Yesterday afternoon, for the first time in a long time, I heard some bag pipe music.  This is a dangerous situation, as it never fails to put into my mind the notion that I ought to dig out my pipes and have another go at it. 

The bagpipes and I have a long-standing love-hate relationship; namely, that I love them and they hate me.  It's been a year since I packed them away and--with a feeling of utter defeat--put them on the top of the wardrobe, to keep them out of my reach and me away from temptation. 

I love the pipes, not in the way you might love Chocolate Chunk ice cream or the Harry Potter movies; it's more subtle, elusive and much harder to explain than that. I can roughly compare it, for you English, to the emotion you might experience (but never mention) while sitting in your favorite pub surrounded by your best mates sampling a pint of the county's best bitter.  For you American's, it equates to the sensation of sliding your hand around the grip of a Glock 20C 10mm automatic; a feeling of belonging, of oneness with something greater than yourself. 

When the pipes play, while those around me cover their ears and scramble for shelter, I feel a stirring deep in my soul of the type of heart-wrenching sentimentality popularly ascribed to the mythical highland heroes wandering the lonely hills in tartan skirts.  I am stirred in a way that makes me think my mother has some serious explaining to do; in a way that made me, well . . ., decide I should play them. 

I figured, how hard could it be; there are only nine notes? 

Unfortunately, while many of my other pursuits required hard work and diligence, the pipes accept nothing less than total and continual dedication.  They are not for the faint of heart. 

I am happy to report that, after two years of lessons, I was able to play 'Amazing Grace' with some degree of skill, but no amount of tenacity and discipline seemed to get me much further.  Then I moved to England and everything went downhill pretty quickly after that. 

I tried to keep it up, honest I did.  My practice chanter travelled with me in my briefcase so I could practice during my lunch hour at a local park, and most weekends I would spend an hour or so squeezing what I hoped sounded passably like music out of my pipes.  But the pipes differ from most traditional instruments in some very fundamental ways and, over the weeks, these differences made themselves known and gradually brought the practice sessions to a halt. 

Unlike, say, a guitar, you cannot lean the pipes up in an unused corner and pick them up for a quick song or two during the odd moment of unclaimed time.  Before playing, the pipes have to be assembled and tuned; an arduous, time-consuming and awkward process that generally left me too fatigued to play and often had the neighbors calling emergency services in the mistaken belief that someone was trying to murder a pig by beating it with a blunt instrument. 

The bagpipes also demand a certain degree of fitness, which is gained in painfully slow degrees but lost, seemingly, over night.  The stamina required to puff and squeeze with enough force to power three massive drones (imagine, if you will, someone attempting to strangle a small giraffe while holding it upside down under his left arm; the drones would be its legs) and the chanter (its neck) roughly equals the hardiness required to jog up Ben Nevis with a hod of bricks under your arm. 

And, most obvious of all, the pipes are loud.  They aren't loud in the way an enthusiastic pre-teen on a drum kit is loud, they are loud in a sixteen-year-old kid with an electric guitar, 5 million watt amplifier and grudge against his parents sort of way.  Outside, on a still day, they can be heard at a range of two miles.  If you're enclosed in a small room with them, they will make your ears bleed. 

In order to muffle the sound and annoy as few people as possible, I tried shutting myself in the spare bedroom, closing all the windows and waiting until my wife went into town to shop.  Even so, my wife reported being able to detect the sound of someone throttling a giraffe before she even turned into our apartment compound.  And when I finished, I noticed several people in the next block of flats leaning out of their windows and applauding. 

Much as I'd love to think they were appreciating my fine playing I can't help but acknowledge the fact that the applause didn't begin until I started packing the pipes away. 

And so, over time, the practice sessions grew shorter and further apart until one day, winded after just half a chorus of Scotland the Brave, my pipes were unceremoniously consigned to the top of the wardrobe and peace returned to our little neighborhood. 

But the pipes won't rest easy.  Every now and again I hear them calling and my soul stirs, as if waking from a long, boring dream, enticing me to drag a chair up to the wardrobe and pull them down into my waiting arms.  I am, once again, convinced this is what I was born for, though I am never quite convinced that the neighbors would agree. 

Maybe if I bought them each a set of earplugs . . .

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