This one time... At band camp... The Yank's Karma

Hey there -

Most of you know me at least a little bit - but I'll do a little intro:


My name is Sarah, I'm 16 years old. Basically since I can remember, my life has revolved around music. Above all else, I'm a saxophone player, but I also play other instruments as well. Music to me is a way of life, as it's all I've ever really known. In terms of listening, I'll listen to anything once, but over my life I've grown very fond of world music and jazz mostly. But my theory has always been that to play good music, you have to listen to it all and decide for yourself what's good and what's not - music is too subjective of a thing to classify as just "good" or "bad."

Over the past year I've changed a lot. I've taken it upon myself to finally put some stability into my life, which is something I've never had before. I've grown up and really taken charge of my life in my views. I'm trying right now more than anything to keep this foundation I've laid down for my life, that's my goal for right now.

Besides that, in reality, I'm a person of fairly limited interest. I do a lot of art - from drawing to ceramics to printmaking to working with digital photography. I read almost everything I can get my paws on, and enjoy writing music, along with poetry and some journalism work. I enjoy just being a human being on this earth really, I love being out in the world among people different from me. I'm somewhat active politically in my own way, and wish in a way I could do more at this point, but that will come someday in the future...

Ask away!

 

What are the five most important things you want to do before you die?

 

That's a hard question to answer! Things change with life, so my life goals will change mroe than likely as I get older. But as of right now:

1. Take my music as far as I can take it - Personally I mean, not in terms of fame or money. I want to die thinking I did everything I could to achieve what I want to in music, becuase music has been so kind to me.
2. Have a family and be able to give that family the stable life I lacked growing up. Some instability in life is good, it keeps you on your toes, but not as much as I've had.
3. Do those incredibly crazy things taht you only do once in your life, ie jumping out of planes and bungee jumping. How amazing must that be?! How cool is it to be able to say you jumped out of plane, and ACTUALLY doing it?
4. Explore the world. I want to learn everything I can about this earth before I go, so I want to travel around it and learn about the people. I feel so stuck in this American culture, be it the "melting pot" it is, everything is "Americanized" in some way and I want to see these cultures for what they are with my own two eyeballs.
5. Finally, die happy. Death is not something that really scares me anymore, I've accepted it and it makes me want to live the life I have even more. More than anything I want to die a peaceful death, knowing that I did everything I could in this life to make it worth while...

 

Some people look forward to death, some run from it and most just accept it. Me, I'd live forever if I could. Would you?

 

Probably not forever, no, but close to it perhaps. Death to me is a part of life, and it's a part of life I have to experience in order for this journey of mine in the world to come full circle. I'd live longer than 100 years if I could, and perhaps I will, but I wouldn't want to live forever...

 

Would you kill a man, just to watch him die?

 

I've watched people die in my life already, I don't need to kill someone to see that. And I don't even like to kill spiders, let alone a human being...

 

Who've you seen die?
What instability have you experienced?
Do you think that's affected the way you think?

 

Tough questions...

I've lost a lot of people in my life, from a very very early age. My grandfather died when I was very young, I have very few memories of him but I know he was an amazing person, and it hurts me a lot that I didn't get to know him better. My uncle Mark died when I was 7 - He was one of the first people to influnce my musically and gave me the head start in it I needed, which is something I think about every day. My mother died from cancer when I was 8, a few weeks before my 9th birthday. In essence, I spent my young life watching her die before my eyes; she was diagnosed when I was very young, I believe when I was less than a year old. Through the next 6 years I saw many people die that I personally was not close to - My dad's friends, some of my mothers old friends, some friend's of friend's, and the like. These did not effect me the way that loosing close family members had, but it still affected me. When I was 14, my father and I found my other grandmother half dead on her kitchen floor on Christmas eve. I spent that Christmas/birthday with my fighting family in the hospital watching her die, and she finally passed on January 7th - with ironically is the day that most eastern european cultures, including my family (I come from a Ukrainian family) celebtrate Christmas. Since that time, which was about 2 and a half years ago, a friend of my dad's who I was actaully very close to had a heart attack and died in his own back yard, and that hit me very hard. A bus accident this past year involving a marching organization I know killed some of their staff, when I'd seen them 3 hours before. That hit me, becuase it made me question the one stable thing in my life. That could ahve been the bus I was on with my band, and the directors I'm so incredibly close to. Lastly, this past January a student from the school I attend was killed. I did not know him, but I was affected but it, as our whole community was. This community is very small, and things this tragic affect each and every single person within its barriers.
Now I haven't actaully seen all of these people die with my own two eyes, but all of it has affected me in some way.
The instability I've experienced in my life has almost seemed universal, everything in my life has been unstable at some point. My family is the main culprit of it, however. My dad is a very flaky person and changes every day. I never know who he is going to be from one day to another. One day he's the happiest man on earth, the next he could be the most depressed person you'll ever meet, and the next day he'll be so angry you can't even breathe around him. Since I'm the only other person who lives in this house, I get the brunt of it. In my life too, I've just been unlucky to be around some of the most unstable people in the world. It's hard to explain almost, it just seems to be a long strain of bad luck and coincidence. Now though, like I said, I do have some things in my life that are stable, and it's wonderful. I dont' know what I'd do without it, becuase if the constant instability I had when I was younger continued I'm not sure how I would have handled it.
It certainly has affected the way I think. I had a lot of trust problems, where I would trust the wrong people way to much, and the right people not enough. Once again, I've outgrown a lot of that and learned, but it still affects me to a certain extent. On a positive side though, I'm a very alert and observant person, and if anything, this has always kept me on my toes. I rarely let my guard down, which is a good and bad thing, but I'm trying now to recognize the good and bad qualities all this in my life has left behind...

 

If there was one skill that you don't have, but you could learn, what would it be?

 

What other instruments do you play besides the saxophone? Not very "deep" I know but I'm curious
Me, I'm a flautist (electric flute, "normal" flute & Native American Fute) and a guitarist.

 

I would love to learn how to SPELL! You all know how horrible I am at it - I think I'm pretty good with words/language but it help if I could write it all out without seeming like an idiot...

And besides sax (I'm a one-woman sax quartet, by the way, but I love playing tenor more than anything else), I also play clarinet. I'm basically a reed doubler, but I also play a lot of bass and percussion. I do marching percussion in the winter, and during marching band I do sax. I'm just a saxophone player - plain and simple. Someoneasked me this once - If I had to throw all my instruments into a fire except for one, which would I keep, and without even thinking about it I told him my tenor... That's my baby

 

We all live in past, the present and the future to varying degrees. But which do you think is the most important to you? Do you live for the moment? Do you dream for the future? Do you dwell on the past?

 

I think I'm a combination of all of that, actaully, except for "dwelling" on the past. I love the present, I love waking up every morning thinking I can do something with my life that will make it better. I thrive on the idea of the future, where I'll be on my own and be able to start my new life with a clean slate, and really start my life unlike now where I'm still bound by my father's household and school. I've had a lot of hard times in my past, and done a lot of stupid things, but I dont' believe in regret. What's happened happened, and theres nothing I can do about it, except to learn and make the present/future better, so I dont relive the bad things in my past that I can at all prevent.

In terms of which is most important, I think the present is most important. The future comes later and there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it right now, except a few tiny things, because things change and life as a whole is unpredictable. And the past, well, you can learn from it, but dwelling on it and regretting things within it makes you miserable in the present, which in reality is stupid and just basically sucks. It is important to learn from your past, but simply thats in the past! Move on with your life and make the rest of it better...

 

If you could be any great non-musical figure in history, or alive today, who would it be and why?

 

Hmmm....

Piccaso. Piccaso himself was not that great of a man, he was very crude and incredibly sexist/racist, but his art work to me is inspiring for some reason I really can't explain. I would love to truly understand what went on in his head, and if painting and painting more as he got older was really how he cheated death and lived into his 90's...

 

What would you call your future children and why?

 

I think that's a hard thing for me to say right now. I'm younger, and even though I believe I'll have kids younger in my life, it's impossible to name my children now, especially since I think the father would have SOME input on it

But I like the name Coltrane, as a first name. NOT just because of John Coltrane as I'm sure many of you would think, I just really like that name, I always have even before I knew John Coltrane was John Coltrane. I like some traditional names, but not the most traditional ones that you hear every day. Everywhere I've gone there's always been at least 4 or 5 Sarah's, so I really want to avoid names that are that common. I think Emily is a nice name, but it's just far far to common.

I really don't know really, this is a hard thing for me to think about...

 

Imagine God looking down on creation on the seventh day. Imagine how he might feel. What makes you feel like that?

 

I feel like that after a really good marching show, when we're getting off the field. I know that I've done my best, and I know that there are 61 people doing the same thing right at my side. I love the audiance's reaction, and it makes me so happy to think that this thing we've spent so much time creating made them so happy, and made them go wild during our show.
I also feel like that when I'm around little children. Not being a mother myself it's hard for me to describe, but to be around those little kids who are still so innocent and dont know of the bad things in the world makes me feel incredible. To feel that two people were able to make this little bundle of joy, and that it's the most natural and magical thing in the world seems so surreal. Childhood innocence is truly an amazing thing, and I'm cherishing it through other people now that I'm older and can appriciate it...