die? Was it a car accident? As a new absence took up residence in my mind, I realized that all of my stuff was put away, and it was now time to leave the classroom. I walked out of the storeroom where we kept our instruments and saw a few people gathered around Ricky Watson. Ricky was the third-chair trumpet player and somewhat of a friend to Carlson. I walked over at a time when no one was saying anything. I asked, "What happened?"

Ricky said that Carlson went out Saturday night to walk the dog. He had his father's gun and was spinning it around like a cowboy when it accidentally discharged and destroyed his brain. I resisted my usual smart-assed inclination to immediately expose the truth, and just said, "Oh, man!"

We made sympathetic noises and drifted off to our next class. Nobody that I know of went to the funeral, and the band director never said anything about it to the class. The next day, there was a new first chair trumpet player, and there was something missing from the music that the band made. The certain, self-assured anchor that we had learned to take for granted was missing. We didn't sound as good as we used to.

I lasted about another month in the band program. I quit when my frustration reached its zenith. That happened when the band director demanded that each band member sell one hundred, five pound boxes of laundry detergent to our friends and neighbors in order to finance the replacement of our old, musty, woolen band uniforms. I thought, "Why bother to look good when we sound like shit?" Thereafter I dedicated myself to learning blues based rock and roll, and appreciated the humor and the outwardly aimed anger of my survival mechanism.