April 30th, 2011

After many days of playing hard blues scales and practicing arpeggios and learning new notes.   After countless hours of listening to the blues and jazz greats, testify as they enter a new zone of timelessness.
I play exercises repeatledly and smash thru the book breaking new blues ground then covering the same ground over and over.  I can understand and hear jazz and blues quite well since it's all I really listen to anymore.   But I am faithfully following someone elses music and adding each inflection as the music tells me like some tape recorder set on the "unoriginal" button.

But tonight was magic.    First a steady stream, then a full chorus,  then ten thousand ideas fell out of my being and created sound-waves that were impossible to me just a few weeks before.   I felt as a bus station for the blues, which  passed  thru my horn in 4 different scales, each one telling a different story.
Blasting out original prose for the very first time in my saxophone history,   shutting off all cognitive thought and just letting it all flow.   This was like baptism gone right.


Today started as the basic Logan Utah Saturday,  when me and my old buddy Larry having breakfast and talking very little.  Larry used to be my pool shooting, drinking pal, but now I don't do that shit anymore.   So he tells me about the current events at the pool hall,  and I bore him with whatever comes to mind.   Larry had been a good friend and currently my only friend in this Mormon city.   He dropped me back off to my place at 9:00 while the snow was still falling.   I watched a bit of TV and dosed for a while... Boredom started to creep into my soul at this point.   The Saxophone and the Country of China are presently on my mind at all hours.

Begin more research on which Chinese town and school would most likely fit,  and decided to search for the places less polluted than some of my job offers have been,   Finally tired of the house and with the sun out, yet cold, I drove my trusty little Spanish scooter to the neighborhood grocery store.   I opted for the ramen and a few veggies to chop up into a great concoction of healthy lunch which couldn't have cost more than 50 cents.   I did add a chopped up hotdog like the Vietnamese do when they serve their "Pho",  and added an egg as well.   Damn I can live cheap when I wish to!   I made enough for two of course,  so I threw the rest into the toilet and hopefully it to will nourish something.

Did more internet research, applied to a few more places in the few non-polluted towns in China,  and read some amazing things such as:  I had to explain what a rainbow was to my students, and that there are millions of stars and not just a few bright ones,  to those who live in most of the Grey polluted Chinese cities".    I also read a few horror stories, but I doubt that China equals this country in "horror".

 Every hour or so,  I spent 20 minutes playing blues scales and new songs.   I would repeat this everytime my King Zephyr would call to me.   And lately its been calling me all the time everyday.   Two weeks ago,  my instructor showed me a new plastic reed,  and suggested I combine it with the old neglected ancient mouthpiece that I haven't been using,   Now I can play as quiet as a whisper and can control my sound till it sounds like voices from the great beyond or something.   I can still scream it out loud when needed, but its nice that its not always loud as hell.    I am getting along well with the Zephyr and its beginning to make beautiful sounds,  and even talking or screaming when I want it to.   I started out with just a generic honking noise.  

When darkness fell I stepped outside for a few,  and could hear the college kids howling and screaming about something,  this is the farewell to the school year weekend,  which explains the big polynesian guy staggering across my lawn looking for a place to piss while I was leaving to breakfast.   Spring is finally here in Logan town,  and things are beautiful again.