Hobbies

I've never been one for hobbies. Not that I don't wish I had some, or think that people with hobbies are silly or waste time, or anything like that. No, I just haven't ever been able to justify pursuing something that doesn't directly influencing my future. To be sure, this is a stupid behavior especially because it leads to spending large amounts of time on overly frivolous activities like video games or surfing the internet, but maybe in a small way those are my hobbies. ... Gross.

I started playing trombone in the seventh grade. Then I started playing trombone in the tenth grade. The only reason I didn't quit before high school was because of jazz band. The original motivator was friends in the class and getting out of school to go to different cities and perform for a little bit and play for a lot longer. There was something intoxicating about jazz. The dotted eights, the dominant sevenths, the attitude, the emotion. I'd like to say it was the challenge that I enjoyed, and I did, but truth be told, everything about trombone was a challenge for me. I also can't lie and say I loved the freedom of improvisation, because honestly it scared me to death. I did love the cultivation my music taste received from being in jazz band for so long. Playing jazz made me listen to jazz, made me appreciate jazz. And that's how I began to appreciate artistic nuances, references in other songs, and again, the raw emotion. I'm listening to Blue in Green right now, by Miles Davis, and the poeticism drove me to write this post.

After tenth grade, this wasn't just a hobby, this was the future career path. My freshman year of college, I auditioned for the school of music and didn't get in. In hindsight, this was how things were supposed to happen, but it was hard to hold onto that glimmer of hope at the time. Trombones are valuable, college is expensive, and after all my hard work and time (which again, in hindsight wasn't that much) I could hardly stand to look at it. I stopped playing the trombone on April 16th, 2008. Shortly thereafter, it got sold. Shortly thereafter, I stopped listening to jazz.

My iPod has twenty-five gigabytes of music. The majority of it is jazz and classical. I've listened to the handful of pop, country, rap, and rock bands/artists I have too many times to count. I've purchased quite a bit of new music over the past two years, but invariably, I get bored, claim I need new music, try to discover new bands, but usually end up letting the radio drone out the silence of my car. I debated taking off all the jazz and classical music from my iPod but couldn't bring myself to do it, to waste it even though it was already being wasted.

Today, Wired.com was giving away a collector's edition of a bunch of Miles Davis music and memorabilia. To enter the drawing, I just had to post a comment about how Miles Davis could be one of the greatest musicians of all time. I didn't commit to any ridiculous statement like that, I just posted something silly ("If peeing your pants is cool, then I'm Miles Davis!") and wondered what I'd really do if I had all of that.

Would I listen to it? I have a lot of Miles Davis right now, that I never listen to. I have a lot of Coltrane, Mingus, Thelonious, Hawkins, Basie, and more that I never listen to. I have a whole set of North Texas State University Jazz Band CDs that I cherished as one of the best gifts I've ever received, that I never listen to. I went about the rest of my day, came home, and listened to Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool. Like an addict, I went right back to it, a habit I could never truly shake. Apparently time heals all because the knife music left in me after I changed majors left a hole that nothing but a 32 bar blues could fill.