FIRST SAX LESSON

The last couple of days have been a bit difficult. Returning to work with a still sore foot which is slowly healing but which hates the concrete floor in my drawing room. The bureaucracy as usual was unnecessary and frustrating but my students were great. The only thing that kept me going was the thought that after work today I was going to have my very first saxophone lesson.

I am a frustrated musician. I have avoided it largely all of my life because I want to do it well. Taking on another commitment as huge as visual art just seemed impossible - you can only have one sadomasochistic 'mistress' at a time. The love affair started even earlier than my love of images. My parents were very active members of the local Light Opera Company so I was always at rehearsals with the rest of the family, singing harmonies and 'rounds' in the car and plonking out one-fingered melodies on the hard-working piano next to the stage. My mother decided to invest in piano lessons, but apparently the little devil wouldn't learn to read music, preferring to play by ear, so that was the end of that.

I should have gone to a private highschool where everyone did music. My staunch social-realist Grandmother wouldn't allow it of course. My very best friend Andrea Hutchins went there so I had two reasons to be broken hearted. Instead I went to a red-neck highschool complete with skinheads and luckily, a fantastic art teacher who let me hide out from the madness in the art room. But no music program.

Pathetic attempts at learning the clarinet and then classical guitar as an adult where I was more interested in talking to my hunky music teacher. Again, I just wouldn't knuckle under, be disciplined, so I chucked it in - I kept the teacher though and we have lived together for 9 years now.

I ended up playing the electric bass with same partner in a four-piece band he formed but I never felt fully conversant with the instrument. I did OK, but it wasn't really my thing. I'm into melody, the voice and harmony. There's enough heavy bass in my life already.

Since my injury I decided to commit to a couple of things. One is the 8 Kum Nye ancient Tibetan exercises which I have been doing every day for 6 weeks now and the other, among a couple of other things, is the sax.

Today, after my first lesson where I got to move right on to the second, third and even fourth pages in my very basic music reader, I felt fantastic. I didn't feel as though I was fighting my teacher, myself or the dots on the page. It felt right, it felt like my instrument and that I should be doing this. I know it is going to get a lot harder, but this time I have committed to learning music 'properly'.

Artist: Xavier Cortada
Title: Music
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Size: 60 inches x 95 inches
Year: 2005