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Granted, I might like the stuff I play at first, but I always learn to hate it. It doesn't take long. What was terrific soon becomes decent, then just ok, then pedestrian, then terrible. I come to despise even my strongest recordings: "I can't believe I sound like that!"; "Ugh! I need to practice!"; "I suck at life! So hit me in the eye with a bat! I'm too much of a pansy to live!" I blow a fine solo, but I hate my tone, my lines, my harmonic concept. My high end is out of tune, my low end's not speaking properly, my time is bad. I use this idea more than once, and that idea not at all; the trombonist plays better than me, and faster too. I get so fucking dissatisfied with myself that I just know I'll be great someday! Other people say I sound fine. I know better, and therein lies the key to my future success. Everything I play is crap. Most everything is very crap, and even on my best day I still sound like a bag of ass. My goal, then, is not to play well, but to play less crappy. This is an impossible goal. My music will always be crap. I will be forever dissatisfied, and because of this, I'll keep pushing forward. I'll improve, ousting old fecal matter for new, all the while honing my craft, advancing as a musician, and surpassing all of my colleagues. I'll play like crap, sure, but I'll play better than everyone else. I'm getting ahead of myself. I friggin' hate the way I play. It's so trite, so pedantic, so Bob Saget circa 1987-1995. My saxophone playing is the musical equivalent of Full House. And my improvising is about as inspired as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. You know? Where I stand up to take a solo and sound like the unruly Christ child inflicting neighborhood kids with blindness? Forget everything I just said. I'm awesome. You're stupid for believing otherwise. No one—and I mean no one—can play saxophone, or jazz, or be as obviously likeable as I can. But don't take my word for it. Let my fans do the talking:
Why aren't I gigging more? Are people too poor to hire me, or are they too musically impoverished to hear how freaking amazing I am? Seriously, what the crap? I mean, I would fork out the cash to hear me play. Earlier this afternoon, I listened to an old recording of myself, and it was so marvelous that I nearly... no, wait. It wasn't marvelous at all. It sounded like crap. That's right, I remember now... everything I play is crap. Man, I suck so bad.
Of course that's not going to happen. The jazz scene in the Philippines is iffy, and my future love life—for reasons only my girlfriend and the entire state of Utah understand—might be too. Besides, I can't really leave my horn in its case. I like to play. I want to play. Sometimes I should play and other times I must. I'm dissatisfied, yes, but I can live with myself with music. I couldn't without it. I have to play. On the long list of "Things that Piss Murray James Right the Hell Off," not playing music is right up there with marital infidelity, which I joke about on the interweb, but hate in real life. Why do men cheat on their wives? That's just nasty. Also, I'll be great someday—which reminds me, I'm sorry for complaining about mediocrity earlier. Despite being overrated and everywhere, mediocrity is still pretty cool, necessary even, and mediocre people even more so. We need the mediocre; without them I couldn't be great. CONCLUSION: Altissimo Acrobatics I'll make the palm keys my jungle gym. I'll blow higher than a lead trumpet player at a Bill Chase convention. I'll practice nothing but my altissimo register because I respect the extremely musical saxophonists who blow chorus after chorus on Honeysuckle Rose without playing a single note in the staff. Either that, or I'll just play that high stuff on alto, except that I don't own an alto, and I can't afford one. Murray James Morrison Summer 2006 |
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