Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Category Archives: band


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Soundtrack.

The first few notes played on the radio this morning. So iconic. We both put down our toast and jam. “Start spreading the news…” we sang. New York. New York. Perhaps one of only a handful of songs about a city that is known internationally. “I can name that tune in five notes,” I said. “What?” I explained to him the game show Name that Tune. 

It was my mother’s favorite. And she was good at it. She loved music. She knew the notes. The words. As easily as my grandma could beat me at cards, my mother could beat me at Name that Tune. But as we sang together, laughed together, sometimes even danced, it felt like we were both winning. 

I don’t think the show was on the air that long, but we kept it alive in the car. It was difficult at first, with cassette tapes. Trying to cue up the song to the right position. We kept a pencil nearby to wind up the ribbons that we abused. The game was significantly improved when we graduated to cds. It was so easy to cue up the song. To start and stop. To Name that Tune.

We didn’t really keep score. We knew the music we owned. And of course we always created a playlist for the city we were driving towards. A trip to Chicago always included Frank Sinatra singing “My kind of town…Chicago is!” 

It seems funny to even mention it – because we never really gave it a thought – but neither of us were particularly good singers. That was never the point. What we were really good at was being friends. I suppose nothing else really matters. When you know someone, really love someone, above all the flaws and the shortcomings, you only hear the music.

I had the privilege of taking my mother to New York three times. I can’t hear the song without descending in the plane over the Statue of Liberty. Sitting beside her on Broadway. Looking up in Times Square. Drinking the wine. Trying the clothes. Singing on the sidewalk. There’s a reason your heart “beats”  – to keep time with the ones you love. 

Ask me anything about my mother. I can name that tune. The music never ends.

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Pa-rup-a-pum-pum.

It wasn’t just in the high school band that we marched along to the same drummers. There was a rhythm to the students, perhaps even the town. We dressed in the same colors, supporting the same team. Traveling on the same buses, singing the same songs.

There was a small skip that we learned when marching in the parades. If you got out of step, you just did this little hop, and right back in you fell. Aligned with all the others dressed in red and black.

When I first went to college, the noise was almost deafening. So many different colors drumming. And I fumbled and skipped and fell in and out of line. But everyone was. It was the time for tripping. For learning.

It was only when I started to put my words and paintings together, that it became so joyful, so light — this beat — no longer a banging of sticks, but a flapping of wings. The most gentle beat — in my own colors, my own heart. Pa-rup-a-pum-pum.

That’s not to say I can’t get thrown off. Out of step. Life will do that. But I know the little “skips” that realign me with myself. I think we all do. I hope we all do.

I pulled a tiny chocolate drum out of my Advent calendar this morning. I hear it. I feel it, my rhythm. I smile, right in time, and think, today, my heart is going to lead me, and one way or another, I am going to fly.

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This orchestra.

I came up the staircase and lifted the telephone cord over my head so I could enter the kitchen. My mother had the 8′ cord stretched to its limit. She was talking on the phone while doing the dishes. I could tell she was talking about me. Why was she talking about me? Something about Washington school. A teacher? Was it a teacher? I tugged at her blouse. She nudged me with her hip. She said goodbye and motioned with her eyes for me to catch the phone as she lifted her chin. I caught it and climbed onto the chair to hang the receiver back on the wall.

Who was that? I asked.
Mr. Iverson.
Mr. Iverson? What did he want?
He said you have good hands.
Good hands?
Yes.
That’s it?
He said you’d be good at the vio- something.
Violin?
No, the other one.
Viola?
Yes, that’s it.
He called to tell you that?
He said you can join the orchestra if you want.

I was in the fifth grade. I had just gotten a clarinet from Carlson’s music store. No small purchase for our family. My hands were already invested. But I liked that he noticed them – my hands. Imagine that! A teacher paying that much attention. What gifts we were given daily at Washington Elementary.

I played the clarinet through my senior year. I still have it. But my hands had different ideas. They are daily covered in words and paint. They are good hands. And I am grateful for them every day. I wonder if I would have believed in them though, if people hadn’t believed in them first. If I hadn’t had teachers who invested their time. A mother who invested her heart.

I believe in myself, because they believed in me first. So I use them, these hands. Once more, again, still, ever, to give thanks, and to tell you, you can join the “orchestra” if you want.

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Making heirlooms.

I looked it up, to see the exact definition —. Heirloom: a valuable object that has belonged to a family for several generations.


I don’t suppose we’ve ever been a family of objects, but I’don’t feel badly about that. Because we do have valuables. My grandparents, being farmers, grew something every year. Not for display. But for the growth. The life. And the stories that remain, even after every truck and tractor, every tool, had been auctioned off, the stories remain. And I hear them. I write them. And I pass them on – these heirlooms.

Since I can remember, I have only seen my brother in overalls. He is not a farmer. I’m sure if you asked him, he would say for the comfort, the pockets, easier to work in… and those reasons are probably all true. But it occurred to me that maybe he is creating his own heirlooms. Just as I write the stories, he puts on my grandfather’s wardrobe, and gives his own grandchildren an image of the past. An image that they certainly will carry with them forever. Their Grandpa Tom wore overalls.


We get to decide what is valuable in this life. What is important to us. For me, it has always come down to the human connection. Never to be displayed on shelves, but certainly displayed daily, in hands reaching out, arms pulling in, love grown, lives shared.


Some days, as I type, I wonder, is it really important, to write these words? And then you respond with memories of your own. Share your stories — your heirlooms — and grandparents are kept alive, traditions, schools, hometowns… and I smile and know it is valuable — making these daily heirlooms.

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From both sides now.

I’m not sure that it was the heart of the lesson, but what I learned with the math “times tables” in first grade (this times this equals this) was that if you memorized something, it came with the security of always having it. I suppose this was the security I was searching for.

It was just my mom and I. Everyone else had left. I could hear my mother cry at night. I wrote poems and drew pictures, hoping to give the tears a soft place to land. But in the dark of night, I, we, could see none of them. So I began to sing, in my head. I found an old album cover that my sister used to play. It was Joni Mitchell’s, Court and Spark. I memorized the songs. Each lyric. Each note. I knew them all. Each took around three minutes to sing. And magically, time would pass. “This times this” — words times music equaled safety.

When days and nights became easier. Time became filled with activities and eventually, somehow, joy. I heard my mother’s laugh. And my own. Life became more full. And the rotations of songs in my head, became less frequent. And then almost not at all. But I knew they were there. They still are. And now, if I sing one, maybe while mowing the lawn, it is somehow, nothing but joy.

I painted her on one of my jean jackets. Maybe it’s too simple to say that she had my back. It may be simple, but it is true.

I saw a video of her on Youtube yesterday. 78, having survived a near death experience not that long ago. The words came out like honey. Pure and sweet. Tears flowed out of the eyes of those around her. Cheers flowed out of the audience. It was beautiful! Magical. Nothing but joy. And at the end of the song, she laughed. Giggled really. Like the little girl that still lived within her. Like all the little girls, the women, she carried. And in that moment, (with the words and music that we will always have,) she, I, we, were saved.

https://youtu.be/4aqGjaFDTxQ


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Heart song.

“Words are partly thoughts, but mostly they’re music, deep down. Thinking itself is, perhaps, orchestral, the mind conducting the world. Conducting it, constructing it.” ― Patricia Hampl

We have a glove compartment full of cds. The car holds our only cd player. Vacation for us begins as I slip the cd into the player. It grabs it gently. Recognizes it. And starts to play the familiar soundtrack of our wanderings.  These trips could be 30 minutes down the road, or five countries in five days. We know the words to each song. The beats. The rhythms. The little nods inside the lyrics. The poetry that fills our souls, guides us down an untraveled path. 

My mother and I did the same. We soundtracked our journeys. Each note giving us strength and courage and the joy of exploration. Frank Sinatra, singing “My kind of town — ” led us into Chicago. And so it went with nearly all of the 50 states. A song for each journey, each story. 

I suppose the music has always carried me. Each note a suitcase for the memory, and a map for open road. Those who know me, really know me, are the ones who can sing along. 

Find this someone — this someone you can sing with. Someone who doesn’t care about the missed notes, or when your timing is just a beat off. Someone who laughs when the country band whispers, “…and Leon…” or is moved to tears with the pure magic of every Paul Simon turn of phrase. Find someone who shares your heart song and says, “Play it again! Play it again!”


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Just breathe.

We knew a little about team work, from playing in school sports, or even gym class, but this was different. We weren’t just working together, “It was more than that,” he said. We had to breathe together. Breathe together? All of us? Was that even possible?

We were just a group of teenagers in a band. We had never heard of breathing exercises. Certainly never heard of yoga. We were preparing for the state high school band tournaments in Minneapolis. Maybe some of us had grand aspirations, but I don’t really think so. We got to get out of school early. Ride a bus to Minneapolis. That was about it. But for some reason he believed in us. Wanted us to believe in ourselves. Reach for something more. And he stood in front of us, with that baton, that wiggle, all that hair, smiling, and we started to believe too.

It was the first time I even brought my clarinet home. Practiced. This was new. For most of us. We were all learning our individual parts, but it wasn’t enough he said. He said we had to be “one.” And the only way we could be “one” was to breathe together. For the first time I listened to my own breath. I was aware of my actions. Aware of the girls on either side of me. The boys behind me. We had different interests. Different skill levels. But we could do this. We could breathe together. We could do this for ourselves. We could be better. And we were. Every day.

That bus ride to the competition was fantastic. We sang. Arm in arm. Shoulder to shoulder. Our instruments snuggly packed in the compartments below. We played better than we ever had. Cohesive. One unit. It sounded beautiful — to us. We didn’t make it past the first round. I don’t suppose that was the ending you imagined. You were expecting some sort of victory. OH, but you see we were victorious. We thought so! And he thought so, our conductor, Mr. Christianson.

On the bus ride home we sang and laughed, still arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, because we had done what we thought impossible. We became one. And that was the victory after all. We were part of something. I can hear a big band song on the radio today, and feel it!. I breathe in, once again, the gift he gave us, the gift we gave ourselves. And I belong.

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