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Morning Reflection
October 24, 2025
Tubas
“Perhaps the best reason to read ‘The Perfect Tuba’ is for Mr. Quinones’s winning point of view, which might be distilled to this: Life gains part of its significance from striving toward a goal; from clearing away distraction and concentrating hard on something good; from extending your reach—and remembering what that feels like, so that you can continue to extend yourself, throughout your life, toward other things worth reaching for. When Sam Quinones wraps up his book by telling us to ‘work to discover your own perfect tuba,’ I take him to imply, ‘whatever it may be.’”
John Check: “The Perfect Tuba: the Bass of the Brass”
Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2025
Reflection by Peter Vanderveen
When I was a student in Divinity School, on an early Saturday morning as I was walking toward the university’s main campus, I spotted seven sousaphone players racing toward me on their way to the school’s ice rink. They were part of the pep band for a major play-off game. In spite of their hurry, they paused outside a science building that had a small research library on the first floor. The library was slightly elevated above sidewalk level, so the bottom of the windows began about six feet above the ground. This provided the sousaphone players the opportunity to crouch beneath the windows without being noticed by the students studying inside. All the players quietly lined up low against the building, and when they were in place, one of them loudly shouted “Ready!” Hearing this, the students in the library all turned to look out the window. A second command was then given: “Aim!” And with this, all the players stood up. All that could be seen by the stunned students in the library were the bells of the sousaphones quivering inches away from the glass. And before their shock could dissipate, the final command was given. A player yelled, “Fire!” and with this all the horns let loose with a thunderous blast of sound. The students inside literally dove for cover.
I wished then that I had taken up the tuba.
The mischievous seven quickly turned and dashed up the street, and I laughed for the rest of the day at the brilliant comedy of this impromptu prank.
I suspect that there are few for whom playing the tuba is their passionate career choice. Sterner professions, like finance and business or law and medicine, sweep up the ambitious. And the “winning point of view” that concluded John Check’s review could be applied to almost any activity. But this one thing should be noted: unlike so much that consumes our time and generates anxiety, playing a tuba – or any other instrument – doesn’t remit to our now ubiquitous binary judgment that winning implies someone else’s losing. The play’s the thing. And while sports used to share the same cultural space, no one can bet on a symphony or a quartet or even a motet. The “winning point of view” is that the striving itself is the satisfaction because it’s an engagement of realizing again and again the beauty and the joy and, at times, the comedy inherent in life. Music does this, without ever growing old or worn. It’s always fresh and often surprising. That’s why music is so intrinsic to worship.
Harold Bloom, the great literary scholar, noted that in the book of Genesis – and from the very beginning – God is often portrayed as “impish.” He shows up like the seven sousaphone players outside the cathedral of science just to send us sprawling and to laugh. Somehow the church has lost this aspect of God, binding him up in all the issues that, in their unrelenting seriousness, are tearing us apart. It’s a dangerous place in which to try to live. We need to allow God to be God as God wills to be, and not as we so drearily remake him in our image. It might provide us the chance for joy to transcend anger.
Bach at 12,000'
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