The Expansive Howl (Part II)
…the ghostly clothes of jazz…
He’s here somewhere, running circuits in his apartment. Typical madman obsessive. Out for the perfection of some idea he’s living for—and no living thing will find it out until it has been done right over and over, until it has been examined from every clear angle, light blasting through the complex inner structure, until it has been perfected, until it is dug. You feel me? Never mind the smell. Never mind clotheslines tangled on his balcony railing. Never mind the subtle rot at his fingertips—not enough of some rare vitamin. Out of touch; out of sorts. Real type of guy who burn a hole in vendors examining, turning over. We can hear his machinery creaking up there at nights. He’s resigned way the hell up there. Door dustier, every time beard longer, never mind the holes, and holes become runs, and runs become tatters and morally wrong. One especial peculiarity: sometimes in the middle of the nights, when half the building’s asleep, we hear his wispy voice going “yes, yes!”, or sometimes the longer-drawn “yass, yass!” He’s digging something up there, but what? Base beats of the stringed instruments? Ezra thinks he builds his own harp-like arrangement, says he was in there one time. Guy treated him to wine, he says. Real polite type, but real anxious, always watching you and where you’re looking, and how you’re looking. But then he puts on jazz, right. Some of the wilder, newer stuff. Real fast; real technical. Ezra’s not a jazz type, but he sits up there all the same, and the guy almost instantly turns off. Just staring beyond, somewhere maybe on a riverbank, sharing a basket of sweets with a sweetheart digging the overhanging willows and dozen flowers he can’t name and grass overlooking little cliffs the river carves out, things rippling in the breeze, all rhythmic-like and hypnotizing, and dreams of making love after a hearty meal at her parents’, all rosy cheeks and mushy but taut skin, irises blooming open and closed, and every brown or partly green line of the muscle just sticking out there among impossible eye whites, and he gets it, you know? He looks like he had it. And he took it here, he says. Says he saw then how the note composes the phrase, and opposing processes of notes make the phrases stick, and phrases to make grand eloquent gestures and it kept growing, into all the forms of all the plays of the world, and in the clotheslines of these here tenements and in the bustles of suits in the business districts. He took it here because he can dream here, and here he can take the idea to extremes, because here Ezra and me just dig, don’t run him to the edge of town. You know? Does he regret leaving those weird visionary irises, he asked him. And the guy just gave Ezra this sad knowing smile. And then he starts going off, all wild and tells Ezra about this book he was reading on the music of the spheres, and the staves leaping out at him from brick walls, and grand concert arias from the coughing of the skid row bums, and definitely “yes!” from the sound of a child’s clumsy fingers working a piano, and he’d go and develop her melody, develop every slip of the fingers into a jumping jazz phrase, and once perfected he’d think of how he might bring his sister and mother here as he pounded the piano with stalks of fingers, and he’d hum softly, but always he’d lose the thread, and then he said he just went out again and picked something else up: the organ grinder or the butcher out in front of the shop (said it was still odd to feel no fear next to a white man with a large knife), or some car barreling down the street, or a newly arrived Arkansas ingénue out of whose eyes he could see the tenements anew. And then it was back, to hammer out another wild phrase. He had no need to shame himself with drugs: above all he was a workaholic. And as Ezra left, the last thing the guy says is to never lose the thread of the music of the spheres, how all versions of the myth are true. We didn’t really get that.
Consider: "Change: nothing inherently bad in the process, nothing inherently good in the result."
He’s here somewhere, running circuits in his apartment. Typical madman obsessive. Out for the perfection of some idea he’s living for—and no living thing will find it out until it has been done right over and over, until it has been examined from every clear angle, light blasting through the complex inner structure, until it has been perfected, until it is dug. You feel me? Never mind the smell. Never mind clotheslines tangled on his balcony railing. Never mind the subtle rot at his fingertips—not enough of some rare vitamin. Out of touch; out of sorts. Real type of guy who burn a hole in vendors examining, turning over. We can hear his machinery creaking up there at nights. He’s resigned way the hell up there. Door dustier, every time beard longer, never mind the holes, and holes become runs, and runs become tatters and morally wrong. One especial peculiarity: sometimes in the middle of the nights, when half the building’s asleep, we hear his wispy voice going “yes, yes!”, or sometimes the longer-drawn “yass, yass!” He’s digging something up there, but what? Base beats of the stringed instruments? Ezra thinks he builds his own harp-like arrangement, says he was in there one time. Guy treated him to wine, he says. Real polite type, but real anxious, always watching you and where you’re looking, and how you’re looking. But then he puts on jazz, right. Some of the wilder, newer stuff. Real fast; real technical. Ezra’s not a jazz type, but he sits up there all the same, and the guy almost instantly turns off. Just staring beyond, somewhere maybe on a riverbank, sharing a basket of sweets with a sweetheart digging the overhanging willows and dozen flowers he can’t name and grass overlooking little cliffs the river carves out, things rippling in the breeze, all rhythmic-like and hypnotizing, and dreams of making love after a hearty meal at her parents’, all rosy cheeks and mushy but taut skin, irises blooming open and closed, and every brown or partly green line of the muscle just sticking out there among impossible eye whites, and he gets it, you know? He looks like he had it. And he took it here, he says. Says he saw then how the note composes the phrase, and opposing processes of notes make the phrases stick, and phrases to make grand eloquent gestures and it kept growing, into all the forms of all the plays of the world, and in the clotheslines of these here tenements and in the bustles of suits in the business districts. He took it here because he can dream here, and here he can take the idea to extremes, because here Ezra and me just dig, don’t run him to the edge of town. You know? Does he regret leaving those weird visionary irises, he asked him. And the guy just gave Ezra this sad knowing smile. And then he starts going off, all wild and tells Ezra about this book he was reading on the music of the spheres, and the staves leaping out at him from brick walls, and grand concert arias from the coughing of the skid row bums, and definitely “yes!” from the sound of a child’s clumsy fingers working a piano, and he’d go and develop her melody, develop every slip of the fingers into a jumping jazz phrase, and once perfected he’d think of how he might bring his sister and mother here as he pounded the piano with stalks of fingers, and he’d hum softly, but always he’d lose the thread, and then he said he just went out again and picked something else up: the organ grinder or the butcher out in front of the shop (said it was still odd to feel no fear next to a white man with a large knife), or some car barreling down the street, or a newly arrived Arkansas ingénue out of whose eyes he could see the tenements anew. And then it was back, to hammer out another wild phrase. He had no need to shame himself with drugs: above all he was a workaholic. And as Ezra left, the last thing the guy says is to never lose the thread of the music of the spheres, how all versions of the myth are true. We didn’t really get that.
Consider: "Change: nothing inherently bad in the process, nothing inherently good in the result."
posted by A. D. at 11:19 PM
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