Saturday, April 25, 1998

A talent has slipped away, but I hope to use it again one day

By Tom Schaefer / Knight Ridder Newspapers

Someday I'm going to pick up the saxophone again.

Pick it up as in play it again.

Someday.

This week's Wichita Jazz Festival has rekindled my musical soul as musicians of professional competence and those who are still honing their skills perform in a variety of venues.

My skills on the alto sax, I'm afraid, have long since rusted out. To be honest, I probably was more talented in my mind than on the instrument.

You probably know what I mean. At one time you may have dutifully taken piano lessons, or eagerly learned some basic fingering on the guitar, and dreamed of performing at Carnegie Hall or rockin' the Fillmore Auditorium.

Someday.

But one day your dream was interrupted. Life got serious or silly. You followed another dream or simply loped along with no particular place to go.

I took up the sax in the sixth grade because a friend, whom I admired more for his baseball skills, played the instrument. It was today's version of "I want to be like Mike," only his name was Jim.

My parents, wise to the vagaries of their 12-year-old son, agreed to rent a sax. I was in heaven when I opened the case and put the instrument together. The first few times I blew it, the tarnished brass tube with mother-of-pearl finger pads and a vibrating reed that tickled my tongue sounded like the last agonizing honk of a dying goose.

But I was persistent. Soon the goose started to improve.

I attended band class in the sixth grade and then for three years of junior high school. In the summers, I took private lessons from a Tulsa Symphony saxophonist, and I began to reach a level of proficiency on the instrument. By now, my parents decided the rent-to-buy instrument was a safe purchase.

Then came high school. I wanted to play in the school orchestra and, if I was good enough, in the school's jazz band. But there was a catch. The music director said all incoming sophomores had to play in the marching band. I objected -- to no avail. I played for one high school game and then abruptly quit. I wanted to be in the stands with my friends, not on the field with my horn.

With that, I put my sax in its black case, stored it in the back bedroom and never played it again. My mother eventually sold it.

Thirty-eight years later, I still think about playing the saxophone. (Flashbacks to the late '50s have been more frequent as I've aged.) When I hear the intricate riffs of a Joshua Redman or the classical style of a Coleman Hawkins, I wonder how far I might have gone with my sax. (From smoky lounge to college auditorium to concert hall? Or simply to a school classroom teaching band to a new generation of would-be musicians?)

It's the someday curse.

Like countless others, I'm looking back on a life half over and dreaming about talents unused. (The line from Frank Sinatra's "My Way" keeps running through my head: "Regrets, I've had a few ...")

I once had a talent -- how much of one I can't say for sure -- but I stopped using it. At this point, the biblical parable of the talents -- three men who were given various amounts of money called talents and invested them in different ways (Matthew 25:14-30) -- springs to mind. Granted, the parable refers to weightier spiritual matters, but it also presents a basic principle that can be rather disconcerting:

"For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away" (Matthew 25:29).

Is my talent -- the ability to blow a horn and create a musical sound -- beyond my current ability, a talent taken away from me and never to be regained?

If I'm not careful, the thought can spill over to other areas of my life: Have I waited too long to reach out to certain friends who are going through difficult times with illnesses or who are enduring strained relationships? Have I become too rigid in my attitude, or too accepting of any behavior? Am I so focused on self that I neglect the wider community of family, friends or neighbors?

Life seems more serious today and less silly.

I once had a talent for playing the saxophone. I hope to pick it up again and play.

Someday.

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(Tom Schaefer writes about religion and ethics for the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Write to him at the Wichita Eagle, P.O. Box 820, Wichita, KS 67201, or send e-mail to tschaefer@wichitaeagle.com )

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(c) 1998, The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.).

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