From an early age, music has been playing in my life, a continuous soundtrack, from Hair and Sergeant Pepper on the Victrola as a boy in New York City, to concerts at the Palladium and Bottom Line as a teenager, to cassettes in rusted cars on Mass Pike road trips, but I was always on the outside looking in, in the audience facing the stage, on the sidewalk saluting the parade….
Until School of HONK. School of HONK finally offered me a chance to be in the parade- which turns out to be whole lot more fun than watching the parade. But not only a chance to be in a parade, nor just a chance to bang on a drum and learn a whole new vocabulary of rhythm. It also offered me a chance to be liberated from my natural inhibitions. To connect with a joyful, inclusive, accepting community. To revel and marvel as Kevin, Maggie, and Shaunalynn summon us to the sound in their heads. It’s called the School of HONK, but it could just as easily be called the Church of HONK for the feeling of communion and love that circulates when we gather in the round. As Kevin said at HONK! Fest 2015 when I was still on the outside looking in, if more people could do this, the world would be a much kinder, gentler, more peaceful place. Amen!