Jake Dester
  • Work
    • Commissions
    • Appears On...
    • Original Music
  • Lessons
  • Transcriptions
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • NYC Lessons

Saxophone Strife and a Songwriting Alias

1/24/2019

4 Comments

 
     I’m really unsure if anyone will give a shit about this, but I have to share or I will explode. So rather than burst into a million pieces of flesh, bone, and guts, I will instead talk about my feelings and experience, and hopefully that will keep me somewhat peaceful; and perhaps this story will entertain as my stories—regardless of intent—often do.

     If you’ve known me over the past few years, you will most likely recall that for a time I had decidedly quit playing the saxophone. I sold all of my instruments and vowed never to play again. With my girlfriend, Sydney, I formed a project called “The Pizza Bats”, which was a departure from the saxophone and all that jazz.

     It was refreshing to do nothing but sing and play guitar, which is sincerely what I always wanted to do. There’s a lot packed into why I couldn’t allow myself to pursue this dream before, but I won’t go into it now (although I am working on writing what may ultimately be a book about my discovery of all the many wondrous traumas I’ve sustained as I grow older, wiser, and sober).

     If you know me at all today, you have probably realized that I am playing the saxophone again. And, since October of 2016, I’ve been pursuing saxophone playing as a street performer and making some kind of money doing it. By November of 2017, I had started playing on train cars, and I have a made a decent living doing it since.

     Refining my style and my repertoire to suit a public audience of all ages, nationalities, social statuses, religions, and so on, I have now reached a point where I can make—even in the supposedly dry month of January—about $40 in an hour. During the Christmas season, that number is closer to $60, with the most I’ve made in an hour being $90.

     Problematically, the traumas that I have associated with playing the saxophone for a living are deeper and more complex than I ever realized. And, now that playing saxophone is something that I have to do (rather than choose to do) to afford the costs of living, I am starting to feel just as I did when I quit playing the first time.

     I have within me an unshakeable calling to become my songwriting self. I feel that this is what I’m supposed to be doing on this planet, and the more success that I find as a saxophone player, the sadder and more tortured I become internally. For this reason, it has been very hard for me spiritually to want to play professionally and to fully realize and/or promote a lot of my instrumental jazz projects.

     Being dependent on the saxophone, I’m in quite a bind right now. But, I’m searching for some kind of salaried, creative position in the corporate world to pay for my cost of living, with the ultimate goal of being freed financially from having to play the saxophone. I am following the hunch that a good-paying job doing something creative—that isn’t necessarily music—will allow me some peace, as well as financing to professionally record and produce the songs that I have written (and am currently writing).

Sidenote: I think I would also really enjoy not living in a partitioned-off section of an old lady's living room in Queens.

     I have well-attached my given name to being a jazz saxophone player, and therefore I’ve chosen to create a separate identity for my songwriting pursuits. That identity’s name is Pretty Mutant, and if you want to follow my progress as a songwriter/indie producer, I have created social media accounts across all platforms. So I invite you to follow me now @pmutantmusic to keep up with my songwriting pursuits, and I will be using that moniker for pretty much everything that isn’t saxophone.

     In the meantime, I’ll still be playing on the subway cars as long as I have to to make a living, but know that ultimately I feel that this is not what I have been put on this Earth to do, and, despite my high degree of skill at playing the saxophone, it may be phased out entirely at some point in the future; I don't know.

That’s all for now, folks. Stay tuned.

—Jake
4 Comments
Jomah link
1/24/2019 10:12:53 am

Thanks for sharing such honest and thoughts Jake. It’s funny how anything, even the things that bring us joy, can eventually turn into a “job”, turning the joy into dread or resentment. I look forward to hearing your new music and best of luck with the job hunt brother. I know you’ll find your bliss.

Reply
Jason
1/24/2019 11:28:21 am

Jake,

Very appreciative of your honesty. The difficult thing for me was to separate 'creative activity' from a narrow interpretation involving only saxophone and jazz. I'm finding creativity is incredibly difficult to define and articulate; very slippery and permeates human activity.

We may have different definitions, but everyone seems to get absorbed into the "machine" eventually, and is not a bad thing. As we get older humans want more stability, security, larger living-spaces, accommodations, etc such that some trade-offs are inevitable.

I hope you continue to figure out what works for you and what you want from life, and don't be bummed about specific trajectories not being fulfilled.

Reply
uk best essay link
3/25/2019 06:26:02 pm

I admire you for being a street performer. I really have a great respect to those kind of people. I envy them at some point, most especially when I come to think that they can show everyone their inner self. Playing music is really a good hobby and I guess a good therapy too. I would love to learn Saxophone, too. Right now, the only instrument I know to play is the piano. I remember seeing a group of people singing too with different instrument back in Hongkong and I was really flattered. Keep up the good work!

Reply
Reid Paul link
9/2/2021 05:20:43 pm

Hello mate nice blogg

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Jake Dester

    performer/composer based in New York City

    Archives

    February 2019
    January 2019
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

  • Work
    • Commissions
    • Appears On...
    • Original Music
  • Lessons
  • Transcriptions
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • NYC Lessons