He was my horn teacher, so I would never have mentioned it.  You just didn’t do that to the man who was pouring himself into you.  For pennies a lesson, it seemed.  And sometimes, for nothing.

I know, I know.  Cart before horse. Again.

I never intend to do it, but sometimes the words just splatter themselves on the page before I can get them into any semblance of order.

Let’s try again.

Our story begins back in the late 1970’s.  I was taking private lessons on the French horn, thinking I might be the next Barry Tuckwell, one of the greatest horn players of all time.  I was not; am not.  Still, Mr. Marlar thought I was a worthwhile candidate for his efforts.

One year, he suggested that I play with him in the summer symphony in a nearby city.  I wasn’t sure I was up to the task, but he persisted.  I played.  He did, too.

We had been to our first rehearsal for the summer’s repertoire.  I had a good night, inspiring the orchestra’s director to stop by as we packed up afterward and to compliment me.  His “you’re really good” still echoes in the back of my mind after all these years.

Still, I can’t forget the other thing I heard that night.  We were playing a Tchaikovsky piece and my mentor, playing first horn, had a short solo.  Everyone else heard it too. I doubt anyone else mentioned it to him, either.

He played the lick perfectly.  Well, except for that one interval, nearly an octave jump from one note to the other.  The higher note refused to come, his lips sliding to a lower pitch with the same fingering.

Afterward, as we rode back to our town in his old 1963 Plymouth, with its push-button gear shift on the dashboard, he broke the silence.

“That was some clinker, wasn’t it?”

“Clinker?  What do you mean?”  I had not heard the term applied to a wrong note in music before, but I knew.  I did.

He laughed, explaining that any wrong note played during a rehearsal (and hopefully not a performance) was called a clinker.  He promised to work on the passage of music during the week before our next rehearsal.

There were no more clinkers heard from him the entire summer.  Not so for me, but that’s a different matter.

Clinkers.  Mistakes.  Errors everyone knows about, but no one wants to make.

If the reader is confused, I understand.

Why would I write about an obscure error, made in a first rehearsal for a concert season over forty years ago?

The answer is that my mind works in strange ways.  But, you already knew that.  Still, unique and seemingly unrelated occurrences often make my thoughts jump to random memories from the distant past.

Just the other day, I made a quick trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma to drop someone off at the airport.  We have a perfectly nice regional airport close to us, but a major airline that many use because of their cheaper rates doesn’t fly here.

I said it was a quick trip.  I was assuming it would be that.  I would travel the eighty minutes to the big city, drive the person to the departures drop-off, and travel the eighty minutes back home.  It wasn’t to be.

The Lovely Lady considered the jaunt as an opportunity to visit our favorite antique store in Tulsa, so just like that, it was a not-so-quick trip to the city.  I was happy to have her company.

She’s helpful like that.  Talks to me.  Listens to what I have to say.  Holds my hand walking across parking lots.

There is a point to my rambling.  Really, there is.  If only I could remember…

Oh, yes!  I’ve got it now.

In the neighborhood behind our favorite antique shop, there is a brick house.  It’s got the strangest brick facade I’ve ever seen, all odd-shaped and dark-colored bricks.  They’ve been laid this way and that.  All oddly-goglin, as one of my old friends used to say.  Bricks jut out from the wall, and window sills go off at angles never intended for windows.

I admit it.  I didn’t understand.  How could someone build a house like that?  Who would live in such an oddity?

Do you know what we do when we don’t understand something—when it doesn’t fit our sense of order and neatness?  I know what I did.

I made fun of it.  On social media, I posted the photo I snapped as we walked past. (You may see it yourself elsewhere on this page.)

And, I made the claim that I could have done better.  Me!  I’ve never laid a row of bricks in my life.

Others joined with me, never having seen such a structure.  I don’t blame them.  I invited their responses.

Then a friend, a builder himself (and the son of a builder), wrote me a note.  He explained that the house is built from a special type of bricks, themselves quite valuable now due to their rarity.

I repent.  Again.

That beautiful house is built from clinker bricks.  That’s what they call them.

Yes.  Clinkers.  Mistakes.  Bricks that were too close to the heat source in the kiln the large batches were fired in.  The heat distorted the material, making it darker and harder.

For many years, clinkers were thrown out.  Trash.  Debris.  Rubble.

Useless to the brickmakers.  No one would buy those ugly pieces of ceramic rubbish.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I would tell you I heard it from the red-headed lady who raised me, but it was most often my father who used the old saying when I was growing up.  It’s still true.

Clinker brick is highly sought after now.  Its beauty is in the oddity, in its non-compliance with the norm.

I do.  I repent.  Not just with regard to the house.

All around, I see the clinkers and I sneer. It seems to be the human condition, to be contemptuous of things that don’t fit our norms.  And, by things, I mean people.

People.

The Shepherd left the ninety-nine sheep who complied—who fit in—and He went searching on the mountainside for the clinker. (Luke 15).

The religious leaders, who defined the norm in their day, were complaining that the Teacher was spending way too much time with the clinkers in their society.  So he told the story of the shepherd and his efforts for the one who refused to fit in.

We have romanticized the story, making it a beautiful allegory of the lovely little lamb who wandered away.  It’s not that.

It’s the story of a determined God who pursued a determined individual bent on doing wrong.  A God who loved the person who hated Him.

And, who was determined to be and do ugly things.

Thrown out by many.  Pursued by a loving God.

Broken.

Made beautiful.

I am a clinker.  A one-percenter, if you will.  Pulled from the ashes and made useful.  Wrong notes and all.

You, too?

He still chases the one.

Still.

Especially us clinkers.

 

“That was great, Squidward!  All those wrong notes you played made it sound more original.”
(Spongebob Squarepants)

 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2023. All Rights Reserved.