Paintings line the walls of Preservation Hall as a group of attendees patiently await the starts of the concert. Portraits of “The Greats,” fill the walls of Preservation Hall, illustrating the deep history that is here.
The sound of jazz is a euphoric experience. The sound simply numbs your body to outside forces and places it in a trance-like state where the instruments are in control of every single nerve. The piano taking hold of your legs, the saxophone taking over your arms, the drums swaying your hips from side to side, the trombone shaking your core with every glissando, suddenly your whole body is overtaken note by note and suddenly you are in a whole other world just like Buddy Bolden in Coming Through Slaughter.
In Coming Through Slaughter, the entire book is a work of literary greatness. Each page is unlike the other; some are short, some are long, some are offcentered, some are flushed, some sprinkle in the work of prose which Michael Ondaatje, the books author, is best known for. There is no proper sequence for this book, it broke all of the rules that a book could, which is exactly why it perfectly describes the life of Buddy Bolden. Bolden was a black man living in the 19th century who was known as one of the “founders,” of jazz although he did not take credit for it. Yet, what he is most known for is his mental state. Bolden was known to have an increasingly worse mental state throughout his life that was filled with breakdowns, a broken family, and frequent escapades. His life was anything but normal and he definitely defied every rule in the book.
The book is written as if it is a piece of sheet music, a piece of jazz. Each page drives you to the next but is broken into different snippets of Bolden’s life, just like the change from one instrument to another at Preservation Hall. The writing on each page did not only mirror the lyrical rhythm of jazz, but the jazz began to illustrate the shortcomings of Bolden’s mental state. It was then in this book's timeline in which I felt connected with the character more than anyone else in this place and time.
Drifting back to about five years ago, it was evident that I was developing anxiety. I spent years in therapy detailing my past traumas and having various psychologists blame the most important people in my life for my unhappiness. This repeated message made me dwell on the past, playing what should have been long forgotten situations over and over again pushing me deeper into a psychological plunge. It was not until recently in which I have realized that my mental spats are no one’s fault. I was tired of dwelling on the past and was keen on focusing on the future and fixing my current state despite the millions of reasons that may have caused it.
A member of Southern University band plays trombone alongside a band of about eight others. This group played for over an hour in the scorching heat right outside Jackson Square in the French Quarter.
The past years and leading into the present have been a rollercoaster of ups and downs that mirror the rhythmic changes from one note to the next that jazz so beautifully illustrates. When I stood in that jazz hall listening to the humming of the instruments, it was so clear that these melodic sounds were telling a story. Since the human mind is innately selfish, I truly believe that it was telling my story. From the very beginning the music was uplifting and filled with excitement and joy. I reflected upon these poetic sounds as a transport to my past. The days of my childhood that were filled with love and frolicking with not a care in the world. The days in which mental illness was a far distant idea that was too foreign to overtake my mind.
As the vibration of the air continued the tones began to change. There was now a series of ups and downs. At one point there was just the sound of the tapping of keys on a worn down piano. It provided stability and a sense of belonging, a blanket of security. A time that I saw as my period of finding out about my mental illness. Being slowly introduced to this idea that my mind was not completely controlled by me. It was instead to be overtaken by this monster that rocked my core. It placed me in a chokehold and slammed me against the wall with no place to run, no place to hide, no retreat in sight. I was weak, I was stuck and the future was unknown and frightening. Would I stay in this chokehold forever? Or, would I one day be able to break out and exert my own sense of power?
Slowly the sounds shifted into the saxophone which provided a sense of fear. My whole body was shaking, wrestling with its thoughts. Trying to grasp onto anything I could to possibly relieve my pain and allow me to escape from the wall. But the feelings continued to electrify. My palms were sweating, my voice becoming hoarse, my body in a state of panic. There was no option of fight or flight at this point. I could not run away, I could not hide, It was going to be fight. It would soon always be fight.
The trombonist sits in Preservation Hall greasing his slide. It is essential for the trombonist to take care of his instrument beforehand in order to have control and ease when they are playing.
Then the trombone came, it sounded even more riveting. The strong tones shook my core, sending me into a frenzy. It was happening there was no turning back. The trombonist stood up, and I winced; knowing very well what was coming next. It was inevitable. The trombone powered into the sound of the glissando. There it was. The feeling of death. The feeling of dying. The feeling that took me time and time again, week after week, year after year. The feeling that kept me a prisoner from sleep, a prisoner from friends. The feeling that held me captive in the attic, hot and steaming with no room to breathe. The feeling that took me to the hospital time and time again because I would become so ill there was no other place that seemed right. Begging for them to tell me what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I eat? Why couldn’t I breathe? Why couldn’t I live?
The glissando neared the end and the seven-letter word that would be a part of my life forever was once again diagnosed to me. Anxiety.
I live in an age where we are spreading awareness of mental illness. Where I am seen as a person with a disability, exaggerating that I am a person first and I just happen to be living with a mental illness. Although sometimes this feeling is encompassing, it does feel that I am defined by my body’s inability to shut down negative thoughts and an inability to control the racing feeling of my heart. Yet, I’m reminded by my peers, my friends, my family, my loving boyfriend that I am not a product of anxiety. I am a fighter of anxiety and that is what allows me to slip through the chokehold and away from the wall.
But Buddy Bolden was never able to slip away from the wall. He was mentally disturbed first and a man second. He was never given the opportunity to break away from the wall. His life would always be a song of jazz, the bounce of the saxophone carrying him to fear, and the glissando crashing down his world like a fighter jet each and every time. He was never able to make it to the piano, the stability, because no one had told him that that was an option. Instead he stayed against the wall, in a chokehold for the rest of his life. His behavior was deemed uncontrollable, unfixable, and so he found himself locked in a concrete room of Jackson, Louisiana in a hall filled not with people but with mental disabilities. He stayed in this suffocating room until the day his body gave out, never once released from his chokehold until the day he found himself looking inside his own coffin in which the song grew to an end and the room filled with the clapping of the opulent fair skinned community that overtook the room.