I was sitting in the audience at the theatre, the play was about to begin, when from the wings a trumpet player walked out, stopped at center stage, and played a few notes. That was the signal. I told myself: I want to do that too. Luck had it that right in front of the theatre there was a music school — but by then it was evening… The next day I enrolled immediately. I never again found a classroom like that one: I could walk in and out as I pleased, and everyone else could too. No one ever disturbed the music — it was all fun and joy. Jimi Hendrix was a guide for me: the guitar gives back exactly what you put into it, and like a good kid I dedicated one hour of my days to my trumpet. The sound of the trumpet is penetrating, wide, and enveloping, so on my mother’s advice I asked for a place where I could play my three little valves. My teacher at the school, seeing me worried because everything hurt, kept telling me not to worry: “The trumpet is played with your lips and your diaphragm.” He encouraged me to stay in tune, and so I did (even though at the time I wanted to smash the thing).
**I started thinking about travelling, leafing through photography books, knowing I wasn’t the only one doing so.
Around that time, in the town where I lived, there was a huge snowfall, and the rehearsal room was about two kilometers from my house.
Thinking of the ordeal, I armed myself with a shovel and, passing through the town square, I went to play after carving out a small path to get inside.
The art world is full of drugs because that’s how it is — Morrison called them doors. They’re certainly not necessary, and certainly best avoided. But what’s the result while you’re alive? A crisis, a dysfunction of the body, including the mind.
I believe it’s not an issue for art curators, but for healthcare — for harm reduction, for doctors, hospitals, and friends.
Life is wonderful.**
Where breath becomes light and the trumpet tells what words cannot say.
