It’s 13:59, and the intercity Bordeaux-Narbonne departs at 14:00. I have sixty seconds to decide whether or not to stay on the train. I reread the text I just received from my Airbnb host in Narbonne: “I can’t receive you today, my apologies.”

My son, who took me to the station, has already left in time to manage the afternoon shift at the Irish pub where he works. I’ve never been to Narbonne, the town in southern France where I’d hoped to spend my break. I’ll be forced to orient myself in an unfamiliar district and scramble—in 30°C heat—for a room in a pricey hotel.

I spiral into a panic, which grows in intensity even after I decide to stay on the train and begin planning for contingencies. I can’t find my password journal, which means I can’t message my Airbnb host, Rodolphe, via the app. I convince myself that I must have mislaid the journal while buying a pair of Reeboks earlier in the day, and perhaps someone is wiping my savings account while I agonize on the train.

Then I remember that I logged Rodolphe’s contact details on my phone. I text him. Within a minute he replies with bemused cordiality: “Mais non, madame, I will not be able to receive you in person as I have a doctor’s appointment, but the key will be in a security box on the door.”

I put my phone away and relax into my seat, thankful I stayed aboard. I end up finding my journal at the bottom of my suitcase.

Maybe I’m so anxious because I haven’t traveled for quite some time. The simple reason I’m headed to Narbonne is to see one of my favorite groups, Funambule, a French flute-saxophone-tuba trio that plays a mélange of different styles, including jazz. They’re performing tonight at Narbo Via, the town’s famed museum of Roman antiquities. But I’m also here because it’s important to keep moving, even if you’ve lost your sense of direction. Growing up in England and South Africa, I envisaged a career playing the flute. In 1988, I graduated from Anglia Ruskin University with an honors degree in music. But I married young and veered into publishing. Eventually, I began working as a freelance copy editor and proofreader. After I got divorced, I raised my children as a single parent.

Living in a kind of survival mode for so long, I tried my best to sustain my creativity by writing poetry and fiction and playing my flute when I could. But my energies were scattered. It was only when my grown children left home that I found I could focus on music again. A few years ago, I joined a local wind band. I began playing flute duets with a friend at charity and private events. We met a pianist, and our trio started performing regularly, gradually building a repertoire and a following. Along the way, I discovered a niche for musicians who have not taken the traditional career path from a conservatory to the professional music circuit.

Built on a raised foundation, the Narbo Via museum is striking for its soaring concrete beams and its pale-colored walls, which give the edifice a striped and stratified effect. The museum’s vestibule features a water installation—a shallow, rectangular pool—which I heedlessly stroll straight through on my way into the building. In my now-sodden Reeboks, I power through the revolving doors, praying nobody noticed my latest faux pas.

I find my way to the performance area, a hall dominated by a floor-to-ceiling mosaic of stone, metal girders, and diffused light. It’s rehearsal hour, and I spot the three musicians who’ve inspired me to take this trip. Two burly men—saxophonist Alain Angeli and tubist Laurent Guitton—are taking direction from Étienne Lecomte, the group’s frontman, a bearded flautist with his black hair tied in a bun. To date, they’ve been two-dimensional, their faces smiling on an album cover. Now I’m in their presence, and I find it surprisingly moving just to observe them handle their instruments confidently, knowing they have mastery over them.

After years of not playing the flute, I lost my embouchure, diaphragm control, and much of the rest of my technique. But everything is returning, and this outing is part of my effort to regain my level.

It was a chance encounter that brought me here. After my second child left home a few years ago, I felt disorientated. I joined the local Catholic community, looking for guidance and support. As I’m English and a flutist, the priest suggested I play at an English-language mass in Charente, which helped rekindle my passion for music. Later, the priest brought up how his brother, also a flutist, was active in Narbonne’s music scene. It caught my attention, and then I learned that Funambule would soon perform there.

The group’s name is French for “tightrope” or “tightrope walker,” an apt description for an ensemble whose music, as one critic put it, is “airy, suspended, and energetic.” In 2023, the group came out with an intriguing album, afrique, which they put together with the oud player Alaoua Idir under the band name Nomades. For me, a highlight of the album is its self-titled track, “Nomades,” where the tuba wends through a surprisingly delicate solo before the flute climbs and climbs, bringing to mind Tolkien’s Misty Mountains.

Tonight, Funambule is being accompanied by a local conservatory’s wind ensemble. Their music meanders across musical styles and cultures, at various points evoking Merseyside in northwestern England, Bulgaria, and traditions further east. There’s a subtlety to this unlikely triangulation of instruments, an elegant whole that at times opens space for the gravelly warmth of Guitton’s tuba and the amiable power of Angeli’s sax. Lecomte takes his flute to its limits, stroking and slapping the keys, bending and fluttering his notes, his body moving nimbly with the music.

As the performance ends, I hear claps of thunder. A storm is gathering momentum. Having finally dried out my sneakers, I’m not keen on getting soaked on a walk back into town. Luckily, I recognize in the audience a pianist from a recent Facebook post. Probably breaking an unwritten rule, I explain my predicament to her. Two more strangers who gave her a lift here, give me a lift there. It’s awkward, but I don’t care.

Back at the apartment, I lie on my host’s snug bed and listen to the rain pattering. I catch a one-sided phone conversation in the street below. “Je t’aime. Je t’aime.” A man pours out his heart. I surmise a split and hear him break down as lightning lights up the sky. I fall asleep.

Lee Nash Lee Nash writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies and has won international competitions. Site: leenashwriting.com | Instagram