My "Cheap Passion" Invigorates Education by Khalil

My "Cheap Passion" Invigorates Education by Khalil - April 2015 Scholarship Essay

I had meager prospects paying for saxophone lessons; the prices eluded me as they reached heights of fifty, sixty - even eighty paper leaflets - and I developed a certain antipathy towards musical education. It was relentless for a matter of reasons, one being that my parents, comprised of a diligent father who sports an attentive and neutral disposition, all the features of his face resembling rulers balancing upon a brick, and a mother whose personality reverberates off walls and humans alike, only to retract when her emotional sturdiness is in question, are a hard working pair, but are not characterized as affluent and, as such, are financially barred from liberating. As far as alto saxophone lessons are concerned, I have been slammed with the blues harder than the“A-Train” speeding down the raven-like rusted, Harlem tracks and was not meant to recover: especially not with our family’s income. Why is money, my arbitrary, yet evident, detractor, such a delightful concept to me now?

Years of painstaking work, hours a day of endless riff and run practice, minutes, seconds, all choreographed in tandem; my hands danced across silver keys, and with every slap off my saxophone’s leather pads against its own metal, I felt my progression - my passion was being meticulously sculpted. No matter how disillusioned I felt throughout my days, no matter how selfishly sorrow accosted my very being, I felt warmth and bonhomie when my mouth touched lips with my mouthpiece.

Besides my earnestness, my drive for success - despite financial securities - molded me into a musician. This love, the essence that brought me solace when my days rolled along a muddled, rocky turf, brought my dream to fruition: for seven, long years, Jazz All State was my dream. One fateful afternoon, I sat in the passenger seat of my mother’s grey Mitsubishi Gallant as we returned from my final Jazz All-State audition. I recall feeling disparaged, as if tears beckoned to flow down my cheeks but resented my face as it slouched over my neck. As my brooding thoughts loomed over my mind, my band teacher, Matt Fuller, called me on my phone congratulating me on making it. ‘Impossible,’ is what I remembered thinking. When it finally hit me that I had accomplished my goal, mirth had overtaken my gloomy disposition. My seven year goal had been accomplished: My “cheap passion” was finally validated.

Readers, it is not purely circumstantial that I am the way I am. I had education, yes. Did I have the money for higher education? No. Education is essential; I am cognizant of this because I tell myself every day that if I had had lessons, I would have been something bigger than myself - I would have been among the nation's premier, young saxophonists. Accomplishing Jazz All State was a top-tier goal, but what about the nation? What about internationally? Education, stringent education, can bring you to the forefront so you can stand at the upfront. Besides, in this post-technological era we preside in, education is even more applicable than in previous years.