Many of you may see a flute and think: “look at this small weak instrument that is played by fourth-graders and bearded Irishmen” but I am here to tell you it is no such thing. It is small, and played by both elementary school students and James Galway, but it is not weak. In fact, the flute may be the most dangerous instrument of all time.

In this, the Age of Disease, many of us are concerned about people spraying hot spit out into an enclosed space with other people. However back in ye olden days people would dress up in nice clothes and pay money just to watch many people on a stage spit at them. Sometimes they would even pour out tubes full of their saliva onto the floor. It was called the orchestra and people were wild for it. The many tubes that people spat into are what we now call “instruments.”

In these wild new times when people don’t like it when you spit directly into their face, we have to go through a whole hassle in order to hear live music. All sorts of precautions are taken so that everyone in the room does not end up frenching without touching mouths. Most instruments get a little face mask with a cute flap to play through. They put a little shower cap on their horn and it’s all good. Not the flute. When a flutist plays a little diddy, they are projecting spit from both their mouth and the end of the flute, all over everyone. For this reason there are specialty containment devices (see image) to keep flutes from giving everyone mono and other diseases I guess. 

Lowly, unassuming, frail and blighted is the flute. I myself am a flutist, as pictured above in my uniform of shame, flaunting my poor choices for all the world. The mask I wear is a purple beard of ridicule. I am marked as an outcast by my clothing. I ask you, am I to blame for my instrument’s tendency to fire hose my fluids in a ninety-degree spray?

Next time you wander past Rosse Hall and wonder what’s happening inside, be content in your ignorance.