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My Sisyphean task - to play the Saxophone.
During the latter half of the 1950s, I was bitten by the jazz bacillus. My main sources were Studio 52, the jazz club in Lund, Sweden, and a night-time program on Swedish Radio "Jazz Glimpses from New York" with Clas Dahlgren. That the founder of Studio 52, Bjorn Fremer was married to my best friend's beautiful cousin Gun certainly had its importance. She was so beautiful that she belonged to the Eileen Ford organization of fashion models in New York, where Björn, with access to his talent and his wife's financial independence, quickly developed both knowledge and contacts in the jazz circles.
Claes Dahlgren and Bjorn Fremer made many Swedes love, especially, the black American jazz music. My stripes have never gone out. But I miss that I never got the opportunity / could practice music, whether jazz or in any other form. I contented myself with listening and playing my favorites on LPs, which still partly exists after several decades. Lester Young, Ben Webster, Stan Getz and Arne Domnérus were among the saxophonists that were closest to my heart. The icon Charlie "Bird" Parker was too great a virtuous and intellectual that I would be able to assimilate his subtleties.
After I, in adulthood, have sorted out my epilepsy, my ability to articulate my thoughts, my physique, and my nutrition, I thought that I, at 75, needed a new challenge. My subconscious demanded, without outside pressure, that I would acquire musical skills. Since Domnerus, Webster, Getz through their great sounding had dominated my daily life (and often even my dreams) my choice was easy. I wanted to learn to play the saxophone. The decision of the tenor saxophone was certainly colored by my weakness for jazz, but there may also be some form of concession to vanity.
It took me a year to find a saxophone teacher. His name is German Molla and he is a music teacher at the local music school in Genovés besides being an active jazz saxophonist. He is an enthusiastic, friendly and patient person who understand and like my late / mature ambition. His personal qualities will be needed. I come from the absolute position 0, despite my weakness for jazz music. At age 75, I have to learn to read music, be rhythmic, learning the saxophone fingering, create great sounding in woodwind and to be capable of, coordinated, performing all these arts with other musicians.
Intellectually / theoretically talking about the different parts of saxophone music is a piece of cake. Then, for the most part, the left half of the brain works because it is about words. In my particular situation, practice the skills of the various operations and synchronize these is a Sisyphean task. Since The Primal Principle / Evolution In Reverse has eliminated most of my automatic repression mechanism, I must put up with deep feelings of powerlessness and humiliation when I fail to play a simple chord with the correct fingering, right notes, and timing. One day, maybe nano research develop nanoparticles loaded with notes and fingerings and shoot spot on the brain's language / music center. Until then, I have to roll my boulder up the hill like Sisyphus.
To master and assimilate the music's elusive harmonies are not my entire truth. I must also experience how old repressions are evident and, like herpes complicate my journey towards music's magical pinnacles. During the first few weeks, I was stiff and inflexible throughout the body and the breath was suffering and anxiety rose. It felt like the whole house shook and the neighbors became irritated and planned to stop my training sessions.
The emotions behind this anxiety rose rapidly to the surface. They are 60-70 years back in time. When I was a boy, my father would often sleep because offset working hours. Then it was said: "Quiet, your father must sleep!" A further trauma has made itself felt. A painful feeling that I cheated if I prepared myself and read my homework. I had misread my parents' pressure to be the best. I interpreted it as if I should know everything without having the opportunity / need to learn. A torment I lived with for decades. It made me certainly smart but cost unnecessary suffering in many contexts.
My experiences with real difficulties in combination with my re-lived repressions which relatively quickly rises to the surface and dissolves my inhibitions are extremely interesting. My question is how many there are who never get the pleasure to get through natural difficulties due to repressed blockages. It's a fairly logical consequence, but I see this problem suddenly from a new perspective.
Much of cognitive psychotherapy is sentenced to the same punishment as Sisyphus. Rolling the boulder up and having to see it fall down again. Over and over again. A treadmill. When will they ever learn?
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