Anxiously awaiting my next fix ...

Last Saturday I judged field visual for the first time ever at my first ever WBA contest. Judging has its obvious rewards but field judging has one I never counted on … until I felt it.

Saturday night the temperature dropped 20 degrees in two hours but I was nervous … well, ok scared … and my adrenalin was pushing so hard that it kept me warm. So warm in fact that I didn’t even need a jacket. As the first band came to the field I walked out to the front side line, tape recorder in hand, desperately hoping I at least looked like I knew what I was doing. I noted that I had that pre-performance queasy stomach that is just my body’s way of letting me know that “we” are about to put our butt on the line again. Thanks body. I knew you’d kick in sooner or later and remind me that judging is, after all, just another kind of performance. So I began to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, filling my red blood cells with oxygen and calming myself down. I "fell back on my training" and did a little self-talk. Ok self. We’re alright now. We know how to do this. We’re prepared. We practiced. We deserve it. Here we go. Feeling ready I walked about 8 steps down the 40 and onto the field and was struck by how familiar everything felt. No longer nervous because it felt almost like a welcome home, I noticed that the grass was green, the lights were on, the air was cool on my skin and that there were uniforms all around me. Right then the drumline started that all too familiar warm up and that sound, in what I can only explain as a conditioned stimulus response, made me turn toward the bleachers to see the audience. Huge and wonderful. I looked around to see who else saw them and was thrilled to see that most of the guard was looking up and already making that first connection. Right on! As the band found its opening set I was suddenly surrounded by a flurry of guardies hurriedly setting their equipment and hugging one another for good luck and I got a stab not of longing but of BElonging.

I didn’t know that being on the field during a performance while not performing could be something so special. I’ve watched field shows for years, I’ve been in field shows and I’ve been up close and personal with performers during rehearsals. None of that began to touch the intensity and almost perverse intimacy of “watching” a performance from its middle as it happened on the field. The energy was like a living thing with depth, width and weight. Being in the thick of the show gave me the freedom to hear the sounds, experience the energy, feel the pulse and rhythm of the show and to be anywhere I wanted to be … I was a tuba, a flag, a snare, I “marched” alongside the flutes, the bass drums and the mellophones. I saw the gathering condensation on the flagpoles still waiting to make their debut, saw the taped fingers, the sweat and the intense facial expressions of the snare line, saw the bandaged ankles and straining muscles of the colorguard and heard everyone gasping for air … for this a sound on the field too … and I immediately appreciated this activity on a whole different level. I’ll never be happy at a field show in the stands or the box again ….. and I find I’m supremely jealous of those who’ve experienced this rush at its most highly competitive level for that must truly be the ultimate marching high.

I’ve never felt what I felt on Saturday as a performer. I don’t know that it’s possible to do so but as an on-field observer, I get it …I so get it … and I can’t wait to get it again.

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