About twenty of our friends showed up to hear us, and we put on a creditable show, which gives me confidence that we won't make fools out of ourselves when we play next week.
We played for about an hour an a half. At the end I was wiped out. While I was playing, the adrenaline was at work, but once we were finished, I collapsed. I was playing tenor sax and working hard at it. But the main work isn't the physical work of filling the horn with air. It's the mental work of concentrating on the music and trying to play interesting improvisations.
Every time I play, I remember not so many years ago, when I couldn't have imagined improvising, and I'm pleased that I've been able to grow that way.
I wonder whether people who aren't musicians, when they hear a group like ours play, four amateurs who have taken a lot of time out of our lives and devoted a lot of effort to prepare, understand how much we have had to invest of ourselves in the music. The hour and a half of our performance represents countless hours of practice as individuals and as a group. We do it because we love doing it, not because we have any hopes of getting rich or famous from it - not even of making enough money from it to pay for our instruments!
That's why I think economists - or anyone who reduces our lives to a single dimension - will never understand why humans behave the way we do.
I was listening to Sonny Rollins a lot during the few days before last night's concert. His playing inspired me. I'm sure that he played better when he was fourteen than I'll ever play, and his music only grew and deepened over the years. I wish I had a tiny fraction of the greatness of the musicians I admire, but I'm not sorry that I didn't become a professional. I probably have enough skill to have been a mediocre professional, a high school band director, or something like that. But it could be that I enjoy music more than professional musicians do. And what's the point of an art if you don't get pleasure and give pleasure?
