November 7, 2015 I get a Sax
Today is the day after saxophone inventor Adolphe Sax’s birthday. Last night, during his birthday proper, I decided I simply can’t go through this life without trying the saxophone. So I rented one today.
I’d been playing trumpet and wanted to get very good at it. I’d even sort of withdrawn from public playing to “woodshed” as musicians put it, doing intense practice on one’s own, the idea being to emerge a much better or even remade player. For months I woodshedded in earnest, playing and buzzing the mouthpiece for hours every day. I did intense breathing exercises. My range soared above the staff. When I put the horn to my lips it sounded like a different person playing it; one who was much better than I’d been and much more mature. If not Satchmo, at least think Red Allen.
Then I got a cold that got down into my lungs so badly it scared me. I was coughing like a WWII vet who grew up on two packs a day. I coughed so hard at times it made me throw up.
I eventually got over it and decided maybe I should not blow into anything ever again. I tried to get enthusiastic about doing art again. This was what I was pushed to do as a kid. My mother had a simple system: I made the drawings or paintings etc and she sold them. Sometimes I even got paid for one, if I could keep Mom out of the loop. I spent the money on brushes or something right away, or the money would get taken anyway. So my enthusiasm for art is not unalloyed.
Music was something I thoroughly wanted to do. I could do it in my head and no one would know. I could play back music I’d heard, invent new music, ponder the oboe part in a symphony I’d heard on the radio. At age 16 I could “jazz out” on something I hadn’t heard since I was 6. I still have all kinds of music in my head that I know, but have no idea of the title or author. With no radio of my own, no records, I had to "hang onto" a song in my head I liked. I guess it was good ear training and all for fun. Music was my own thing - no one else told me to do it, and in fact I doubt many knew how much I was into it..
So for me, art would be about as interesting as working day labor (or less so, manual workers tend to be hilarious to work among) but music is something I’m gonna do paid or not.
As my health got back to “normal”, I wanted to do music again. I’ve decided: Flute (which I’ve played) takes a lot of air, at low pressure, and it's just too puffy for me. Trumpet takes comparatively little air, but often at a lot of pressure. Since I have discovered I have high blood pressure, I don’t think trumpet is for me any more. And the flute does not turn me on; neither does the clarinet which I’ve played a little of. Instruments in the guitar family hate me, and the violin is too delicate for street playing, which is my primary interest right now.
But it was after another talk and laugh-it-up last night with Leroy, the sax player downtown, that my mind got percolating and I decided I simply must rent a sax. I called the shop today and asked if they had any alto saxes to rent, and they said yes, and I asked if they had any Yamahas, and they said they don’t rent Yamahas, and I asked what they did have, and they had one, a Selmer student model. So I said I’d come over and rent it.
So I paid for a $6 VTA (valley transit authority) day pass, got on the light rail to the #62 bus, to the music store which is on the same intersection as the Rosicrucian Museum. This makes it easy to find. I should mention that Park Avenue Music is the most excellent music store I know of, and there are a lot of really excellent music stores here. I explained to the very nice lady working there my trumpet playing woes, and that I’m ready to try a sax, and the really excellent trumpet player (pro level) who was browsing around in there said, “All the more gigs for me!” and I said I don’t worry about gigs anyway, because for now I play on the street. This caused a conversation about Rabbit Trumpet Guy who plays downtown and who is really quite awful. And Leroy, who plays in front of Johnny Rockets. I stood up for Leroy: “Yeah he’s not John Coltrane, but he’s the nicest guy in the world.”
So I picked out some reeds and a sax care kit and a book that comes with a DVD and has pictures of intermediate-schoolers showing me how to hold a sax, and the very nice lady put in a Rico sax strap for free, and I got out my debit card.
Which was refused. Well! OK let’s put the box of 10 reeds back and I’ll just few a few single ones. Still refused. Well, let’s just put the sax rental on the card, and I’ll pay cash for the rest. Refused. Well, OK then, let’s take everything I can’t cover cash, about $8-something, and try that. Refused. We managed to come up with something that I could cover cash, leaving me with $14. I think the problem is, although my card is dated years into the future, my credit union has sent me a new “chip and pin” card and I’m supposed to activate it.
So I got out of there with the sax, and while waiting for the bus, thought to myself, “They let me walk out of there with a new sax and they have no idea if my card will let them take out the monthly payments, I’d better make sure I get the card situation cleared up”.
I figured the $14 I had left would cover at least the necessities, by which I mean a bottle of gin. The kind where they care enough to put it into a nice light plastic bottle. Essex Place, fresh out of Kentucky.
So I got on the bus and then the light rail to downtown, and went into Safeway and got the necessities, and had $3 and change left, enough to get a Hamm’s at Café Frascati, a place Leroy had turned me onto, the coolest little coffee shop in the world. It’s a place that’s not home (here) or work (here), the “third place” where one can just relax and more often than not, get into the most interesting conversations. So I went there and had my Hamm’s and didn’t get any conversation but at least got to relax a bit. I wanted to kill some time until the time Leroy was due to show up at Johnny Rocket’s and I’d show him my new (student) Selmer. (Leroy plans to buy a very expensive pro Selmer and more often than not I put a buck in his case toward this purpose).
Beer consumed, I walked over to the light rail station but … no Leroy. I got a banana out of my messenger bag and ate it sitting in the outdoor patio at Starbuck’s, people watching. Saturday night and just zero buskers. No Red, the flute player, nor was there “the guy with a hole in his head” who plays a very nice bluesy guitar.
Oh well, I guess this is for a purpose, I thought, and took the light rail to the Santa Clara station and got off, in case Leroy was at his secondary spot down there. And he was! We talked and laughed a bit, and I showed him my new (student) Selmer, and I said it was because I can’t possibly go through this life without trying the saxophone. He agreed it’s a very good thing. We have an interesting dichotomy. I am astounded at how he can play while at the same time reading all those musical notes – all at the same time. I sometimes joke that the printed music looks like an anthill got kicked over. Meanwhile as I like to say, I’m not taking printed music out with me when I play because I’m not gonna look at it anyway. He keeps saying “You got the gif’, you got the gif,” because I can just sing or play stuff without printed music. So he thinks I really ought to give it a go.
(In all fairness, like anyone illiterate in anything, I think printed music is a big deal and means one is a "real musician" and I work at playing from it.)
Leroy and I talked a bit about where to get “sharp” clothes and shoes and stuff, and then it was time to bid him adieu and get on back. (The correct answer is Black & Brown on The Alameda, by the way.)
So I got back here and decided that if I am bringing something as wonderful as a saxophone into my home, I must clean up the cluttered cabinets where I’m not even sure what’s in there, and aside from the need to sell off my trumpet stuff on Craig’s List I need to rake out any other dross I’ve accumulated around here and make the place all nice and neat and spick and span.
So I put a few hours into doing that, and got my art shit together to slap onto Craig’s List too. It’s 2AM and I’m out of gas, but got quite a lot done.
I am Mr. Neat. I also have a sort of fear of having too much junk. After a certain point, the “stuff” owns you. That’s another thing I’m finding repellent about art. I was trying to talk myself up, how I’m gonna get out there drawing faces and once I make enough to handle it, rent a small office to use as a studio, etc. And I may have to get a car eventually. And how in the meantime I might get a storage space across the street to stash some of my stuff in. Doing art seriously involves a lot of stuff. Constantly buying materials and paper, and to work outdoors you need an easel and lights and signage and at least a chair for the person you’re drawing,. Music, you just put the notes out there and the emotional link I made with people with my trumpet is something I’ve not seen anywhere else.
As long as it’s a non-amplified instrument, my carbon footprint is probably far, far smaller doing music than doing art. And I should never need to have a car. Hell, I could live, me and my sax, in an Army pup tent and get by OK.
And how do I live? I live in the finished office of a building that started life as a prune-drying shed, near the San Jose airport. My “own” space (most of which is in fact dominated by a work bench, file cabinets, and such things that are not my own) is 130 square feet. I just measured it. I have electricity, but no running water, and only the minimal internet access via a tablet whose main purpose is to look up Ebay items. The rest of the 1000-odd square feet of the building, with 20-foot ceilings, is filled with surplus electronics. At least half of the stuff has stickers from places like Lawrence Livermore National Labs, XEROX PARC, HP research, AEC, you name it. The guy I work for is a genuine rocket scientist, and a super nice guy. I work half time and live in here for free. I have a small fridge, an electric skillet, and a couple of cabinets to keep my stuff in. It’s not bad if you’re disciplined. And no one gives a shit if I feel like practicing at 2AM. Once a week I spend a day at my boss’s house and do laundry, take a real shower, and upload the photos I’ve taken and post the items I’ve photo’d and written descriptions of onto Ebay. I also pack things for shipping there, so my boss and his wife don’t have to hassle with that. We’ve got a pretty good system worked out.
