Q&A: Kristen Laine, Author, "American Band"

By Jon Berry, Insight Trails

SOME YEARS AGO, AT A HIGH SCHOOL REUNION in Richmond, Indiana, Kristen Laine found herself in a group of friends from her marching band days, talking about what was really going on in their lives in high school. They shared the back stories they’d kept from each other of family crises, financial hardships, and other pains. Band, they all agreed, got them through it.

 The evening stayed with Laine, eventually becoming the germ of an idea for a book: to immerse herself for a year in a high school band and uncover the stories of a new generation of teenagers. In 2004, she acted on the dream, moving with her husband and children to Elkhart, Indiana, home of the reigning state champion high school marching band, the Concord High School Marching Minutemen.

    It was a risky move. Although she had been published in magazines and had become a an essayist for Vermont Public Radio, Laine had never written a book. She didn’t have a contract with a publishing house or an agent to shop the idea.

 But the gamble paid off. The resulting book, American Band: Music, Dreams, and Coming of Age in the Heartland, published this fall by Gotham Books, has made waves in narrative non-fiction, one of the hot spots of the publishing industry. It has landed Laine interviews with NPR’s Talk of the Nation and other top radio programs, and has won praise from major publications as “a touching story superbly told” (Library Journal) with “novel-like richness” (The Wall Street Journal) and “a driving narrative” (The Chicago Tribune).

 The book is layered with unexpected twists. The band’s hard-driving, clean-cut band director cares as much about developing leaders as winning trophies (sample wisdom: “If you work as hard as I want you to, you’re going to have a great marriage, a great career, and a great life”). The trumpeter who is the acknowledged leader of the band sees his perfect life come undone by a series of tragedies in his family, and manages to soldier on. The classic story of the new kid in town who finds a home in the band – a story Laine, the daughter of a corporate executive, saw in herself a generation ago – concerns a Hispanic immigrant. The evangelical Christianity that suffuses much of  heartland America today plays a significant, and sometimes surprising, role in many of the stories.

 I have known Kristen Laine since high school, and for many years have been impressed by her personal journey. It has taken her through a series of leaps, from small-town Indiana to college at Harvard, then to the West Coast, where she worked at Microsoft in the go-go years of high-tech and, for several years, devoted herself to rock climbing, before coming to her current life in New England.

 I talked with her about American Band, becoming a writer, and the lessons she’s along the way, from the apprenticeship in risk-taking that she gained from rock climbing to the advice she was given by the poet Gary Snyder.

QUESTION: As much as a story of a high school band, American Band is a book about growing up and the interior struggles of finding identity and making sense of the world. Did you go into the book looking for this theme?

KRISTEN LAINE: I went into the book thinking of band as a transformative, life-changing experience, because it had been that for me. But I wasn’t sure what I would find. What I found was remarkable and wonderful. Each of the students I focused on moved closer to who they needed to become as an adult.

Q: Many adults find it excruciatingly difficult to talk to teenagers. How did you get them to open up?

A: I wanted them to feel they could be themselves with me. I remembered from when I was a teenager that teenagers have many faces. I didn’t want them to just present the face to me that they present to their teachers. I didn’t want them to be playing a role. I was sincerely interested in who they were, what they were thinking about, and why they mad the choices that they made.

 I didn’t talk down to them. I interacted with them in their own questions. I remembered that when I was a teenager, I was grappling with big questions. So when they brought up their questions, like “How does God interact in the world?” I didn’t act as if I had all the answers and that they would come to those answers down the road. I engaged them, and asked them questions: What did they think? Why were they were thinking about this? Who did they talk to about these questions? I wasn’t trying to look at teenage culture. For me teenage culture is just the surface. Underneath the surface is where the interesting stuff is.

"I remembered that when I was a teenager, I was grappling with big questions. So when they brought up their questions, like “How does God interact in the world?” I didn’t act as if I had all the answers. I engaged them, and asked them questions: What did they think?"

Q: What did you learn about kids and growing up today that you didn’t appreciate before the book?

A: Before going to Elkhart, I knew some teenagers, but not many. I think I’d accepted the media image that kids today are disengaged mall rats and very focused on what college they’re going to get into or how much money they’re going to make. Although I assumed that band kids would be a little different from that, I was surprised by how far they were from those stereotypes.

     What I found was a lot of kids who weren’t focused much on college and money at all. Instead they were focused on their relationship with God.

    That was a huge surprise. I grew up in the era of Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. The Jesus Christ I thought of was countercultural and antiestablishment. In the 30 years since I’d left the state, Indiana, like a lot of the middle of the country, had become more conservative. I’d read about the change, but didn’t fully appreciate until I got there that I was going behind the lines of red state America. The culture wars were real. I’d been on one side of them, and I was now seeing the other side.

"I didn’t fully appreciate until I got there that I was going behind the lines of red state America. The culture wars were real. I’d been on one side of them, and I was now seeing the other side."

    If I was going to take on these kids’ lives in full, it meant dealing with their questions about religion and their relationship with God. They’d been brought up in a culture that had clearly defined things I saw positively as negative – that feminism was the work of the devil; that homosexuality was the work of the devil. I was truly the first person some of these kids had talked to who was a feminist, a Democrat, and a liberal. I had to try to look at them empathetically. I had to understand that they were trying to make sense of the world they’d been taught.

    Some of the students felt very clear about right and wrong. But many were trying to figure things out. Like teenagers everywhere, they had a view of the adult world that’s from underneath the adults. They saw hypocrisies between what adults say and do. They read the Bible, and listened to what their pastors said, but made their own assessments. In doing so they started to chart a path that was very different from the generation teaching them. They talked a lot about tolerance. Something they kept saying to me is, it’s not up to me to say what God decides. It’s up to me to love everybody as God would want me to love them. Not love the person/hate the sin, but simply love them.

"Something they kept saying to me is, it’s not up to me to say what God decides. It’s up to me to love everybody as God would want me to love them. Not love the person/hate the sin, but simply love them."

 From what I saw, I believe this generation of evangelicals will remain devout Christians. But I think they’re going to be different in the political realm, more politically diverse and more interested in social issues like homelessness. That was one of the encouraging pieces for me. In my worldview, thinking for yourself is key. I believe that God wants us to find our own way, and not simply do what we’re told.

Q: Many people think about taking a leap of faith to pursue a dream. You did it, going to Indiana to research the book, before you had an agent or contract. How did you do it?

A: I think my life has trained me to take risks. Partly it’s from my family – my three brothers and I were brought up to think of ourselves as special. But a lot of it was books. I was a bookish kid. I loved reading, and read a lot of myths and fairy tales. I often think I’ve gone through my life thinking of myself in mythological terms, looking at my life as a series of quests, with obstacles in my way. I’m always looking for the magical dust or the implement or sword that’s going to help me get through the obstacle to my goal. I think I did that when I came to Richmond. Through being in band, I reinvented myself from a girl who was picked on all the time to someone more poised and socially comfortable. Moving around so much when I was growing up – we moved every 2-plus years – in a sense, also helped. It taught me I could make big moves.

"I often think I’ve gone through my life thinking of myself in mythological terms, looking at my life as a series of quests, with obstacles in my way. I’m always looking for the magical dust or the implement or sword that’s going to help me get through the obstacle to my goal."

Q: How did rock-climbing come into the picture?

A: It started, ironically, with going to Harvard. I had this idea that Harvard was a place where people tried to find truth and beauty. When I got there, I saw that it was more a training ground for people to become investment bankers, lawyers, or doctors. It was the beginning of the yuppy era. I didn’t want to join the status quo. After graduation, what I wanted to do was go to Alaska. I’d just read John McPhee’s Coming into the Country.

    I couldn’t find a job in Alaska, so I got one in San Francisco. Through a friend from Harvard, I met a guy who was a climber. I thought, I’d like to try that. He got all the gear and ropes and hung them on me – they weigh a lot, about 30 pounds – and said, “Do you really want to do this?” as in “Why would you want to do this, you little girl?” That made me mad.

    I moved up to Tacoma (Washington) to do college admissions work for the University of Puget Sound. My travel area was California. Once, on a trip there, I saw this rock. I got out of my car and, in my tennis shoes, started climbing up the rock. I got almost to the top, and my leg started shaking. I got scared and grasped the rock – the wrong move, any climber will tell you – and fell to the ground, into some bushes. Luckily, I wasn’t injured.

    After I fell, I could have said, "I don’t want to do this." But instead I said, “I need lessons.” I wanted to do it, so I learned how to do it. And I liked it. I loved it, in fact. I lived out my dream to be an explorer and adventurer. For several years, in my 20s, I became a climbing bum. It was not an easy life. I lived without a car and really close to the bone. But I had really great adventures.

"After I fell, I could have said, 'I don’t want to do this.' But instead I said, 'I need lessons.' I wanted to do it, so I learned how to do it. And I liked it. I loved it, in fact."

Q: What did you like about climbing?

A: Climbing got me outside myself. It requires absolute focus, something I think I crave. I loved the feel of rocks. I loved the smells. I loved the people I got to know. I learned a lot from the other climbers I was around. They were people who were, literally, not taking the easy way. Many of them had very interesting lives. It was an apprenticeship for me in risk-taking, not only in going up a rock but in all of life.

Q: What did you learn about risk-taking?

A: Climbers I knew died. It’s one of the sad truths about climbing. Climbing magazine always has an obituaries column. So death became part of what I learned about. I learned that life is short. Even if you live to be 95, there’s not an infinite length of time. To hold back from what I most want to do is a crime.

    Over time, I learned that the climbers who were less likely to die were the ones who prepared very carefully. They were risk-takers, but they prepared themselves well. I’ve drawn on that lesson many, many times.

    Then, in the simple, physical act of climbing, I learned what it means to go for it. There are lots of climbing moves that you can’t do if you hold back.

"Over time, I learned that the climbers who were less likely to die were the ones who prepared very carefully. They were risk-takers, but they prepared themselves well. I've drawn on that lesson many, many times."

Q: Take me through one of those moves.

A: The standard climbing rule is you need three points of contact with the rock. Three points make you stable. It’s best if it’s your two feet and one hand. But there are times that you have to make a dynamic move, where you have only one point of stability, the point you’re pushing off from, to grab hold of a rock or ledge. To reach a point of safety, you have to go past a point of no safety. You have to have faith. Many of these moves also take you past a point of no return. You can’t backtrack and reverse a leap.

    When I think about the leap that we took to do the book, we had to go past a point of no return. We actually went past a couple of them.

"The standard climbing rule is you need three points of contact with the rock. But there are times where you have only one point of stability, the point you’re pushing off from. To reach a point of safety, you have to go past a point of no safety. You have to have faith."  

Q: What were the points of no return for you with the book?

A: I knew that I was unlikely to get an agent or a contract before we went to Indiana. I was too much of an unknown. The only way we were likely to pull this off was to take a risk. Once I got to that point it was an easy question. I believed in the book.

    That’s another thing I’ve learned: to trust my instincts. When I have strong leadings, they’re usually right. I had a strong sense this was going to be a good book. There hadn’t been one like it. I had the background to write it. I felt it was a reasonable risk.

Q: How were you able to take the risk of pulling up stakes and going to Indiana to research the book?

A: I owe a lot to my husband, Jim [Jim Collins, also a writer, author of The Last Best League, on the Cape Cod summer baseball league]. There was no way I could have researched and written this book without the sacrifices Jim made, moving with me to Indiana and taking care of our children, so that I could focus on the book. I spent a long time as a single woman asking the men I dated, would you ever stay home with children? It’s really hard for women in my generation to find that. And then I met Jim. He wanted to be fully engaged as a parent, and to have a real partner in his life. Jim knows the excitement of sharing an intellectual life and career, and wanted that in his marriage.

Q: How did you manage financially?

A: We had come into our marriage with money from my being in the high tech business. We used most of it for Jim’s book, and figured we would spend the rest for my book. As it turned out, we needed to spend that money by the time we came back from Indiana, before I started writing. We sold off some stock and a life insurance policy. Then we borrowed money from one of my brothers.

    We were right at the point of saying, “If I don’t get an agent by next week, we’re going to have to find other jobs,” when things shifted. That was on a Sunday. By Friday, the agent I’d wanted from the beginning, Robert Shepard, told me wanted to represent the book. That was good news: Robert wouldn’t have taken the book unless he knew there was a good chance of being able to sell it. From there, my story went beyond fairy tale. Not only did I get enough money to write the book, but I got a lot of money for a first-time author. Jim didn’t have to work, so he could totally take care of the kids while I finished the book.

Q: It’s striking to me how often coincidence comes up in the interviews I've done for Insight Trails – when people put themselves out there, things happen.

A: A number of years ago, at a writers conference in Squaw Valley, I went on a hike with the poet Gary Snyder. On the hike, I asked him, “How do I make a living at writing?” He turned around, in midstride, while bounding up these rocks – he’s truly like a mountain goat – and said, “You just do it.” It was a very simple idea. You just do it.

    It took me a long time to get rid of my anxiety about money. But once I made the leap mentally, people took me more seriously. You recognize it in someone. I think something actually, physically changes in people, in how they hold themselves, when they’re committed to a path.

"I think something actually, physically changes in people, in how they hold themselves, when they’re committed to a path."

Q: What else have you learned about risk-taking?

A: That you have to be fully invested. For a while in my early 30s, I got so used to taking risks that I would just leap. The last job I had at Microsoft was entirely the wrong leap. I took it because I thought it was going to look good. I forgot to ask myself if I really wanted it. It turned out that I didn’t. I got fired. I failed. Moving up the corporate ladder turned out not to be meaningful enough to me for me to take that big a risk. I didn’t want it badly enough to do all it required.

 In contrast, writing this book was something I’d wanted my whole life. I was so determined to do it. It was the first time in work that I’ve ever had the feeling that I’d had climbing, of absolute investment.

Q: When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

A: I first said I wanted to be a writer when I was five years old. I had other dreams as well. When I was seven, I wanted to be a missionary. I wanted to go to China, and I thought being a missionary was how you got to China. I was reading a lot of 19^th-Century books at the time! I also wanted to be an explorer. I remember reading about Marco Polo and being unhappy that there were no more continents to be discover – then reading Kon-Tiki [Thor Heyerdahl’s book about crossing the Pacific by raft] and thinking, there are other ways to be an explorer. When I think about the passions I’ve had in my life – words and books, having adventures, and trying to make the world a better place – nothing has changed! (Laughs)

"For many years, I think I was waiting to be anointed, like the girl at the soda fountain who gets tapped to be a movie star. I had this idea that writers were picked. Now I realize that writing is not a divine gift. It's a craft. If you want to do it, you get an apprenticeship."

Q: How close is where you’ve wound up to where you thought, back in your 20s, that you’d be at this stage of life?

A: When I was younger, I think I had a failure of imagination about what it meant to be a writer. I had an ideal, and that ideal got in my way. For a number of years, I think, I fell into avoidance strategies. It was exciting to be at Microsoft, but I knew every day that it wasn’t really where I wanted to be.

 When I was turning 40 one of my brothers said to me, “If you’re 40 and you’re not writing, maybe you weren’t meant to do it.” Inside I just screamed, “NO!” Because I didn’t want to believe it. But after I got done screaming, I asked myself, what am I still missing? And I tried to find people who could help me get the skills I lacked so I could get to where I am today.

     For many years, I think I was waiting to be anointed, like the girl at the soda fountain who gets tapped to be a movie star. I had this idea that writers were picked. Now I realize that writing is not a divine gift. It's a craft. If you want to do it, you get an apprenticeship. You go get the skills you need and practice them.

That’s I.t.!

****

To learn more about American Band of buy a copy of the book, please go to:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Band-Dreams-Coming-Heartland/dp/1592403190/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195574777&sr=8-1

To learn more about the book, read a sample chapter, listen to interviews with Kristen on Talk of the Nation and other programs, or read reviews of the book, please visit the American Band website:
http://www.americanbandbook.com/

To listen to some of Kristen Laine’s commentaries on Vermont Public Radio: 

Frost Heaves
http://www.vpr.net/episode/32723/ 

Scrappy
http://www.vpr.net/episode/32596/

Veterans Day
http://www.vpr.net/episode/32559/

Spring Peepers
http://www.vpr.net/episode/32315/

Kristen Laine's author photo, at the beginning of this interview, was taken by Medora Hebert.