We celebrated my husband Andrew’s birthday in the studio this week and witnessed a performance we will never forget.
Let me share a little backstory first.
Our home is full of things that have potential creative energy in them—art supplies for sculptures waiting to be made, hand-me-down instruments for playing. These things tend to find their way to us somehow; a few months ago, Andrew received a trumpet from a stranger who saw him carrying his saxophone home from a gig one night. The stranger said, “I know this sounds funny, but I have a trumpet in my trunk and no one to give it to. I don’t play trumpet. But something tells me you know someone who could use this.”
Our son Jack found it when he was wandering around our closet one day. He was drawn to it immediately. Andrew showed him how to blow into it to make sound, and that was it; Jack took to it like it was something he knew how to play already (I tried to make it play but couldn’t). Since then, he keeps it in the box by his bedroom door and picks it up throughout the week to practice and see what sounds he can make.
Like every Monday-Thursday, Jack got off the bus and ran into the studio to see what I was working on while telling me about his day at school. He grabbed two things: a snack and the trumpet and told me he wanted to do a performance for dad’s birthday. First, he needed help creating a stage. We cleared a space for him, and I adjusted the track lights to his liking. Family arrived and the room filled with sound as we all ate together on the table made from the old barn. Jack quietly disappeared to get his trumpet from another room. When he returned, he opened it up on the floor near his performance space and began humming a melody out loud to himself while silently pressing on the valves. I nudged Andrew so he could watch this unfold; his mouth opened, his eyes widened, and he said, incredulously, “That’s it. He’s got it.”
What followed was something we will never forget. Jack nodded to me, a gesture I understood to mean that he was ready to perform. I quieted the family crowd and welcomed them into the room as a performance space; a very special musician had something to share with his dad on his birthday. Jack smiled, closed his eyes, pursed his lips, and flowed. The sounds he made with the trumpet were steady, serious, simple melodies that carried around the curved walls and back to our listening ears with confident playfulness. Jack was certain, proud, and humble. This was his gift to share, pouring from him in the most natural way I could possibly describe. I get goosebumps even writing it now.
He played like that for about a minute, improvising what came up in him and sharing it with us. After the party, Andrew told him how special it all felt and asked him what he was thinking about when he played. Jack thought for a moment and tried to describe it in this way: “I wasn’t thinking about anything. It was more of a feeling. You know that feeling you get when you are thinking of a question, but you don’t really know the question you are asking? It was like that, but then I was also answering the question at the same time. That’s the only way I can describe it.”
Kids have such a home in that thin place between inspiration and creation. To me, what he described is creative expression. Something compels you but you don’t really know what that is. So you talk to it, wonder about it, and let it come through you in whatever form it takes. You close your eyes, purse your lips, trust, and let it flow.
I think about the home studio a lot. What we poured into it, the risks we took to make it, how it will give back. It is for me, yes; it is also very much for our children. Welcoming them into the process as it unfolded was something we did on purpose. They know we designed the curved walls for sound. I suspect they also have deep creative awareness built into them, so they can walk into this room and feel the potential in it. How wonderful that they watched their parents invest themselves in a space whose sole purpose is to contain and nurture the creative impulse?
How wonderful that this child—nearly seven years old now—can feel an inner churning and describe it to us. An unanswerable question that finds an answer through him.
Wonderful to capture this in the way you have here. So special.
Wow! Just wow