First one was the good old "jazz is everything", which proposed that a true jazz man lives what he plays, jazz is the main purpose of his life and he subordinates everything else in his life in order to fully "live jazz".
The other approach was that jazz is only a lifestyle, when you don't really "live jazz", you just take it as a part of your life, but other things are equally important, be it family, sports... anything.
I wonder how it really should be. Bird said "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn", and especially in the earlier years, the musicians really lived what they played, they lived jazz, played gigs at night, jammed until the late morning, then got few hours of sleep and then practiced, or got together (or looked for drugs...) and in the evening, there was another gig and then again and again, every day. But for example, Dizzy, which was another great jazz man, had his family, and his wife Lorraine was really strict when it came to Dizzy being a family man. There was one time, when Bird came to Dizzy's home in the middle of the night and started ringing the bell, asking Diz to come out - he wanted to show him some new things he just composed. He asked Dizzy to write it down, but then Lorraine came and told Diz to shut the door and come back in. He obeyed, apologized to Bird and shut the door before his face. Still, Bird kept playing the song from behind the door and Diz wrote it down. :)
But the point is, that even though Dizzy for sure was a great jazz man, whose life was jazz, he still managed to be a full time family man, had his life together...
These are two views on two of the greatest jazzmen of 1940's and 50's. One lived jazz to the fullest extent possible, living a very unbalanced life, but resulting in his early death (of course, here alcohol and drugs took its toll); the other one lived a more balanced life, staying clean and taking care of other things as well, and managed to become a great musician as well.
I am thinking about this because lately I have been asking myself, whether I could practice and play even more than I do now, as it would in turn make my progress faster. But at the same time, I am feeling that my life is really unbalanced, I spend too much time closed in a room, practicing, transcribing, listening to jazz, talking about jazz - that all means exhausting my mind, and spend too little time exercising, going to the nature, doing sports - that means exhausting my body. And I feel that it doesn't do me good. So I am wondering, what should I do. The greats managed to practice and focus on music with all their time, but that of course took its toll and many of them had very difficult personal lives. Do I want that?
I guess the truth is somewhere in the middle. And that's why today I left my saxophone in its case and I am heading out for a hike!
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