Finger Patterns

Last August, I bought a one-way ticket to Mexico City where I stayed in a hostel and spent nine days losing myself in anything and everything I could. I drank happy hour margaritas and did lines with my new friends and went to raves downtown. Still sparkly from the booze and the drugs, I felt like a fizzing star, dancing with the still functional parts of my body, throwing myself around as carelessly as possible.

When I decided it was time to move on, an old Mexican guy sold me his old motorbike and I went south. I drove under the scorching sun, going as fast as I could on the autopistas, swerving in and out of cars. I drowned out the hum of my brain with the roar of the engines, the slap of wind in my face. During the evenings, I wandered the streets of random pueblos and drank with strangers in hostels. When they asked me who I was, where I was from, I’d tell lies. When they asked me what happened to my hands, I’d laugh like it was funny to me. I was still waking up trying to flex my fingers, still taking tramadol for the pain.

It was in the madrugadas that the memories came flooding back. Of course, they did. No amount of alcohol was going to erase everything, not when my entire life had been one direct dream—from the dusty music rooms all the way to Julliard. It had been my entire life—the big bands with the grumpy conductors and arrogant trombone players, the nights falling asleep listening to John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker. The way I listened to their famous solos again and again, memorising then copying their trills and tones, their flutter tonguing, their growls. God, I would try and come up with my own solos, forcing myself to shift and stretch, to make them even more daring, more exciting than theirs. I couldn’t help but cry when I remembered the euphoria of truly mastering a run, of making my saxophone come alive until it truly sang with a voice of its own. When I played well, it felt like my fingers were flying, almost moving independently of me. I would float on each note, the sweetness of producing the best sound I possibly could. When I thought about that, the air around my hands sparked and scalded.

I passed so many people travelling. Backpackers in their tramping boots and flowy pants, their sandals sticking out the side of their 60L packs. They’d grin at me, another foreigner, and I could tell they were thinking that I was one of them. Men on motorbikes would slow down to look at me as I walked past. ¿Linda, a dónde vas? ¡Que hermosa eres! ¡Ven acá! ¡Pasa la noche conmigo! I ignored them, letting their comments slide like debris into an ocean. I wasn’t scared. What could harm me now? I shunned the friendly old men with moustaches, the women with children hanging on their hands, the ones who sold me bottles of water from their tiendas. Cuidate chica, they would tell me kindly, and I would smile tightly and keep going.

On the road, I kept on doing crazier and crazier things. What did it matter anyway? What was a person without her dreams, a saxophonist without her fingers? I had zero regard for safety, even as a woman travelling solo. I drank tequila like it was water, swishing away the taste with rum. I did whatever drugs I was offered, let the motorbike men choke me out, woke up past noon in their beds. I’d wake up hungover, drive for hours, arrive in a town, do it all again.

Three months after I started travelling, I met a woman named Melissa. We were in a hostel in Antigua. She was the kind of free spirit I’ve always felt confused by, the kind of person with a million dreams instead of one goal, the kind of person I used to look down on for what I perceived as their lack of ambition. She was staying in Guatemala for six months, learning how to free dive and teach yoga. After that, she was maybe going to Nicaragua, maybe going to Costa Rica. She wanted to surf in Panama, meditate in the Amazon jungle, horse trek through Colombia. To her, the world was this beautiful place filled with people and secrets she couldn’t wait to discover.

Even in the first week I knew her, I could see this light about her. It was in her smile, her loose blonde hair, the easy way she moved. She played guitar in the garden, wrote poems about the moon, and knew how to make people feel heard. When everyone else in the hostel got drunk, she sipped mint tea and comforted people when they cried.

It was nearly dawn when she asked me my story. I’d spent the whole night dancing and had returned to the hostel, make-up smeared all over my face, my heartbeat palpitating in weird, uneven rhythms. Why are you still awake? I asked her. She was sitting by herself outside, her face upturned to the sky. Couldn’t sleep, she said. Come sit with me. I went to sit with her, and we started talking in low voices. Everything felt special, secretive, even though I couldn’t say why. When she asked me to tell her my story, the ghosts of my fingers pulsed like tiny explosions. I was tired and drunk and my body was a ruin. Here was a woman I’d never met before and would probably never see again so why not tell her my story?

My favourite place in the world was my family’s music room. It had vinyl flooring and sound proofed walls lined with wooden bookshelves. My father collected records, music books, and biographies of musicians. It was his entire life, and I adopted the dream entirely for my own. How could I not? My bedtime stories consisted of tales from my father’s heyday, back when he played in bars in New York, metro stations in Paris, concert halls in his hometown, Shanghai. My father was one of the best saxophonists in his generation.

My father used to introduce me to his friends as ‘the future best saxophonist of all time.’ He was so proud of the fact that I was ambitious, that I was undeniably talented. I had this innate thirst, this innate confidence that I had what it took to make it. I used to lie awake and imagine myself on the world’s largest stages. The applause would echo in my ears while I was practising, driving me to home in, to focus, to do everything I possibly could to keep improving.

And I had it fucking all. The work ethic, the connections, the gift. From the age of nine I started placing and winning in international saxophone competitions. When I was twelve, I was invited to guest solo with Brussel’s Jazz Orchestra. I was considered a prodigy and it made life decisions easy because all I needed to do was keep playing.

My only friends during high school were other musicians. I just didn’t have the time for friendships outside of rehearsals. I’d wake up at 6am and practise for two hours before school. Even though my dad could have dropped me off, he made me walk the 45 minutes to school every day. A musician must keep her health, he insisted. You don’t want to end up like Beiderbecke. My father had strict rules, and I think it was worse because I was his only child. No alcohol. No drugs. Definitely no boyfriends. There’ll be time for that when you’re famous, he used to chuckle. For now, keep your eyes on the prize.

After school I had back-to-back rehearsals until at least 8pm. I was part of seven music groups: big bands, two chamber groups, concert band, the symphony orchestra, two rock bands. My father said that it was important to be versatile. He said I wanted the tone of a classical saxophonist, the agility of a jazz saxophonist, and the stage presence of a rock saxophonist. He used to talk me through the different ways a musician could make money—from session hire, paid big bands, and ensemble orchestras for musicals, to album recordings, solo performances, and touring. Teaching was to be avoided at all costs.

I started doing session work and playing for paid big bands when I was fifteen. I started paying rent at the same time because apparently, I needed to understand what it means to survive as a musician. It sounds gruelling, even cruel, but my father and I were truly on the same page. We lived and breathed the same dream, and it all hinged on my own success. I wanted to be the very best, to be internationally acclaimed, praised, adored. It was also easy for me because I loved my saxophone more than anything. Naturally talented, my tunnel vision and dedication meant that I was exceptionally good. I have to say, it feels fucking fantastic to be that good at something.

Julliard contained both the best and the worst years of my life. It was the best because I was with the best musicians in the world. And it was the worst, because I was with the best musicians in the world, and I was therefore less special than I’d been in my entire life. Growing up in New Zealand, it’s easy to become a big fish in a small pond, to feel like you have it made because you have a few world competition titles behind you, and you’ve gone on a couple of international tours. In New York, it’s different.

In New York, everyone is the best at their given art. The designers, the actors, the poets, the musicians, the painters, even the fucking investors—all these people who are the top of their game in their respective countries, cities, and states come and converge and suddenly everyone’s in this cut-throat race to the top of the top.

Don’t get me wrong, I was still good. I got noticed by my peers and professors almost immediately—but it wasn’t the acclaim I was used to. It wasn’t: you’re the best saxophone player we’ve ever seen, it was: you’ve got promise. I was a new fish, and I was not used to that. I started working harder than I’d worked ever before, my 6am starts became 5am starts and I had to find an apartment with soundproof walls. I was practising and gigging until past midnight every day and I was operating on about three hours sleep a night. Parties were a networking opportunity and who you drank with and slept with was all part of your image as a to-be successful musician. It was a lot. But it was all worth it and I loved my life because I felt like I was really on my way. At least that’s how I felt the first two years.

Maybe it was inevitable, but I started to crack under the pressure. My third year at Julliard was characterised by increasingly frequent and violent mental breakdowns. My 5am practices had moved to 4am and the lack of sleep meant I was mostly moving through a haze. Life turned furry around the edges, I lived and breathed saxophone and nothing else mattered. Even though I’d made a few friends amongst the other musicians, I neglected the relationships. I stopped any form of socialising that wasn’t strategic to my career. My playing was the best it had ever been, my tone was exquisite, my solos were soaring—and yet I wasn’t in a place to appreciate it at all. A single word of critique was enough to make me cry for hours, a harsh tone was enough to spiral me into a full-blown panic attack.

It happened on a Wednesday. Wednesday the 4^th of March 2022, how could I ever forget it? It was the stupidest thing too, by no means an epic accident, just a careless, idiotic mistake. For weeks, I’d been surviving on instant ramen and my body felt wrung out and puffy. On Tuesday night I called my mum and told her how horrible I felt, and she sent me a recipe for a carrot soup. Easy and delicious, she wrote, it’ll make you feel better. And so, after practice, I went to Trader Joes and bought a handful of carrots, some spices, onion, and a packet of foil wrapped garlic bread. It was nearly midnight by the time I started cooking and my head was fuzzy enough that the whole kitchen swam. I picked up my wooden handled cleaver and started hacking at carrots, hardly looking at what I was doing.

Such a stupid sleight of hand.

One fucking slip and my entire life lost meaning.

I was crying by the time I finished my story, big idiotic sobs that splintered up my throat and pummelled my entire body like a bully. It was the first time I’d told anybody what had happened. Between my first and fifth finger was only space and air. It was fucking agony.

Melissa didn’t say anything for a while but she offered me a hug and asked if I wanted to walk on the beach as the sun rose. And so we went. The light and air were soft, the sky like the inside of a magnolia petal. I took my shoes off and every grain of sand seemed to want to make its presence felt between my toes. Despite my still pounding head, the exhaustion aching in my ribs, I felt strangely wonderful. Better than I had in weeks. Talking to Melissa felt freeing. She asked me questions, wanting me to fill in the details of my life. I found myself talking and talking, telling her about all the things that I used to want.

I asked her about her life, and she paused. It seemed that she was more comfortable listening to others than sharing about herself. She didn’t tell me about her childhood, or about how she ended up travelling, but instead she told me magical and almost unreal tales. Swimming with dolphins in New Zealand. Drinking from fresh coconuts in Malaysia. Falling in love around a fire in South Africa. From the way she spoke, Melissa could have been born in the Bermuda Triangle and it wouldn’t have seemed that strange. But where did you grow up? I asked, and she just shook her head. Don’t you have a family?

What I really wanted to ask was: what about your story? I’d told her mine—all up until that wretched night, the flustered Uber to the hospital, my fingers wrapped in toilet paper and stuffed in a plastic bag. How I fainted from loss of blood. How it was too late to sew the fingers back on. It seemed only right that Melissa would share some kind of trauma with me in return, some semi-abusive father or childhood failure, something that’s haunted her for life. That lake-top serenity must be a reaction to something. Maybe Melissa had escaped from a terrible friendship group or husband. Maybe Melissa had run from a psychiatric ward or cult.

Eventually, I just asked her directly. What brought you here? What was your life like before you started travelling? She looked at me then, her lips curving slightly upwards. I prefer to focus on the present, she said, and I knew I would never ask again.

I decided to follow Melissa to Honduras. It was a spur of the moment decision; she asked if I wanted to go with her and I said yes. We got on an eleven-hour bus to Tegucigalpa and sat next to each other, switching every hour for the window seat. The seats were mercifully comfortable but the aircon wasn’t working properly so we were disgustingly moist the entire ride. It was fine though. We slept for half the journey and listened to music for the other half.

Music felt different now. Before, I only listened to funk, soul, and jazz. Before, I only listened to music to try to work out how I would do things better. Listening to music was another form of practice, another way for me to hone my craft. The first month after, I didn’t listen to music at all. My entire life had disappeared with my fingers, so what was the point? I had zero perception of music as something people enjoyed. On the bus, Melissa made me listen to her playlists. She had a varied music taste—everything from pop to indie folk to reggae. I watched her face while she listened. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly as if she wanted to fully appreciate each note as it hit her ears.

In Honduras, Melissa coaxed me into a new pace of life. I traded nightly parties for morning yoga, bottles of beer for herbal tea. We spent hours just walking beside the sea, hours sitting in the sun and taking deep breaths. And it was painful not being able to lose myself in substances, being forced to reconcile everything I’d done and been and was. But my body was grateful for it. I could feel my muscles loosening, my breath growing deeper and steadier. Melissa taught me how to focus my mind to the ghost pains in my hands, to grieve my fingers and accept their loss. And we swam every day. The water felt like a kind of baptism.

Spending time with Melissa was interesting because she was so unknowable. Where first I’d considered her to be just light, I started to sense the fissures, the shadows. Melissa wore her peace and love like a cloak thrown over her head, everything else neatly tucked away. Surely she was angry sometimes? I asked her about that and she shrugged. I choose my emotions, she told me. But you’re only human! Our capacity for evolution is vast, she said. Vast as the ocean.

We ended up staying in Honduras for two months. After that Melissa went to Costa Rica and onwards into a life I couldn’t even picture. I went to Nicaragua. I had no idea what I was going to do there, but I didn’t mind. On the bus, for the first time in months, I listened to jazz. It didn’t hurt anymore.

Emma Sidnam is a Wellington-based writer and lawyer. As a fourth-generation Asian New Zealander, she is passionate about representation and ensuring that all voices are heard. She is a slam poet and her work has been published in the Spinoff, Capital, Newsroom and the anthologies A Clear Dawn and Middle Distance. Her debut novel Backwaters won the Michael Gifkins Prize and was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in 2024.