Playing in the Circle

Bagpipe band practice tonight. We were at Kelly Ryan's pub in the Bronx blowing our guts out in the circle preparing for our first contest of the season in a few weeks. The contest is a two day even in Bethlehem, PA.

Playing in a circle in a pipe band is probably one of the proudest things I have ever done. It is most definitely a brotherhood, a union. You get together with these people every week to work on something. To work towards something. To work on music, musicality, tone, etc. There is a collective effort to sound good and play well.

So as we stand in the circle in our shorts or work clothes we move as one. We come from different backgrounds, locations, stories, yet that night in Kelly Ryan's banquet room for those hours we are a band. The drummers and pipers have one common goal and I am just one piece of that. But I am a piece! I notice I stand taller when I feel like I bring something TO that circle. I am a piece of a whole. I know that many of you who have ever competed in team sports or been in plays or choruses or helped in a rescue or raised money for charity and walked for charity know what being a part of a whole is like.

I could wax, but there is so much gratitude I feel to play pipes in a band. To stand next to another piper or a drummer and PLAY. If there was a way, and there is, to take that team spirit into my day I could be way ahead.