Performing artists (more specifically addressed in this post, instrumentalists) have, um, "different" boundaries than other (normal?) people. The following are three such instances from my time in college.
My freshman year of college I lived in Wiebking Hall, on the second floor. This floor is reserved for performing arts majors.
*Actual scene from finals week. Each day during finals week we got one hour to make noise in the dorms. The rest of the time we had to be silent so people could study. Cue jam session in the hallway.
My first days living here were during marching band camp. Each day it was between 95* and 105* with a decent amount of humidity. Ew.
As soon as we finished practice each day, it was off to the showers!
I found out that dorm showers are a lot like campground showers.
-Glorified bathroom stall
-One hook for your towel/clothes/etc
-In need of bleach and a good scrubbing
-Low water pressure
A few weeks into the semester someone told me the water pressure was better up on the third floor. Lucky for me I'm female, because the third floor had been dubbed, "The Nunnery". It was an all-girls floor.
Soon the guys found out about the awesome water pressure upstairs, too.
Looking back, I think the ladies of Wiebking should have been more concerned about this, but we just...weren't.
#2. PotR Goes to Utah
In 2006, Pride of the Rockies marching band became friends with the marching band from Weber State University. They invited us to come out to Utah and perform with them during a football game where our two teams duked it out. (We lost, as usual.)
Right before the game, the director of the Weber band told us they had separate changing rooms for us to get into our uniforms. We assumed Weber got one room, and PotR got another.
When we got to the changing rooms, this is what we found instead.
For home games, everyone got changed in a big gym filled with instruments and uniform racks. The racks were organized by instrument, so it was normal for us to help each other zip up our jackets and such.
BESIDES, who the heck wears a band uniform without at least a t-shirt and shorts underneath? (Seriously *twitch* yuck.) Not like we were getting nekkid or anything...geez.
Double reeds...my fellow bassoonists and oboists...I'm calling us out. We share reeds. It's nasty, but most of us do it. Some people sanitize the reed with mouthwash first, but I dare say that is the exception, not the rule.
(Clarinets and saxophones...you too, or no?)
In the case of this illustration, contrabassoon reeds are very expensive and must be ordered weeks in advance. For the part-time contrabassoonist, it is common to only have one or two reeds at a time.
Double reedists are always in search of better reed making techniques. It is difficult to tell if you will like a new technique unless you try a reed that has been made that way for yourself. As such, it is in our best interest to *share, share, share.
Soooo....our boundaries can be a little wobbly...
Whatever.
You're welcome for all the music!
