Two Eyes, a Nose, and a Mouth

And a mouth

French horn

At the end of grade six, the kids who signed up for band gathered in the school gym to select our instruments. The girls asked for flute or clarinet. The boys asked for saxophone or drums. The instrument I really wanted was violin, but this was band, not orchestra.

One by one, the music teacher called us to the front and ran us through a little audition that involved matching the pitch that she sang. The pitch test was to determine which students had the best ears to play brass instruments. After the test, students came back and announced which instrument they were assigned.

When the music teacher got to W, I went up and tried to match the note she sang.

Mmm, she hummed.

Muhh, I hummed back.

Mee, she hummed.

Meh, I tried to match.

Weird, she said. You’re singing everything a third below. What do you want to play?

Saxophone, I said.

Everybody can’t play the saxophone and flute, she said. We need people to play trombone and baritone.

I thought a while, then I said, Can I play French horn?

It was one of the least popular instruments. I asked only because I had a crush on a girl who was assigned to French horn.

The music teacher shook her head. I suppose I had failed the pitch test. I was prepared to try again.

She said, The mouthpiece is too small for you. Then with a stutter of mind, she added, But you’ve got this great deep mouth. I wish we could get you a bassoon.

I didn’t know what that was. It sounded too close to baboon. The teacher wrote something on her clipboard.

Tenor sax, she said for me.

I walked back to my spot in the crowd of students, disoriented. Were my lips really too big to play the French horn?

________

The tenor saxes sat in the back row of band with the trombones, the baritones, and the bass clarinets. The French horns sat in the row ahead, in the corner of my left eye. I could comfortably see the girl I liked, one hand tucked into the bell of the horn, happily puffing her French horn or emptying the slides of spit. It was a fine piece of machinery, the horn. Yet it sounded like a lonely animal in a foggy forest.

I went to the public library and read up on the instrument. I borrowed cassettes of classical music. I made myself a tiny mouthpiece out of a Christmas ornament, a bell, to practice my embouchure. I was prepared to work twice as hard to get half as far, to quote Blackparentese.

The following year, I asked for the French horn again.

This time, the music teacher said fine.

And I was terrible. In my mouth, the instrument gurgled and bubbled with spit. It demanded a lot of pressure from my diaphragm. It made my teeth vibrate, my whole face buzz. There was no medieval forest in the instrument, only a series of wet diarrhea farts. I got a C in music that semester. And that wasn’t happening, girl or no girl, so I switched back to tenor sax, and all was right with the world.

Except for the question of my lips.

Of course, I understand now that I was a poor French horn player because of my ears, not my lips. I simply couldn’t hear and match the notes I was supposed to play. Forget leaping from one note to another if they had the same fingering. Of course, I know that dazzling, Black brass players exist. My uncle and my cousin both play trumpet. And despite those facts, the music teacher’s assessment weighs on me. She seemed to prophesy from the beginning that I was not anatomically suitable for the instrument. Maybe I was naive to think that my lips could purse or vibrate like all those thin-lipped White kids. I wish that I had proven her wrong and overcome systemic biases through determination. But this is a story of...