Sonny Rollins had a story that was too good to be true

This is probably one of the best personal reset stories you’ll ever hear.

Many of the obituaries of saxophone great Sonny Rollins contained this amazing anecdote. It is too good not to share.

In the summer of 1959, at the absolute peak of his success with his earliest albums, Rollins abruptly walked away from the public eye for a self-imposed two-year sabbatical. 

Wracked by self-doubt and feeling deep dissatisfaction with his own playing, he retreated to the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn. He practiced there alone for up to 15 or 16 hours a day, enduring the intense heat, rain, and winter snow until late 1961.

You see, Rollins couldn't practice at home because he lived down the hall from a fellow jazzman whose wife was preganant and Rollins played loud.

One day while walking down Delancey Street, Rollins took the stairs up to the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge. He looked out over the East River and realized the roaring traffic, passing subways, and tugboats below provided the perfect acoustic setting.

"I used to blow my horn back at the boats when the boats would blow."

 For the next two years, he was supported financially by his wife's secretarial job at NYU. He dedicated his days to intense exercise, yoga, reading spiritual texts, and playing his horn directly into the open sky.

Looking back, Rollins said: "I could have just stayed up there forever." He admitted he had to get back to work, joking: "You can't be in heaven and on earth at the same time."

Now THAT is doing it for your art.

RIP Sonny Rollins. There are still people who want to rename the bridge after him.