The Music In My Life: Part IX -- Conclusion

Unable to view my psyche as able to tolerate the life of a professional musician, I did not graduate with music as my major. I am either a musician or not. A university may give me a piece of paper reading that I can teach or perform but it can never teach me to play. My rival does well teaching band at a small high school a few hours away and Nike-guy has disappeared completely.

Regarding myself, I continued to perform in small bands on and off campus and kept playing sporadically until at least five years ago or so ... about the time my marriage started really falling apart … but … music has never left me. I believe it was in me before I was born. It is not a past-time for me but; instead, it IS me. Not a day passes without an MP3 player in my pocket. I do not listen to Johnny Cash or René Joly but Green :Day is almost every day that I am able.

I cannot express the profound effect that music can have on me. Lately, just thinking of a 21st Century Breakdown lyric pushes me to tears because it is so reflective of myself that I cannot tolerate it.

I have wondered if my father realizes the irony of keeping me in that prison with his music but buying me the saxophone that I used to escape.

Likewise, as far as my saxophone goes, I’ll say that it has been located, dusted off, and the mouthpiece sits in disinfectant as I type.

The Music In My Life: Part VIII

She calls me after-hours: “What the hell is going on with you? You need to get down here RIGHT NOW.”

When I arrive, she is livid. The dean has somehow found out about the post-concert suicide pact. My assigned counselor and I had already been through similar scenarios with the dean and promised that such situations would no longer occur. “It is a public-relations nightmare -- not to mention the effect it would have on other students.”

I do what is right -- I lie. “Yes-mam’s and No-mam’s” tumble out of my mouth automatically without thought. After finding out what she sent me “home” to after my last forced “time off,” the dean's reluctance and remorse trickle slightly outward. I'd forgotten the risk she had taken when allowing me back. Most students either hate or fear our dean. I hated her also at one point ... but now I am filled with respect and awe at the steel demeanor of her exterior since I know she is secretly kind inside.

That evening, in the dimly lit auditorium, the final concert seems flawless and leaves me, for a moment, not with the heaviness I had dreaded, but with a familiar tingle down my spine. I later run back to my dorm, secretly vomit in the empty restrooms, and dive into bed. Visions of the dean standing on the bridge barge through my mind as I debate what to do with myself. Damp palms and a cramping stomach cause me to succumb to fetal position. I recall David Helfgott. I slip into a depression and sleep throughout most of the next week. I have to figure out a way to keep my music as MY music -- not something that can be taken away again.

The Music In My Life: Part VII

It kills me to hear “Kurt Cobain-with-Nikes” play MY soprano solos. I’m humiliated to be in the clarinet section. I suspect others see it in my eyes. I’ve taken on a number of students for private saxophone instruction and now the university is sending me clarinet referrals as well. When we go on tour, I am to teach master classes for the alto clarinet – NOT saxophone.


The whole scenario would not be so bad if the new guy weren’t so good. He’s had the best education, knows much more than the proper name of notes, has the maestro as his father … nagging insecurities scratch at my stomach as I remember the small illiterate town where I am from. Berlioz on a saxophone – what was I thinking?


Despite my bitterness and shame, René Joly’s creation of “The Lord of The Rings” sweeps me away to another world and I forget all else. “Sweep” is not even the right word. I am engulfed, consumed, submerged, and soon nothing else exists. The whole work probably lasts just a little over an hour but it seems much longer. Easily, I am lost in what solos I have and though the sax solos are not mine, I feel them in my being as if they were.

It is now to the point that there is nothing else that exists in this world and I do not know what I will do when this tour is over and we no longer perform this piece. It has become who I am, what I live for, and the desperation of losing it drives me to craziness. What I will do with myself once we finish performing this? I cannot live without this music so the solution seems clear. When we arrive home and perform our final concert, I will take the whole lot of the pills the Indian doctor gives me, go downtown to the bridge, and jump into the Mississippi.

I Fray

Belongings are getting out of control again. They are beginning to take over my environment. My mind is frayed so that I can’t seem to focus on these things for very long. I start but do not finish. I end up doing something else and I do not know how it happened or what I am doing. I am only one person. There may be different parts of my mind but there is only one body here and it can only do so many things at once. I already have enough things to try and keep order of so how can I possibly order my environment? Am I dying or am I not dying and how may times does a person have to arrive at this point in a lifetime?

I’ve started to throw things away again. If I don’t know what to do with some clothes or books then out they go to the trash. Goodwill or used book store? No – there is no time for that. These things have to go NOW because I can’t control them. So the cleansing begins. Trash.

Bills pile, financial matters waiting to be attended to. The hospital is threatening to send me to debt collection again. I fray.

I do not know what to do. There are so many things that I should be concerned about but I am not. Bills, finding a job, managing my dwindling money – these things I just let slide away. I try to feed myself, I try to rest myself, I try to bathe myself, I try to monitor my blood pressure, I try not to cough, I try to care for the cats, I try to make it to work and back each day as I wait.

The Music In My Life: Part VI

He is very tall with long stringy blonde hair and rises up from the pair of neon yellow Agassi shoes that I have been coveting for weeks at the mall (they only come in men’s so I can't get a pair.) The group around him seems to know him but since I do not, I weave through and into the practice room.

We are to start practice on René Joly's “Lord of The Rings” today and I am excited. Since I am currently lead, I will get the soprano sax solo representing Smeagol. My first solo on soprano, I will be the one wailing that dreadful cry by smearing two eerie octaves into one long dissonant descent created by my very own embouchure.

My diva-dreams are interrupted when Nike-guy slides himself into the chair where my rival has usually perched himself and honors me with an introduction. It turns out that this is our fine conductor's eldest from which rumors of being suspended from (famous school) for cocaine use had already predicated.

It only takes a week before I am back on second part. I would not worry so much but there are only two alto parts in the ensemble and my rival will be eligible to challenge me in just a couple of weeks. Also, I know that the clarinet section is hurting for an alto clarinet player and I had already been filling in during quartet practices so chances of the maestro moving me down to clarinet are rising.

The Music In My Life: Part V

They keep throwing threats at me to either participate in marching band (MB) but just the thought of putting on another thick, hot marching uniform crammed between tubas and clarinets annihilates my stomach contents. In high school, it was either march or don’t play music at all. I cannot continue to have my music threatened by some administration’s desperate need for bodies to support whatever cause the band is marching for.

Never will I be able to rid my ears of the maniacal voice of my high school music director. A loud whistle would slice through all instruments and would conclude with his voice “STOP – STOP - STOP!” I knew what would follow:

“G*DDAMMIT (MY LAST NAME)!!! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO HAVE TO DO TO TEACH YOU HOW TO TIE YOUR SHOES?!? HOW OLD ARE YOU!?! EVERYONE – LET’S STOP WHILE WE WAIT FOR (MY LAST NAME) TO GET HER DAMN SHOES TIED – AGAIN!”

I don’t know why I could never keep them tied. To this day, I still cannot. It seems as if they are controlled by a force beyond my control and that I have too many other things to keep track of.

Almost as bad, were those trips on that lousy bus that reeked of a mixture of locker room and cheap perfume. Since our town was so small, there was no such thing as band geeks. Since most of the members were extraverted jocks and cheerleaders, what few geeks there were ran in the other direction. I hated sitting in that bus – the only person occupying a seat to herself. I quietly endured the periodic harassment, prayed for my escape, and wondered why could they not just let me play how I want?

During my junior year I was ranked first in the state and was to provide lead saxophone in a state-wide honors band that would open opportunities for me but the school would not promote an activity for just me. Instead, they spent their money on the girls’ volleyball team by sending them to watch state finals after they had failed to place locally. They had rather spend their money on a whole group of losers than one winner.

Anyway, the most amazing discovery I’ve made since arriving on campus has been the realization that I DON’T HAVE to go to “their dance” or “their party” and I most certainly do not have to go their “band trip.”

The Music In My Life: Part IV

Through his wiry moustache and beard, the aural skills instructor asks us to start at the eighth note in the ninth measure. Measures I can count but I have to lean over to the girl next to me to ask which one is the eighth note. She looks at me as if I am insane and asks how do I play if I cannot read music? I ask her how our instructor can play the flute with so much facial hair.

Of course I can read music. Though I can usually sense how each note fits in with the others by its appearance; I cannot call upon them by proper name. My memory fails me. Proper names seem silly. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that I've had my nose pushed into a hymnal from age week one. I always ended up staring intensely, week after week, at all those little dancing decorative notations while silently moving my lips along with the rhythmic lines.

It seems something about the music has embedded itself into my being. Perhaps this is why I do not play jazz well since such notes are those of interpretation and do not fit together in a tidy mathematical sensory pattern. I HAVE to have a pattern.

Despite my ignorance, I do find the music theory classes to be interesting. The endless practicing, rehearsing, and competition to maintain my first chair in symphonic ensemble is much more stressful than I’d anticipated. One of the other sax players resents me since I am a freshman – especially since I have not yet declared music as my major. Every chance he gets, he files a challenge to topple my status. Continuing to choose French pieces filled with … the fast notes … he never realizes that these pieces are my strength. Though the notes are smashed together in very small measures, my fingers feed and float around such pieces. If he would choose a piece with frequent time changes and strange notes then my mind would overpower my fingers and he would undoubtedly topple me over but I do not tell him this. His antagonism drives me further into my quest to not only catch-up on but master all of these new intriguing concepts.

My typical schedule starts at 9am in the music building and ends around 11pm in the same building. I am assigned protégée to a recovering alcoholic but brilliant woodwind professor for private tutelage. Week after week, we sit in his small office. The smell of his stale tobacco accompanies us as he drives me to break all of the “bad” habits that I had acquired through my own learning. I am both offended to have MY territory; MY music threatened but, at the same time, I am challenged to leap through any hoop he asks me to jump through. Periodically, he re-hashes the story of my initial Berlioz audition and it gives him a chuckle. I never see any sign of the raging temper reported by his other pupils and instead become attached to the old man.

Unfortunately, or not, I sense that all this will have to come to an end.

The Music In My Life: Part III

I first hear Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique while watching 'Sleeping With The Enemy.' For some reason, I find the dark, forceful melodies vacillating with a dreadful torment and sadness oddly familiar so I mostly extract portions from movements one and five into one piece while assuring that all my strengths are touched upon. This is what I use for my audition with the university.

It seems that I perform it ok but I am met with silence from the three bearded and disheveled professors who sit before me. This committee asks me where I had found this piece? Lying, I tell them that I had heard on the radio. I do not know why I lied but it slipped out too quickly for me and I could not reel it back in.

They ask to see my manuscript and I explain to them that the music is in my head. They appear confused and ask me to sight-read more material. I begin to worry that I should have used the plain sheet music my high school band director had given me but I seem to read the unfamiliar notes fairly well. They thank me, respond that the audition is over, and I am free to leave.

The Music In My Life - Part II

A dark brown swirl of hair swirls around her head like nothing I've ever seen. The raspy smoker's voice and non-conventional slacks made the band director stand out in our rural, factory-abandoned, and fundamentalist town.

Anyone in the fifth grade has the option of signing up for beginner's band. I have already been playing my neighbor's alto sax & hope that I will be selected for the one sax position available. Almost everyone who has signed up for beginning band wants to play the sax. It seems unfair that only one person will be chosen. Why can't everyone play the sax if they want?

Regardless, I want it very badly. I had been able to improvise tunes since the first time I picked it up, cannot get feel of the pearly keys out of my fingertips, and frequently daydream about it during class. Finally, the director says that she sees something in me that is different from the others. I feel lucky because any other teacher might have picked one of the brighter students.

The smallest in my class, the sax probably weighs more than I and takes both hands to carry in the large black case. My stomach starts to ache every day before the 3pm school bell when I fear that no one will be in the parking lot to take me home but I'm proud to have it and drag it all the way home if I have to. We were all given" practice cards" for the required 30-minute-daily practice routine but I usually practice AT LEAST an hour. I can't say exactly why I am so driven to play except there seems to be some instinctual drive that overpowers me.


I won't go into the trials I endure to eventually get to the level of playing I achieve by the time I finish high school but the effort pays off. Though class Salutatorian, my grades are barely above mediocre for college. However, thanks to my musical achievements, I am offered multiple full scholarships as well as an audition to Julliard.

In sum, it feels as if I raped the music that had participated in the rape of my own life, left shit-town, and never returned to stay. I do not know where I will go from here though.

The Music In My Life: Part I

Our cheap laminate floors were always hard and cold in the winter. I walked down the hallway one day soon after Christmas when suddenly there was a commotion and my parents rushed me out of the room – instructing me to go to my bedroom and close my eyes. Supposedly, “Santa” was visiting yet again because he had forgotten one of my presents. Excited, I ran to the bedroom, covered my eyes, and used all my wits to NOT look out the bedroom window in hopes of catching a glimpse of Santa. Minutes later, I was told that Santa had left and that I could come and get my present.

A large package was wrapped and sitting on the couch just for me. My tiny hands eagerly unwrapped it to discover a real record player with denim covering. It was the type that played the black records that my sisters listened to. I already had a “record player” that played “special” records. They were plastic, much prettier, and I liked to run my fingers around the edges. The music from those records was much better than those of my sisters but it seemed to be such a big event for me to have one that I got caught up in the excitements.

Soon after, my father called me into the dining room to play the record player. I crawled up into the big chair as his large rough hands began to load some records onto the player. The one I remember most was Johnny Cash’s “Cry, Cry, Cry.” It was carefully explained to me that if I were to tell anyone about the stuff going on in the house then I would end up all alone. I would have no father, no mother, and no sisters. It would be me who would be the one to “cry, cry, cry.”

My sisters must not have known the real meaning of that song because they played it quite a bit and tended to tease me because it made me cry so hard. My parents got so aggravated that they would scold them to stop.

I wish so much that I could express how that musical threat branded itself into every ounce of my being and dominated my every action. Music has played such an intricate role in my life, threading in and out through most aspects of my being. There are no words. He knew a most sensitive place to strike and used that to his advantage. I never told anyone.

Twelve Hours

10am: It's hard to believe that the crunch of an apple could be so loud; or, even the quiet guy on the phone who sits all the way across the large loft office. My nerves scream in pain so I poke in my earbuds and crank up The Mozart Sessions in the hopes that the 55 beats-per-minute will prevent me from screaming.

2pm: God, I think I'm going to be sick. A tremor starts in my hands so I head to the restroom. Sickness. Vile sickness. Water cooler, food, unwashed coffee mug? My heart races so I take a Metoprolol and an Immodium.

6pm: I can't believe I just raised my fist to one of the cats. Just a raised fist -- but still. I'm so stressed that I can't stop shaking and my stomach makes noises as it churns. I try to sit with the cats to give them one-on-one time and make up for my crankiness.

7pm: Now that the cats have my attention, they want nothing from me so I decide to finish my WordPress theme. PHP is frustrating enough as it is and now the cats are back jumping on me. I refresh the page after an FTP only to see a the white-screen-of-death. Starting to panic, I hastily search for my backups only to find that they are gone.

8pm: There is a crashing in my head. First, the remote flies across the room and shatters along with other items off the mantle. Within seconds, anything that I can get my hands on goes sailing. I end up in the garage to protect the cats from myself and attempt to slice tennis balls from the ball hopper but with my bad throw I miss and this makes me more angry. As I continue along my path of destruction it hits me: HALF. Three days ago, Dr. cut the Nortriptyline in HALF. I knew something wasn't right about that -- NO ONE CAN EVER cut my medicines in HALF at one time.

9pm Realizing not only the medical foolishness but my own for having NOT prevented it I begin to curse god. I call God names I've never called anyone. I think back to the community mental health center where it all began - where they all started pushing drugs down my throat. If only they had LISTENED TO ME. WHY DIDN'T ANYONE LISTEN INSTEAD OF STUFFING PILLS DOWN MY THROAT?!?

10pm: I re-enter the house and view the remnants of my destruction with the cats are purring(?) for food. I feed them and take a WHOLE dose of the pills.