Keeping it real

Describe a man who has positively impacted your life.

Turning the clock back and then turning it some more, like flicking through the yellowing pages of an old book, I remember someone who had a big influence on me. What I’m about to recall is still vividly etched in my mind as if it happened yesterday.

I can picture it now. I must be fourteen or fifteen and it’s just another day at school, just another class but this time they tell us to assemble in the school lecture theatre. So we all go over there and yes, we see it’s an opportunity to relax and ‘slack off’ shall we say. School is something that doesn’t figure much in my life. Apart from a couple of friends I find it a drag.

One of them, who happens to be seated next to me explains that we have to choose an extra curricular activity. I’m so zoned out I haven’t even registered. He’s decided piping – (that’s highland piping for God’s sake). Next he tells me I should sign up so I reluctantly put my name down. I find myself in this weird roundhouse at the side of the classrooms feeling shunted out and slightly neglected.

The teacher is this older guy who I vaguely see around the school but again, I haven’t registered. He is quietly spoken and modest. He gives me a single wooden pipe – known as a practice chanter so I can learn ‘the tunes’. I take the thing home and forget about it until the next lesson. I’m supposed to practice but arrive for the session unprepared and discover my friend has done the homework. Oh, I have to learn some notes on this instrument and locate them on the score in front of me. What a drag. Er, G, um C or is it? No, it’s A. Right (I’m not interested). And the teacher, Ernie Dowler probably notices, but nonetheless shows patience and enthusiasm.

Now, I’m supposed to be a music kid coming from a music family. But somehow this guy – this teacher is different. So I put in some practice for the next lesson and think nothing more of it. Ernie Dowler has a concrete mixer and tools in the roundhouse. There are boxes of stuff – what look like kilts and equipment all around. The place is relaxed – so not a classroom. He tells us (only two of us have turned up) that he’s going to demo out ‘the tune’ and so he pulls out his set of pipes. What follows is so profoundly effecting and impactual it marks a seismic shift that forever changes my life. It isn’t so much the volume levels (you can imagine within a confined concrete space) but the way he plays. A faultless rendition that is seamless and appears effortless with a level of expression that is transformative. I am transfixed. From a somnolent state to fully galvanised attention all in the space of two minutes flat. In that moment I understand what it means, what he means, to be real. Not merely to get away with stuff – there’s plenty of that going on next door in the classrooms. They teach what you need to know to pass exams and how to ‘get on’ in life. Here it’s how to be real and how to be hands on.

In the months and years that follow I hang out in the roundhouse. It becomes a home from home. School becomes interesting and enjoyable. I discover Ernie Dowler’s backstory, from his time in the navy and as a champion pibroch player. He teaches me to pipe solo at school assemblies, weddings, and public events and I will go on to study at the Conservatorium. I doubt this would have happened without his influence.