“city mouse” by devi laskar

It’s a typical Friday night, and I’ve just finished putting on my tails – an archaic costume that most male orchestral musicians are required to wear for their concerts. Cummerbunds, bowties and white vests are not the usual attire that you see on the streets of San Francisco (except at certain times of the year in the Castro) and from the audience (far enough away so you can’t see the edges where they are slightly frayed and in need of a trip to the dry cleaners) you’ll marvel at the uniformity of the men on stage. The women are a different story — there’s a much greater leeway in what they have taken out of their closets – necklines that push the boundaries of what the contract allows, earrings cunningly chosen so as not to get tangled in the strings of the violin, some in pants, some even wearing what the men do.

I step out on the stage, and do some warming up on my horn — a ritual that I’ve kept to for the last 32 years that I’ve played in the San Francisco Symphony. More and more musicians join me under the lights, and soon, the stage is filled with the chaotic sound of the orchestra getting used to the sound on stage.  Even though we have played many concerts here in Davies Hall, the heat, humidity, stage setup and where you are sitting can make it sound very different from night to night.

The concertmaster stands up, the orchestra quiets — then a single oboe sounds a tuning “A” and the air fills once again, all of us adjusting to the agreed pitch. Then a pregnant silence and then a burst of applause greets the conductor as he bursts from the side entrance, bows and takes his place on the podium. He raises his baton, the audience expectant, gives an upbeat and the music begins.

It’s almost magic, when an orchestra plays. It’s like dancing with a hundred others, and knowing what they are going to do before they do it. The brass breathes together — you can hear it in a soft passage before a rich chorale — the woodwinds move together as they phrase a melody, and the bows of the violins match those of the cellos, sitting all the way across the stage.

Tonight we are playing the Fifth Symphony of Tschaikovsky, a piece that is so much a standard of the orchestral repertoire, that I am sure I’ve played it at least fifty times. Every piece has its challenges, but this one has a special one for the first horn. The second movement begins with a dark string introduction that rises from the bottom of the string section in a minor key, then turns into a sunlit cushion for a horn melody so beloved that it was turned into a popular song in the 40s.

And here, for me, is where the worlds of music and writing intersect. Every concert, I must have the courage and conviction to play my solos from my heart and release them out into the atmosphere of the auditorium, where they are heard by 2,400 people. A man from Toronto, hearing the San Francisco Symphony for the first time live. A season ticket holder, who knows the names of all the back-stand violists, and who wonders where Gina is when she’s sick. A bassoon student at the San Francisco Conservatory, who has walked over to the hall after putting her instrument in her locker and sits in the terrace seats right behind me, leaning over the edge, peering down.

As writers, we must do the same – believe in our work, and believe in it enough to share it with others. Giving the first draft of a novel out to a reader, sending a query letter to an agent, getting up in front of a coffee-house crowd to read your poem — all are scary the first time you do them.  And so is playing a Mahler Symphony in Vienna, where the audiences are famously knowledgeable, and critics infamously pointed in the newspaper reviews the next day. But I can attest to something that may be obvious.  It gets easier.

Getting a job in a major orchestra is competitive. So competitive that 75 other horn players auditioned the same weekend when I won my job in January 1980, before Davies Hall was even built. I have a oboe-playing friend who took 49 auditions before he won his first one. Forty-nine! And each audition is an agonizing all-alone-on-stage complete exposure of the best you have to offer as a musician, with only one winner out of the hundreds who might apply.

We always hear about the stacks of manuscripts that are unread except for the first page.  Query letters that get a form letter rejection. Friends who say they would love to read your novel, but after you give them a copy somehow never get around to it.  But like it or not, writing is competitive too. You cannot win if you don’t play or write.  Sure there’s disappointment every time you slice open an envelope and you’re not good enough.  But remember that oboist? He’s now the Principal Oboe of the Boston Symphony.

Outcomes are always beyond our control.  Sometimes, despite my best efforts, a concert doesn’t go the way I wanted it to. But perhaps it was just a first draft.  I’ll get to do it again one day and come up with just the right turn of a phrase, the right leaning into a note, a way of blending with a colleague that feels like it lasts forever.

Playing the horn starts with breathing — we inhale and then use our air to create music — taking everything musical that we have heard in our lifetimes and using it in the moment of our performance to spin a new tale of melody. Sound familiar?  Writers do the same things — you can take the image of a wine glass with a small dot of red wine in the bottom, sitting next to a sink in the bathroom, and create a whole chapter. You can admire the work of your favorite author and see what inspires you.  It’s how we learn — partly by imitation. It’s no mystery why my novel, The Halflife of Memory, has to do with Alzheimer’s — my Mom was a victim in 2007.

I have a saying that I say to myself to remind me what’s important in the concert that I am playing: Be Confidently Musical.  It helps me to remember what to do and how to do it, when I’m in the middle of a hard passage. What would be the writing equivalent? “Write in a way that’s confidently moving?” “Be engaging?” “Make Something Happen?” I’ll leave it to the BWW to come up with the right phrase.

In the meantime, move forward with your writing with courage and confidence, and realize that it’s OK to be scared about putting your creations out there in public.   It’s only human. So fill the space around you with the best you have to offer. And one of these days, you will get a fat envelope instead of a thin one.

Robert Ward has been a member of the San Francisco Symphony since 1980, and can be heard playing principal horn on the complete cycle of Mahler Symphonies, performed by the SFSO and available on SFS Media. He is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated brass ensemble, The Bay Brass and also teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  After 15 years of genealogical research, his family tree now has more than 2,000 names, and he is somehow finding the time to write his first novel, The Halflife of Memory.