Oboe We Are

We should treat ourselves as our finest instrument. An instrument we have gotten to know how to use over the years and the end goal of mastery is to become experts on our instruments, with our instruments, and yet all of us fumble a bit forgetting how it works, or neglecting the care and maintenance, turning our blind eye to the wear and tear and ultimately living our lives as though our instruments are a responsibility, our onus, our gift or curse, whatever, but existing outside of us. Our instrument is something we use to show how we do it.

For comparison sake I will compare thee to a woodwind. While neither you nor I need be musically tuned in any way I shall show is absolutely not necessary for full comprehension of this apt comparison. First and foremost, we are full of hot air. Likewise we need fine or general tuning before use. We can hear ourselves louder than anyone else. It doesn’t match what others hear. We can feel when we are off. We drool at the chance to be heard, to toot our own horns. And we, humans, all of us, bellow constantly whether in unison or solo, we think we sound better than we do. So if the oboe is our onus we should get to know its best notes, as the ugly duckling of Peter and the Wolf, we should know our part, play up our assets, and practice our skills, lightly.

Sadly, practice is hard, Practice is work, redundant work, it’s like work practicing.

No two oboes play the same, even with similar construction. I am an oboe, though, I have negative 12% musical talent, I hear myself, my oboeness and just recently I have been cleaning, properly storing and regularly my instrument. I’d even like to learn some new tunes once I become proficient at anything. Somedays I can’t even blow a note, so I admire what it can do while not having to waste my breath.  My oboe knows my moods, my pitch, my flaws, my touch, my lips, my song, and especially when my notes are all wrong.  

Practice does not make pitch perfect, but it does make it easy listening.  

Like the great Yogism goes, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” 

Image by Thomas Eakins [Public domain], The Oboe Player (1903), via Wikimedia Commons.