Knitting and practicing, practicing and knitting

by Meg Dedolph

There is a tendency in my family to say “yes!” first and ask questions later. 

So when a friend who plays with Bagad New York called my partner and asked if he would like to join the ensemble for a trip to a giant Celtic music festival in western France this summer, he said - enthusiastically - “Yes!” 

(A quick vocabulary lesson: Have you ever looked at a Scottish bagpipe band and thought, “What that needs is to be louder”? That’s what a bagad is. Popular in the French region of Brittany, a bagad is basically a Scottish pipe band with a bombard section added on. A bombard resembles a short oboe, turned up to 11. Here’s a video of a bagad in concert. Sound on, as the kids say. There are dozens of bagads in France. There is only one in the United States.)

In my sordid youth, I spent a season with the University of Chicago Alumni Pipe Band in their snare line, which seemed like a reasonable activity for someone with a percussion degree. And so I asked if I could play drums with the group, because why should my partner have all the fun? 

This has turned out to be a big ol’ learning experience, which often happens when you say “yes!” first and ask questions later. 

It has meant that most of the time this summer, when I am holding two sticks, it is not because I am also holding some yarn. It’s because I am holding my drumsticks and I am practicing. A lot. I’ve been listening to recordings and playing along with videos, and meeting with a drum teacher on Zoom every two weeks. 

I’ve also been talking to myself a lot. My teen said last night, when I took a break from practicing in the bedroom while everyone else watched a movie, “It’s kind of funny to hear you go “tappity tappity tappity tap … %&@#!” 

“It’s kind of funny imagining you sleeping in the yard for the rest of the summer,” I said. 

OK. I didn’t say that. But I thought it really loudly. The cat likes to watch me practice and try to bite the sticks, so I felt like I had suffered enough for my art that night.

The only knitting project I decided to tackle before this trip is to speed-knit a sweater for a toddler I will be seeing. Even though the trip has been in the works for months, I only just figured out how to read a calendar, apparently.

So I’ve been knitting this sweater, practicing my parts, and working on making peace with the idea that in a couple weeks, I’ll be at the Festival Interceltique in Lorient and I’ll be as good at playing these parts as I can be, and that’s going to have to be enough. 

As in knitting, you can’t cram music practice. Learning takes as long as it takes. So does making a sweater. I wish both were going faster.

The knitting is going along just fine. But the music? That’s hard. I’m struggling with accepting imperfection. I chalk that up to music school - the idea that no matter how hard you practice and how well-prepared you are, it won’t be good enough and someone out there will be better than you. (And they will beat you at the audition and you will have to live in a cardboard box under a bridge because you have no gig. I guess you don’t have the option of getting a job and living in an apartment like a regular person?)

Fortunately, the fiber arts have shown me that even when something isn’t perfect – when there are mistakes, when it doesn’t quite line up with the pattern, when I’m unhappy with the evenness of the stitches – it still works. I’ve had a lot of practice handling imperfection in the fiber arts, and I am using that muscle to also manage imperfection in my music.

The concerts and parades will be fine, probably even fun, and the kid will be adorable in his new green sweater, which will keep him warm this fall and winter.

Now, it’s time to practice my parts and knit this second little sleeve. Just because you can’t cram for concerts or knitting deadlines doesn’t mean I’m not going to try. Some tendencies are hard to shake.