[TPIN] Excel/Comeback/Whatever

[Allegro69]

Comeback player? It's all semantics. While similar to proper English, we
Americans speak 'American', a totally screwed up and misunderstood language
even among other Americans where one word or expression has a zillion
meanings. It all depends on what local cultural or occupational environment
we exist in. When I picked up the horn again after a several year lapse, I
never heard the term comeback player until I discovered TPIN. Of course the
meaning became crystal clear to me. However to other people, to make a
'comeback', they see the term in other ways where someone making a comeback
is doing so after falling by the wayside from alcohol, drugs, and / or
generic failure. This isn't always the case. Rather than the term comeback
player, perhaps it's better we coin our own phrases to describe our
respective attitudes when playing. Since I'm basically starting over from
scratch, I'll call myself a 'born again' trumpet player or a 'I finally got
off my dumb butt' trumpet player and just be happy that I'm back to doing
what I loved doing for years before I quit. It's very difficult and often
frustrating to get back into playing again, but I'm going to do the best
that I can and try for a better next time I play. There's one term though
that is not part of my vocabulary - the term 'I can't'. Maybe guys like Mike
Vax and other former Swabbies, Grunts, and Jarheads that graced the halls of
the Navy School of Music remember one of Navy Music's legends Duke Garrett.
Go to a rehearsal that he conducted at the S.O.M. and tell him "I can't do
it." after lousing up a passage and crud (expletive sanitized for TPIN
decorum) will hit the electric fan where Duke would give the person the
biggest and most brutal butt chewing a person could ever get. It was a shock
treatment for sure, but an object lesson that I'll always remember when
things don't go right for me on the horn (or for that matter anything else I
do) today. I'm 63 old going on to age 20 (and even younger) where I can
rightfully say that I'm born again and feeling a lot younger to boot.

BOB D