Lone Xylophone redux
I'd wanted to repost one of my earliest blogs that explains where I got the name. Now that the archives have been recovered, here it is...

Lone xylophone, I realize, is a kind of odd name for a blog, and merits explanation...

My sophomore through senior years of high school, I played mallet percussion, an experience that put me in an even more freakish subset of band freaks: girl percussionists. I didn't play something delicate and feminine like a flute or clarinet, but a huge instrument that had to be strapped to my body. I carried sticks and hit things.

Being a girl percussionist is not for wussies. I got to wear a 40-pound marching xylophone through blazing heat, rain, and snow on football fields and several-mile parades in hilly towns. (I only fainted once, during a two mile parade in 98 degree heat in a wool uniform. Fortunately, a parent caught my instrument before I was impaled on the harness.)

My band director decided that the percussion harnesses were ugly, so we had to wear them under our uniforms. It's amazing I ever got a date, wandering around football games with lumpy shoulders, bolts bulging at unnatural places on my chest and a steel bar sticking out by my groin. Of course, with the instrument attached I could do some serious damage if I turned around too fast--and did knock the wind out of a trombonist...

I'll save some of my crazy band days stories for future posts. Suffice it to say, my experiences shaped my imagination in unique ways, and I can hear beauty in hitting things, see dignity in the lumpy but strong.