The Day I Understood That I Could Do Anything

That day was today.

For my birthday last year, I asked for interesting instruments, or money to buy them. At the time, I was thinking it would be fun to have stuff I could make noise with, maybe experiment a bit and record and sample them. For science.

A year and a half ago, I started playing the piano properly again, and shortly thereafter, I learnt to play the ukulele. I knew I’d never be great, and that I wasn’t really an instrumentalist, but that it would be cool to be able to accompany my singing without having to rely on others. And I kept thinking that when I started playing guitar again for school, and when I decided to teach myself to play the bass. I thought, this is slow going, but it’ll be nice to be able to compose stuff on these instruments, that I can later give to other people to play, people who can actually play instruments. Because I’m not an instrumentalist.

I knew that I couldn’t really play instruments. I knew it up until today.

Last week, Leo and I started working on a new song he’s written. I wrote a bassline for it, and we had fun hooking the bass up to a guitaramp and laying some fuzz on it, and I played with a slide, which was awesome. I was on my way home for the weekend, when Leo texted me and said, “You know what would be really cool for that song? Saxophone!”

And I thought, hey, my dad played had a soprano sax, my brother has it now. So I asked if I could borrow it, thinking I could maybe compose something. I brought it back with me to school on Monday, played a few dissonant notes and put it back in its case.

Today I took it out again, and after only a few minutes I was playing scales. I was surprised, because as previously mentioned, I don’t really play instruments. I thought it would take much longer to even start making sound other than noise, let alone playing a scale. Then I composed a melody for Leo’s song, we jammed for a bit, and I improvised something and it actually sounded great, and I realised, I’m playing the sax.

This is a big deal for me. And you must understand, I’m not tooting my own horn or anything, I’m not bragging about how quickly I’m able to pick up a new instrument. Because to my knowledge, I’m not. I don’t know how to play instruments. Two years ago, I would never in my wildest dreams have thought that I’d be able to play any instrument other than the piano (and very poorly, at that). I have always been just a singer, and while what I do vocally does take some skill and I recognise that… Today is the first time I really, properly, feel like a musician. And that feels pretty fucking great.