Sarah

- I'm Sarah Comer and I live in Puyallup, Washington. I've actually lived in Puyallup my whole life which is kind of always a joke among Puyallup people. It's like, even if you briefly get away everyone always ends up sucked back to Puyallup. There's a gravitational pull. Nobody ever really gets out. You know, for a long time I was kind of like, oh my God, Puyallup, how do you get out of Puyallup? 'Cause it's like not so small that you know everybody but it's also not like big city.

But I spend half my week working in Seattle and then you come back here and you're like, I can park wherever I want. I don't have to worry about that and it's nice and quiet here and you just don't have all the noise and the hustle and the bustle. And there's a lot of beautiful park areas out here too and that part of it is really really nice. You just get out of all of the crazy intensity of bigger cities. But you know, we're big enough that it's not like a one pony town or something. There's a little bit to see here and there.

I play fiddle reasonably well, I think. But piano and guitar I can do just some backup cords. It's nothing too fancy. And I can sort of struggle my way through a couple of tunes on clarinet and coronet now. Brass is my new adventure and it is so gloriously weird. It's mathematical and confusing and beautiful and strange and I love it but I'm not good at it.

I remember that when I was nine my parents brought this out because everybody in my dad's family played and so this is the one that he had left over and they're like, oh, do you wanna play this thing? I'm like, it's gigantic and no I don't want to. And then just a couple years later when I was 11, one of my best friends was playing fiddle and said hey, you wanna try this thing with me? I was like, eh, sure. And it was still gigantic for a tiny person and just sawing away on that and you know, she and her mom came down and taught me a couple of tunes and that was fun and that was kind of the gateway drug, after that it was off and rolling. That's probably the earliest thing I remember is playing music with Claire and Nancy.

I personally was above averagely bad. I started like real bad. That's a whole other story. If you can learn to love the process, that's the important thing and to see yourself moving through that. I had a talk with a music teacher friend. We came to the conclusion that your potential for proficiency with something is very well matched with your tolerance for failure. But it's not really the tolerance, it's the ability to just look at that as process. Are you willing to engage in this staring contest with the instrument and keep doing it one more time? And observing the process as things get better and as you go through it. So you have it to take it where you are. And journey forward with it and recognize that that's a process and not really a destination.

It's hard to say how musicians are different because I like to think that we're all potential musicians. Which I know probably sounds really cliche but I don't think we're special. I think that all the arts are some expression of what it is to be human and that's why I think everybody on some level is an artist because it's just one way of showing what it is to be human and to live this life. Be it happy or sad or whatever, it is a way of expressing that human condition. I don't like to think that there's artists and not artists. Musicians and non musicians. Some of us just haven't become them yet. But I do think that once you are a musician it does open up these gateways of community that you maybe weren't aware of before.

I would say that there is this really beautiful crossover point with students where you go from just mastering mechanics of how do I wrangle this thing to my physical will and what are the names of these things and what's this whole language approach to it? And you get past those basics and they can play some tunes and that's great. And then there comes this day where like there's a little bit of their personality sneaking in and it's not just notes and it's not just the music but it's a little bit of them in that. And to me that's really beautiful and excited to see them being able to express themselves in that way and watching how they build community with others when they've found that strength and that boldness to go and share their musical lives with other people.

I don't think that there's a you have the gift or you don't. Is it's you love a certain discipline enough to spend some of your life chasing it. Or you don't and maybe then it's just not your thing. The accordion is not for you. And maybe watercolor is or you know, fiddle's your thing or trombone is not. The fact that maybe you had a bad music experience as a kid does not mean that you just aren't a musical person. You can come back and try again, maybe different instrument, different genre might be a different day.

Archie came from Turlock, California, actually. We got him from Smidgen Rescue that specialized in getting little bitty dogs. Little bitty dogs that are actually about to be euthanized. They go and drive down to California and I think some other places and they take a truck down what is about to be their last day because a lot of shelters down there you have very little, you have like 72 hours to be found by somebody and so that was about to be Archie's last day and then he got picked up and brought up here and we are very very fortunate to get to be the ones to adopt him. He's an awesome little guy. Most dogs live in the moment.

I think they start off so long as you're not invading their yard, they want to think that you're a nice human and give you some leash to see whether that's going to prove to be true. And his whole life outlook is hey, let's have a great day. Unless you're a crow in which case he's gonna bark at you. I think the loving way that he comes at everything and wanting to know how can we make this day better for you and he knows you're having a down day he does everything he can. He'll go and get Larry because Larry is the best thing ever and squeak, squeak, squeak, and run around the house with that.

If you're upset about something, Archie is convinced that tears are probably why you're sad so he'll just sit there and lick them all off your face til they're all gone. That's his approach. He's like, no, I smell them somewhere. And he'll go and check the faces of other people. Like, are you the one that's crying? Nope it's you, okay. I will take care of this. He is on the job.

Six years ago this April my dad passed away while undergoing cancer treatment and it's definitely been a life changing experience and a learning experience. It's not what you want to learn or how you want to learn it but I guess it's things that are valuable to know. The grieving process is a strange and changing thing. And there's gonna be times and places where you don't know what you're doing and you don't know how to handle it and you're gonna make decisions that you may feel differently about later. And there's gonna be how am I coping with today? And some people may be kind of judge-y about that.

But if you're making it through that day and you're making it through the next and not hurting anybody or not hurting yourself, if you're getting through somehow go you and it'll be a different day some day. There will be days when you can't sleep or you fall asleep and you just like wake up screaming and that's just gonna be your life for awhile. And it's gonna be the first thing on your mind every day and then one day it'll be the second thing. And I was like, that is the most meaningful statement because this doesn't go away, right? It's not like a sitcom where you're like, oh, it's season two, we've forgotten this is a thing now. Kind of the best case scenario is some day it's the second thing on your mind. You know, 'cause there's bad days and it's bad days because you're not here and there's other times where it's a good day and you're not here. And that bitter sweetness never really goes away. That's your target. Is that some day, what you've lived through here and the pain and the loss of that, some day that'll be the second thing on your mind. And you can work towards that day.

I think that community is a deep and central human need. And I am really fortunate to get to be a part of that when we're teaching music and we're doing community dances, when doing storytelling. We're coming together and being human. And we do those things and we go, that was a really great time and then we go back to our houses and ignore that other humans exist. I think we see how much we need those things. By the way that we engage in stuff like Facebook. Remember when Farmville came out and everybody was like, oh, I'm gonna go help my neighbor harvest tomatoes. And you're like what are you doing?

But what you're really doing is you're feeding this need for community and connecting with other people and that is really important. But when we do it through social media and stuff like that, I feel like it's the emotional equivalent to snacking. Because it's like, it's right there, you can grab a little piece of that. But it's really not very filling and when we go out and do things with other people it's an entirely different experience. Whether it goes well or badly.

Doing things badly together can be a ton of fun. You can make a lot of memories and I think that you really can't replace what happens with other humans with any amount of digital anything. I'm kind of a curmudgeon in that way, anyway. It is what I believe and I think that however we can create community, however you can foster that. If it's with your neighbors, if it's with your town. If it's with people in niche music communities or dance communities. I think that that's something that you need as much as food and water and coffee, and everything else. Is you really need that to live a full and happy life. I think it's more important than we realize but we see that in other behaviors that we have. The way that we try to fill our need for community.