Stories Written on Reeds and Strings

I'll never forget the first time I heard Alex play the bass clarinet. It the late winter of 7th grade and as he opened with a solo to our middle school symphonic band's first piece with one half note and two eighth notes. In that moment, shattering the silence with the deep echoes off the cafeteria walls with the timbre of his vibrato against the reed, I fell in love.

Maybe I was misguided and only fell in love with him because of the music, but in nearly three decades of studying music, I've never been more in love with anyone than at that moment, with him.

From there, I fell in love with two drummers, three saxophone players, one guitar player, an a pianist. Through the years though, I don't think I ever felt another kind of "Alex" type of love until I heard the mandolin.

I still remember standing in the living room talking to him, our footsteps clacking across the wood floors as we made out way to the couch. His name was Jim and he had long blonde hair, just past his chin that curled ever so slightly at the ends, ripped jeans and a plaid flannel shirt that assured me I wasn't the only one carrying the 90s into the next decade. I can still remember the name of his cologne and the way his fingers moved so effortlessly across the strings of his guitar when he'd close his eyes and sing. His guitar made mine look like it came out of a crackerjack box but he seemed intrigued enough to want to write songs with me and play together in the front lawn on Sundays.

Ironically, I can't remember if he actually played the mandolin himself, or if I only heard it on the radio that day and have forever associated those feelings of love with the starving artist who, like so many other guys, saw me as another one of the guys. He told me of the girls he loved, the loves he'd lost, and the hopes he had for the future. As expected, I wasn't in his gameplan. I remember writing love poems about him that summer and casting wishful thoughts into the night sky that someday he might realize I was singing songs about him.

I haven't seen him in almost 15 years; our chance meeting was over almost as quickly as it began, and I undoubtedly evanesced  into the attic of his memories until even those were no more.

I still think of him every time I hear the mandolin. I wonder if he still plays music. I wonder if we would even recognize each other if we were to pass on a street corner in some small town neither of us lived in. I was nothing more than another sigh between chord progressions he'd pick and choose form to pass the time on the lawn after church but even still, I can't help but wonder if maybe sometimes, on the rarest of occasions, he hears someone play an A-minor chord on an old acoustic guitar and for the briefest moment, a light fog blows through his memory... something about a vegetarian hippie and a wide-neck Spanish guitar...
It would be a fuzzy memory at best, but it would make all the wishing stars worth the wait.