Saxophone Love Quotes

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

Both a rose and a cactus have thorns, and while the rose may say, "I love you," the cactus says, "Fuck off." I think that's important to remember, and it's the ideal way to farm ducks.

There are quiet places also in the mind,” he said, meditatively. “But we build bandstand and factories on them. Deliberately—to put a stop to the quietness. We don’t like the quietness. All the thoughts, all the preoccupation in my head—round and round continually.” He made a circular motion with his hands. “And the jazz bands, the music hall songs, the boys shouting the news. What’s it all for? To put an end to the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost it isn’t there. Ah, but it is, it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of everything. Lying awake at night, sometimes—not restlessly, but serenely, waiting for sleep—the quiet re-establishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken bits, all the fragments of it we’ve been so busily dispersing all day long. It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like this outward quiet of grass and trees. It fills one, it grows –a crystal quiet, a growing expanding crystal. It grows, it becomes more perfect; it is beautiful and terrifying, yes, terrifying, as well as beautiful. For one’s alone in the crystal and there’s no support from outside, there’s nothing external and important, nothing external and trivial to pull oneself up by or to stand up, superiorly, contemptuously, so that one can look down. There’s nothing to laugh at or feel enthusiastic about. But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably. And at last you are conscious of something approaching; it is almost a faint sound of footsteps. Something inexpressibly lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And oh, inexpressibly terrifying. For if it were to touch you, if it were to seize and engulf you, you’d die; all the regular habitual, daily part of you would die. There would be and end of bandstands and whizzing factories, and one would have to begin living arduously in the quiet, arduously n some strange unheard-of manner. Nearer, nearer come the steps; but one can’t face the advancing thing. One daren’t. It’s too terrifying; it’s too painful to die. Quickly, before it is too late, start the factory wheels, bang the drum, blow up the saxophone. Think of the women you’d like to sleep with, the schemes for making money, the gossip about your friends, the last outrage of the politicians. Anything for a diversion. Break the silence, smash the crystal to pieces. There, it lies in bits; it is easily broken, hard to build up and easy to break. And the steps? Ah, those have taken themselves off, double quick. Double quick, they were gone at the flawing of the crystal. And by this time the lovely and terrifying thing is three infinities away, at least. And you lie tranquilly on your bed, thinking of what you’d do if you had ten thousand pounds and of all the fornications you’ll never commit.

Music is so archaic. Why do we still listen to songs through our ears? Why can't music come in liquid format, and be mixed in with my morning coffee that I love to drink when I first wake up at 3:33 PM? Also consider the ducks. Wouldn't they love to swim in music?

If you like how jazz music sounds, you'll love how it tastes. My duck soup now comes in trumpet-solo flavor. You don't have to curl weights, because this is already pure Armstrong.

Steven Seagal makes movies only blind people could love. I'm glad he goes full Helen Keller and makes music you have to be deaf to appreciate.

The Pink Panther had been playing on the old antennae TV. He remembered how the slinky, suggestive saxophone triggered something abstractly pleasurable in his child-self.

I love how pancake syrup comes in a sports bottle. That makes it easy to squirt in your mouth while running a marathon. But if you are really thirsty, try drinking scrambled duck eggs.

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

When fishing for birds, remember: The sky is a floating body of water. Use the proper bait, like Victorian poetry. Some ducks fly like they swim, and they love Browning everything behind them.

I love having pockets on jeans. They're wearable filing cabinets, and if I didn't have them I don't know where I'd keep my important paperwork, like tax documents or lists of clever duck puns.

Ducks love me because I am a dandelion. I am a Wind Flower. I'm half wind, half flower. My mother is a flower and my father is the wind, and I know this because he's so gone he's invisible, but at one time my mother felt his presence.

If you want to buy a duck or a synthetic duck substitute, ask me about my Tuesday Specials that happen every Wednesday. If you're a fan of invisibility, inaudibility, and undetectability, then you'll LOVE this deal, because you can't see it, hear it, or in any way sense it.

How many minutes of my life have I wasted staring at the microwave waiting for my plate to get hot while my food stays refrigerated? To save time, and add potentially years to my life, I've decided that I do like cold pizza. I learned that from my ducks, as they LOVE cold pizza.

The careless violins and saxophones, the shrill rasping complaint of a child near by, the voice of the violet-hatted girl at the next table, all moved slowly out, receded, and fell away like shadowy reflections on the shining floor - and they two, it seemed to him, were alone and infinitely remote, quiet.

Speaking is a stream of invisible words, and I water my ducks with phrases of love. Oh, and I also give them regular water, because otherwise they'd get dehydrated.

I could grow to love you, but I’m not that kind of farmer. No, I’m the kind that grows things that actually benefit more than one person—I’m a duck farmer.

My heart has defined size, which means its volume can be calculated. Despite this, the amount of love for you it can hold is without limit.

I love powdered saxophone music. That’s what I mix in my coffee to make it taste like fresh elevator.

Pizza as a reward at work, gotta love it. Personally, I'd rather have that than a raise. Give me a pizza, boss, and let me know you truly value the work I do.

I thought people loved it when I played my guitar. Last time I performed Toby Keith, and everyone at the party started engaging in gay butt sex.

Music is fluid, and my ducks love splashing in it. When I fill my pool full of Vaporwave, they swim like they're dancing.

Time flies and flies time. I know, because I sold them a tiny stopwatch. They love to race. But they aren't quite fast enough to avoid being snacks for my ducks.

A woman will fall in love with you if you make her laugh. Try tying her down and tickling her. Or, if you really want her to find you hilarious, tell her you believe we can VOTE for FREEDOM.

Ducks love swimming, but they also love drinking. Same with me. In fact, I could drink you under the table. It’s amazing how watery the lower half of your body is, and so I’ll probably need to use a straw.

If you string gem-like words together, you have a Poetry Necklace. I’m now selling decorative I Love Yous for just under $19.96 ($19.95, to be precise). They taste great in your mouth like duck soup in your ears.

Wooden scrabble letters offer a whole forest of literature, tiled down for easy shower installment. If you limit your use to only the letters q, u, a, c, and k, your ducks will love what you've done with your bathroom.

Cats make cuddly pets, but you can’t take them for walks. That’s why I love my pet waterfall, which also makes the splashiest snuggles. However, neither cats nor waterfalls lay eggs, which makes ducks the superior jazz musicians.

She was my sister, beloved, who had stayed in my room around the clock when I’d been eight and suffered with a case of the flu that nearly killed me. She was my sister, whose clarinet playing inspired me to find the music in me, to settle on the saxophone, which had fast become the key to my identity. I loved her as I loved no one else, as no others had allowed me to love them, and if I were to kill her under the influence of some malign spirit, I might as well then kill myself.

I just invented an Applause Machine. You turn it on by clapping. I figure I'll have no trouble securing Venture Capital funding, because VCs love congratulating themselves, and this time when they do, my machine will respond by adding to their self-kudos.

If I give my all to becoming wealthy, and take no thought to being charitable, all I’ll wind up with in the end is the wind. I'd rather be The Dandelion of Love, and trade a present for one for a future for more than a few. That's why I started duck farming.

I must have told my cat I love him at least 123,456 times, but perceiving the words were just Noise Air, I liked to let my hands do my communicating. From my heart, down my arm, through my hand and into his body, each time I pet him I wanted him to feel my love.

When I walk my feet and knees pop. They always have. I could never be a ninja. I'm as stealthy as a strobe light at midnight, which of course is the universal sign for Buy One Duck, Get Twelve FREE. My neighbors love when I flash that deal outside their bedroom windows.

I saw a woman wearing yellow Nikes, so I said, “I love your red shoes.” She told me they are yellow, and I said, "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you are colorblind.” Then I asked her if she wanted to buy a Pekin duck, because we could both agree that its beak was orange.

When I worked as a concierge, I loved getting a pat on the back from a guest, because it's like a tip, only better, because it doesn't devalue like fiat currency, and it will buy me food at the store. Oh yes, shared body language is the best facilitator of trade, and here on my duck farm I accept high-fives for eggs.

In the meantime, the Bear had attained the Avenue, where blinding, brilliant traffic travelled like a line of light from north to south, as if between worlds. But it was Jacob who saw the ladder, wrestled with the angel, and obtained a birthright under false pretenses. The Bear had done none of these things. He pulled the hat brim farther down on his face and walked south beneath the vault of darkness, above him like guardians or heralds the electric signs of bars and stores- white, orange, yellow, gold, red, brilliant blue and green, occasional imperial purple - as if they were angels that had descended to earth only to hire themselves out as lures for business, possibly for reasons of pity. The Bear walked beneath them like a resolute and powerful man, the saxophone case at his side swinging like a cache of fate, love, gold or vengeance. When he realised that he could have his pick of them - that all options, attributions and possibilities actually were open to him, that he was, at the moment, exalted, liberated, free - he stopped walking for a moment, put down the saxophone case, looked gradually around him at the Avenue, raised his snout and smiled broadly, and there on the pavement stretched out his great and inevitable arms. Aah. The night entered him like honey, and he began so heartily and with such depth of pleasure that it might have been for the first time in his life, to laugh out loud.

You are turning me like someone turning a globe in her hand, and yes, I have another side like a China no one, not even me, has ever seen. So describe to me what's there, say what you are looking at and I will close my eyes so I can see it too, the oxcarts and all the lively flags. I love the sound of your voice like a little saxophone telling me what I could never know unless I dug a hole all the way down through the core of myself.

In Notes of a Jazz Survivor, a documentary about his drug- and jail-ravaged life, Art Pepper and his wife, Laurie, listen to his recording of “Our Song.” The entry of the saxophone, Pepper explains, is “like the most subtle hello.” Ramamani’s voice is the response to this call; it is Laurie’s hand reaching for her husband’s as they listen. Ramamani tells us not only what it is like to love, but also what it is like to be loved. When I hear her voice, darling, I feel your hand in mine.

People did not tell the truth or speak with any sincerity, and when they allowed themselves to be plain-spoken, they went to the other extreme and became insulting and offensive. Men and women became the pitiful representatives of an unattractive age. Although the guns were silenced and peace had apparently enveloped the earth, there was no quietude. Dance mania was the new fever, and the air was poisoned by the braying of the saxophone, the whine of love songs, and the stamping rhythm of the cotton-fields.

The conversation swings from the brothers Bush to the war in Iraq to the emerging rights of Muslim women to postfeminism to current cinema—Mexican, American, European (Giorgio goes spasmodically mad over Bu-ñuel), and back to Mexican again—to the relative superiority of shrimp over any other kind of taco to the excellence of Ana’s paella, to Ana’s childhood, then to Jimena’s, to the changing role of motherhood in a postindustrial world, to sculpture, then painting, then poetry, then baseball, then Jimena’s inexplicable (to Pablo) fondness for American football (she’s a Dallas Cowboys fan) over real (to Pablo) fútbol, to his admittedly adolescent passion for the game, to the trials of adolescence itself and revelations over the loss of virginity and why we refer to it as a loss and now Óscar and Tomás, arms over each other’s shoulders, are chanting poetry and then Giorgio picks up a guitar and starts to play and this is the Juárez that Pablo loves, this is the city of his soul—the poetry, the passionate discussions (Ana makes her counterpoints jabbing her cigarette like a foil; Jimena’s words flow like a gentle wave across beach sand, washing away the words before; Giorgio trills a jazz saxophone while Pablo plays bass—they are a jazz combo of argument), the ideas flowing with the wine and beer, the lilting music in a black night, this is the gentle heartbeat of the Mexico that he adores, the laughter, the subtle perfume of desert flowers that grow in alleys alongside garbage, and now everyone is singing— México, está muy contento, Dando gracias a millares… —and this is his life—this is his city, these are his friends, his beloved friends, these people, and if this is all that there is or will be, it is enough for him, his world, his life, his city, his people, his sad beautiful Juárez… —empezaré de Durango, Torreón y Ciudad de

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

I close my eyes and hear wind rushing through palm trees again. And then laughter. The scene is foggy at first, and then it comes into sharp focus. I am standing in a kitchen. It's one of those big, well-appointed spaces you see in magazines, but this one is well loved, not just staged. A cake bakes in the oven. Carrot. There are matches and a box of birthday candles at the ready by the stove. Stan Getz's smoky-sweet saxophone filters from a speaker somewhere nearby. I'm stirring a pot of marinara sauce; a bit has splattered onto the marble countertop, but I don't care. I take a sip of wine and sway to the music. A little girl giggles on the sofa. I don't see her face, just her blond ponytail. And then warm, strong arms around my waist as he presses his body against me. I breathe in the scent of rugged spice, fresh cotton, and love.

We got into the car. It was my first time. The car was spotless and I liked its smell, the smell of old leather and old steel. When, two minutes later, we reached my building, I began to feel sorry for him but didn't know what to say or how to help. I was too shy to ask him to open up and tell me about the cloud that had cast such a gloomy shadow over him. Instead I suggested something so flatfooted that I'm surprised it did not irritate him even more than he was already. I told him to head home and sleep the whole thing off, as if sleep could free a castaway from his island. No, he needed to work, he replied. Besides, her was looking forward to driving at night. He loved cruising Boston by night. He loved jazz, old jazz, Gene Ammons — especially played en sardine, with the volume really low — as the tenor sax invariably blocked all bad feelings and made him think of romance and of sultry summer nights where a woman dances cheek to cheek with you to the saxophone's prolonged lyrical strains that made you want love even after you'd stopped trusting love exists on this planet.

From my vantage point in a busy working kitchen, when I’d see Emeril and Bobby on the tube, they looked like creatures from another planet—bizarrely, artificially cheerful creatures in a candy-colored galaxy in no way resembling my own. They were as far from my experience or understanding as Barney the purple dinosaur—or the saxophone stylings of Kenny G. The fact that people—strangers—seemed to love them, Emeril’s studio audience, for instance, clapping and hooting with every mention of gah-lic, only made me more hostile. In my life, in my world, I took it as an article of faith that chefs were unlovable. That’s why we were chefs. We were basically … bad people—which is why we lived the way we did, this half-life of work followed by hanging out with others who lived the same life, followed by whatever slivers of emulated normal life we had left to us. Nobody loved us. Not really. How could they, after all? As chefs, we were proudly dysfunctional. We were misfits. We knew we were misfits, we sensed the empty parts of our souls, the missing parts of our personalities, and this was what had brought us to our profession, had made us what we were. I despised their very likability, as it was a denial of the quality I’d always seen as our best and most distinguishing: our otherness. Rachael

researchers have conducted more than a hundred studies that explore music’s ability to evoke in the listener the five “basic” emotions—happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and love/tenderness, which appear in musical scores as, respectively, festoso, dolente, furioso, timoroso, and teneramente—or the hundreds of subsets of those emotions.

Day’s heart clenched. God didn’t want to just fuck him; he wanted to make love to him. Damn, it’d felt like ages since Day had done that. Not since college if he were being honest with himself. He’d loved his college sweetheart, but they’d never actually got to the lovemaking part, since his college sweetheart was straight. But now he’d have the chance. Day reclined, letting the soft soprano sounds of the saxophone add to his euphoria. He

taping of the Hollywood Palace TV show. In America then, if you had long hair, you were a faggot as well as a freak. They would shout across the street, “Hey, fairies!” Dean Martin introduced as something like “these long-haired wonders from England, the Rolling Stones.… They’re backstage picking the fleas off each other.” A lot of sarcasm and eyeball rolling. Then he said, “Don’t leave me alone with this,” gesturing with horror in our direction. This was Dino, the rebel Rat Packer who cocked his finger at the entertainment world by pretending to be drunk all the time. We were, in fact, quite stunned. English comperes and showbiz types may have been hostile, but they didn’t treat you like some dumb circus act. Before we’d gone on, he’d had the bouffanted King Sisters and performing elephants, standing on their hind legs. I love old Dino. He was a pretty funny bloke, even though he wasn’t ready for the changing of the guard. On to Texas and more freak show appearances, in one case with a pool of performing seals between us and the audience at the San Antonio Texas State Fair. That was where I first met Bobby Keys, the great saxophone player, my closest pal (we were born within hours of each other).

When Adolfe Sax patented the first saxophone on June 23, 1846, the Creek Nation was in turmoil. The people had been moved west of the Mississippi River after the Creek Wars which culminated in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. We were putting our lives back together in new lands where we were promised we would be left alone. The saxophone made it across the big waters and was introduced in brass bands in the South. The music followed rivers into new towns, cities, all the way to our new lands. Not long after, in the early 1900s, my grandmother Naomi Harjo learned to play saxophone. I can feel her now when I play the instrument we both loved and love. The saxophone is so human. Its tendency is to be rowdy, edgy, talk too loud, bump into people, say the wrong words at the wrong time, but then, you take a breath all the way from the center of the earth and blow. All that heartache is forgiven. All that love we humans carry makes a sweet, deep sound and we fly a little.

RABBIT INVENTS THE SAXOPHONE When one of the last trails of tears wound through New Orleans Rabbit, that ragged trickster, decided he wanted To be a musician. He was tired of walking. And they had all the fun. They got all the women, they were surrounded By fans who gave them smokes, drinks, and he could have All kinds of friends to do his bidding. But, Rabbit hadn’t proved to be musical. When he led at stomp dance no one would follow. No shell shaker would shake shells for him. He was never invited to lead, even when the young ones Were called up to practice. The first thing a musician needs is a band, he said to his friends. The hottest new music was being made at Congo Square— So many tribes were jamming there: African, Native, and a few remnant French. Making a new music of melody, love and beat. Rabbit climbed up to the stage but had nothing to offer. Just his strut, charming banter, and what looked like a long stick Down the tight leg of pants. Musicians are musicians, no trick will get by.

Winter's coming in the air tonight Feel it blowing off the park But that don't mean that we can't take a ride 60 miles to Seaside Heights I do the same old thing again, because it don't feel old There's no need to reinvent, you’re sensational Poetry in motion, swinging with your saxophone in the rain What's this devotion? I've never felt love, not from pain Bodies or oceans, you fill mine up with your right rain Because you're like, poetry in motion Sippin' on your martini in the band What’s this devotion? You really seem like a good man Bodies or oceans, I cling to you like your mainland Winter's coming in the air tonight Feel it blowin' off the park But that don't mean that we can't take a ride 60 miles to Seaside Heights I want the same old thing again, 'cause it don't feel old That there's no need to reinvent you, you're sensational You're poetry in motion, swinging with your saxophone in the rain What's this devotion? I never felt love, not from pain Bodies or oceans, you lift mine up with your right rain Because you're like poetry in motion Sippin' on your martini in the band What’s this devotion? You really feel like a good man Bodies or oceans, mhm On the cover of life is a picture of a man Just like she's alive again, and everyone Doesn't matter if you're a One, two, three Because you're like poetry in motion Swinging with your saxophone in the bar What's this devotion? Built with metal and with guitar Bodies or oceans, wash over all my scars, Because you're like poetry in motion Swingin' with your martini in the band What's this emotion? You really seem like a good man Bodies or oceans, I cling to you like your mainland

In melodies of longing, my heart does play, A saxophonist's soul, in love's ballet. Our meetings planned, yet fate intervenes, A cosmic dance, behind the scenes. His saxophone whispers in the midnight air, Each note a promise, a love affair. Yet life's interruptions, a relentless rhyme, But through the strains, love stands the test of time. In dreams, I see his star ascending high, Prosperity blooms beneath the sky. His saxophone weaves dreams untold, A symphony of success, a story to unfold. I yearn for his pain to gently sway, In the cadence of a brighter day. For within my love, a healing balm, To soothe his soul, bring tranquil calm. As dreams align, and stars align, May his saxophone play a melody divine. In the crescendo of life, may joy take flight, And love's song serenade the darkest night.

There are quiet places also in the mind,' he said, meditatively. 'But we build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately - to put a stop to the quietness. We don't like the quietness. All the thoughts, all the preoccupations in my head - round and round, continually.' He made a circular motion with his hand. 'And the jazz bands, the music hall songs, the boys shouting the news. What's it for, what's it all for? To put an end to the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost is isn't there. Ah, but is is, it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of everything. Lying awake at night, sometimes - not restlessly, but serenely, waiting for sleep - the quiet reestablishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken bits, all the fragments of it we've been so busily dispersing all day long. It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like this outward quiet of grass and trees. It fills one, it grows - a crystal quiet, a growing expanding crystal. It grows, it becomes more perfect; it is beautiful and terrifying, yes, terrifying, as well as beautiful. For one's alone in the crystal and there 's no support from outside, there's nothing external and important, nothing external and trivial to pull oneself up by or stand on, superiorly, contemptuously, so that one can look down. There's nothing to laugh at or feel enthusiastic about. But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably. And at last you are conscious of something approaching; it is almost a faint sound of footsteps. Something inexpressibly lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And, oh, inexpressibly terrifying. For if it were to touch you, if it were to seize and engulf you, you'd die; all the regular, habitual, daily part of you would die. There would be an end of bandstands and whizzing factories, and one would have to begin living arduously in the quiet, arduously in some strange unheard-of manner. Nearer, nearer come the steps; but one can't face the advancing thing. One daren't. It's too terrifying, it's too painful to die. Quickly, before it is too late, start the factory wheels, bang the drum, blow the saxophone. Think of the women you'dl like to sleep with, the schemes for making money, the gossip about your friends, the last outrage of the politicians. Anything for a diversion. Break the silence, smash the crystal to pieces. There, it lies in bits; it is easily broken, hard to build up and easy to break. And the steps? Ah, those have taken themselves off, double quick. Double quick, they were gone at the first flawing of the crystal. And by this time the lovely and terrifying thing is three infinities away, at least. And you lie tranquilly on your bed, thinking of what you'd do if you had ten thousand pounds and of all the fornications you'll never commit.' He thought of Rosie's pink underwear.

Whether it is labeled as sacred versus profane, gospel versus blues, God’s work versus the devil’s music, the classic (and still pervasive) African-American paradigm that holds church matters and popular culture in diametric opposition, that separates true spirituality from such music as jazz, held no sway in Coltrane’s self-erected system. How could it, when he had found salvation through a saxophone? With the clarity of youth, he divined a common source—and common goal—to both pursuits.

The hardest part of a relationship isn’t staying with the people we love—it’s actually getting to know them.

Brian Wecht was born in New Jersey to an interfaith couple. His father ran an army-navy store and enjoyed going to Vegas to see Elvis and Sinatra. Brian loved school, especially math and science, but also loved jazz saxophone and piano. “A large part of my identity came from being a fat kid who was bullied through most of my childhood,” he said. “I remember just not having many friends.” Brian double majored in math and music and chose graduate school in jazz composition. But when his girlfriend moved to San Diego, he quit and enrolled in a theoretical physics program at UC San Diego. Six months later the relationship failed; six years later he earned a PhD. When he solved a longstanding open problem in string theory (“the exact superconformal R-symmetry of any 4d SCFT”), Brian became an international star and earned fellowships at MIT, Harvard, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He secured an unimaginable job: a lifetime professorship in particle physics in London. He was set. Except. Brian never lost his interest in music. He met his wife while playing for an improv troupe. He started a comedic band with his friend Dan called Ninja Sex Party. “I was always afraid it was going to bite me in the ass during faculty interviews because I dressed up like a ninja and sang about dicks and boning.” By the time Brian got to London, the band’s videos were viral sensations. He cried on the phone with Dan: Should they try to turn their side gig into a living? Brian and his wife had a daughter by this point. The choice seemed absurd. “You can’t quit,” his physics adviser said. “You’re the only one of my students who got a job.” His wife was supportive but said she couldn’t decide for him. If I take the leap and it fails, he thought, I may be fucking up my entire future for this weird YouTube career. He also thought, If I don’t jump, I’ll look back when I’m seventy and say, “Fuck, I should have tried.” Finally, he decided: “I’d rather live with fear and failure than safety and regret.” Brian and his family moved to Los Angeles. When the band’s next album was released, Ninja Sex Party was featured on Conan, profiled in the Washington Post, and reached the top twenty-five on the Billboard charts. They went on a sold-out tour across the country, including the Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas.

She asked me if I would visit the music class sometime and speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. A few months later I found myself there in that same music room, talking to the kids and jamming out for them. The kids were beautiful, the jamming and talking was cool, but I walked away from the experience shaken. The last time I had been in that room was twenty years before, and it had been packed full of kids playing French horns, clarinets, violins, basses, trombones, flutes, tympani, and saxophones, all under the capable instruction of orchestra teacher Mr. Brodsky. It was a room alive with sound and learning! Any instrument a kid wanted to play was there to be learned and loved. But on this day, there were no instruments, no rustling of sheet music, no trumpet spit muddying the floor, no ungodly cacophony of squeaks and wails driving Mr. Brodsky up a fucking wall. There was a volunteer teacher, a group of interested kids, and a boom box. A music appreciation class. All the arts funding had been cut the year after I left Fairfax, under the auspices of a ridiculous law called Proposition 13, a symptom of the Reaganomics trickle-down theory. I was shocked to realize that these kids didn’t get an opportunity to study an instrument and blow in an orchestra. I thought back to the dazed days when I would show up to school after one of Walter’s violent episodes, and the peace I found blowing my horn in the sanctuary of that room. I thought of the dreams Tree and I shared there of being professional musicians, before going over to his house to be inspired by the great jazzers. Because I loved playing in the orchestra I’d be there instead of out doing dumb petty crimes. I constantly ditched school, but the one thing that kept me showing up was music class. FUCK REAGANOMICS. Man, kids have different types of intelligences, some arts, some athletics, some academics, but all deserve to be nurtured, all deserve a chance to shine their light.