Last Tuesday, if you were anywhere near the Liggett-Koenig lawn, you may have been greeted by a highly unusual noise: the music of bagpipes. Having been fortunate enough to be sitting at a table in front of Liggett House, I was able to watch the artist at work, and I was immediately mesmerized by the way the sound resonated throughout the entire space and seemingly my whole body. However, not everyone was this enthused. All too quickly, another student opened his third-story window and yelled at the player to stop; he was trying to study for a biology midterm.

“Three minutes—that’s my record,” Oliver Wang told me as he walked back to the table and began disassembling his instrument. Evidently, interrupted practice sessions were a regular occurrence for him. But I was still dying to hear more. How could someone learn to play an instrument if everyone around him constantly begged him to stop? And was it even worth it? I arranged an interview with the piper to find out.

Oliver Wang is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University, studying English on a pre-med track. Outside of class, he has an impressive range of commitments, serving as director of the Lunar New Year Festival skit, PR chair of the Esports and Gaming Club, and “Oliver” of the Beatbox Society, as well as being an active member of the Taiwanese Student Organization, Asian American Association, and Belegarth Medieval Combat Society. But what most students and faculty—as well as the Washington University Police Department—know him for are his bagpipes.

Wang has been playing this rare instrument for 11 years, having been given only the choice of bagpipes or Scottish drums at his K-12 school in Houston. Interestingly, St. Thomas Episcopal School and Church (STES) itself is neither a Scottish nor a Catholic institution; the headmaster simply fell in love with the culture after visiting Scotland and decided to bring as much of it back to the school as he could.

Throughout his childhood, Wang was generally able to practice bagpipes as much as he needed to, although he still describes the experience as “getting away with it.” Everyone in his town being aware of STES’ ensemble at least granted him some mercy and respite. Unfortunately, St. Louis has been a different story.

When I ask Wang how he finds a setting to practice in, his answer is quick and simple: “It’s impossible.”

He continues: “If I play during the wrong week, or the wrong hour, it’s bad. I’ve gotten in trouble a few times with WUPD for noise complaints.”

I bring up the practice rooms in the Music Classroom Building, although I realize the moment the words leave my mouth that those walls could not possibly contain the thundering of bagpipes. At this point, I finally learn the extent of the backlash Wang faces for playing his instrument. “The music department did [let me] for a month, then they realized how loud I was and told me to stop,” Wang confirms. As for everyone else on campus? “I’ve been contacted by a few people,” Wang answers, “mostly people who know I play the pipes just text me and tell me to stop.”

Finally, Wang recounts how the pursuit of his passion has brought him face-to-face with law enforcement. The first time he was witnessed by WUPD, they simply pulled up their car and stared, which Wang took as a cue to leave. On another occasion, however, when Wang was practicing in Forest Park, he was arrested, called out initially because other patrons thought there was a party going on, then accused of “smack-talking the police officer” and officially charged with resisting arrest. Wang defends that neither of these claims are accurate, and thankfully the charge was dropped immediately after a third party looked over the case.

Yet it seems that this is the fate of pipers in St. Louis. Wang shares that his only solution now is to find spots far from campus when he wants to practice. “I try to keep at least a mile away from people and two miles from buildings,” he says. “Recently I’ve found that there’s a baseball field out back behind the school, just a giant open patch of land. And I stand right next to the road, so the sound of the cars mask my pipes.” Wang is also looking into buying a set of electric pipes, which would allow for easier volume control.

In these ways, Oliver Wang has found windows to keep pursuing his love for the bagpipes. Although Wang also plays violin and viola, and learned piano in the past—all of which, he laughingly admits, are much easier to play on campus—the piper describes how he is drawn to the meditative experience of playing this unique instrument. Between adjusting the pressure of the bags and supporting them, focusing one’s breath and fingering the right notes, he says, “You don’t even have time to think about anything else.” Moreover, there is a silver lining toward Wang’s impossibly challenging quest to routinely practice. “Every time I play the pipes,” he says, “it stands out a little bit in my mind.”