Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
"My horn is my ticket"
is what I remember my jazz teacher Mr. Clyde Kurt Junior telling me one day.
My horn is undeniably my ticket.
My ticket to long trails of heartbreak and happiness.
And that sepia colored road continues today.
One evening, I was practicing my saxophone in my grandmother's front room.
While reading my music,
I peered over the top of the pages, my sister Adrian walked out of the
front door.
I began to hear her talking to some male,
but I didn't really care.
After about fifteen seconds, I wondered what was taking them so long.
So I decided to walk outside and listen to them.
When I walked out of the front door,
I saw my sister talking to some old man with black sunglasses and a cane.
I also noticed another man had his arm wrapped around the first man's arm.
Well, they're gay,
is what I thought.
But I soon found out that the man with the sunglasses was blind.
And he was also my grandfather whom I hadn't seen much of during my life.
The man next to him was his brother,
whom he stayed with while he was in New Orleans.
After 20 more minutes of talking, my grandfather bid us adieu,
And he took off with his brother .
My sister and I were on our way inside when she said, "What you doing? Pick
it up.
There was a rectangular black box sitting where my grandfather had stood.
I hadn't noticed it until my sister said something.
"Who's that for?" I asked.
"It's for you, dummy."
When I went inside, I put it aside,
for I was kind of scared to open the box and I finished practicing.
During the practicing I couldn't stop looking at this box that Pandora seemed to have
misplaced.
Finally, I gathered enough courage to open this thing.
I brought it to the round couch, and I vigilantly released the locks to divulge an
alto saxophone, whose cover was similar to that of Amber beer.
I gawked at its beauty and then I looked at the tatty saxophone that
belonged to the school.
I put the school saxophone in its case and I began practicing with the new horn.
After playing the saxophone for about two hours,
before putting the horn up,
I took one final look up and down
its body and I said, "this is my horn."
My horn is always by my side,
I never leave home without it.
It is an important part of my life.
Why did everyone tell me to practice.
What good does spending all of those hours playing the same saxophone do?
Whenever I would have any free time,
I would practice my saxophone.
At my mother's house, I would sit amongst the superbly scented magnolias seemingly always in season,
and practice the only note that I knew,
until it followed me wherever I went.
It didn't seem like all of that practicing worked.
I used to believe those tales of a great musician sounding horrible,
practicing,
and then mysteriously becoming the Wynton Marsalis that everyone knew and loved.
I practiced and practiced all day until my lip gave out.
The only thing changing was how much more I loathed the practice.
A week later in band classic,
after playing one of our concert songs,
Mr. Morris came over to me and told me that my long tones
had improved.
My hours spent on practicing actually seemed to work.
Mr. Morris had restored my faith in practicing.
Whenever I would have any free time,
I would practice my saxophone.
My mother always told me that she really liked the song I made out of that one note.
Eventually I upgraded my ability to being able to play in the entire B-flat concert scale.
Six o'clock am,
I awoke heartbroken to my cell phone's alarm.
As I pulled myself out of my half-sleep state of mind,
I subconsciously hummed the melody to George and Ira Gerschwin 'Summertime'
If I knew that one of these mornings I would rise up singing.
As the rest of the house slumbered,
I carried on my one-man band towards the bathroom.
After taking my shower,
I got just and I adorned my shirt with the pendant of Charlie Parker,
that was given to me that Mr. Kurt on the last day of my first year at
NOCCA Academy,
my junior high school.
My alto saxophone and I slipped through the doorway without stirring any of the creatures still
asleep in my house.
Foot met gravel while I inhaled the fresh air of a new school year,
and the other foot met the pavement while I slowly exhaled the corrupted air of the New Orleans
Public School Board.
As I started eighth grade at NOCCA Academy,
I couldn't help but think that I would be missing some education that would be imperative to
my development as a jazz musician.
In the summer of 2005,
the school board laid off various teachers including Mr. Kurt,
the man who was responsible for me playing jazz,
and also the drum instructor, Mr. Jonathan Bloom.
So I was deprived of both a jazz education and a better understanding of percussion
instruments.
At the end of the first week,
there was a warning for a storm that caught my ear.
Some hurricane named Katrina, or Kathleen, the name never appealed to me.
It was during math class that I heard of this storm.
The math teacher Mrs Bouti awarded anyone who could give the correct name of the storm extra credit points.
I no clue what the name was, so I just put down 'Lola'.
That was the last time that I would be attending NOCCA Academy,
and the last time that I would mistake Katrina for Lola.
The Sunday after that event,
my sister Danielle; her two sons; her fiance at the time, Tommy;
my mother; her fiance at the time, Jim;
my visually impaired grandfather; and I were in my grandfather's two-bedroom apartment.
We decided to stay in New Orleans for Lola, oh, I mean Katrina.
Everything was fun
until the storm actually came.
The next morning our electricity was defunct,
and water was surrounding the shelter that we were in.
The first couple of days were easy,
because the water wasn't high enough to touch us.
All of the residents had their at the American Apartment Complex, who decided to ride
out the storm, gather at the grilling area and shared stories of past hurricanes,
and we all shared our food.
Eventually we ended up evacuating the apartment the Thursday after Katrina.
We received news that we could only take one item with us.
What should I take?
I'm going to need clothes, a tooth brush, clean underwear etc.
After much deliberation, I decided that the only thing I should bring was my sepia-colored vito alto saxophone.
My sister, and her side of the family ended up parting ways with us, for she was evacuated before us.
After taking a boat to the only dry strip of land on Bayou St John, and
being helicoptered to the interstate where we slept until two o'clock in the morning,
My grandfather, my mother,
Jim and myself rode
on a cold bus in our soggy clothing into Dallas, Texas
where we stayed with Jim's brother Bill.
My grandfather took a plane to New York, where he stayed with one of his friends.
After several days,
My mother, Jim and I went in a car.
We eventually ended up in Clemson, South Carolina.
We were in a three-bedroom house with the Chorins,
a family who were friends of Jim.
The family consisted of two girls and their mother and father.
We stayed there for
four months until we moved back to New Orleans late in December.
At 15 years old,
I haven't decided what kind of musical artist I want to become.
I already know that I want to become a jazz musician.
But I don't know what kind.
There are recording artists, entertainers, gigists, etc.
But I'm not sure what I want to be.
I want to record music
but I don't want to have my own record label.
I want to be in a band, but I'm not ready to be a leader.
All I know is that I want to play the saxophone.
I want to be a gigist,
but I don't want to be limited to just playing around town
in various clubs as my only source of income.
I want to be a composer,
and I want to be able to play other people's compositions.
I want to travel the world, but I want to be able to be in New Orleans to play there regularly.
Even though I may never know what exactly I want to do,
At least I have
my saxophone by my side to help
me make that decision.