Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: jazz

  • jazz, godliness…

    jazz, godliness…

    I’ve cycled past this jazz club in town maybe half a dozen times & never had the nerve to go in. Today in the afternoon sunlight both the doors were standing open and, oddly, two tables with bottles of soft drink stood at the entrance guarded by ribbed plastic cups. A handsome-looking man was pouring. I got off my bike. “Is this – open? I mean,” looking at the people in coats milling around inside, “are you… rehearsing?”

    He flashed me with his blinding Amway grin. “It’s a church. You’re very welcome.” I stepped back. Looked up at the sign. “It’s not a… jazz club?” “It is a jazz club, just not today. But we have lots of music!!”

    Who could put their faith in a church that’s willing to use disopsable cups? Looking back, I could have given him many better responses, the least of which might have been, “My only religion is jazz” (a lie). Instead I had that protective feeling one has around people who seem to look out wistfully from inside their own club and wonder why more don’t join. “Jazz,” I said, “godliness…. they’re related.” And we waved each other off, a pair of heathens, neither one willing to convert.

    H2O HoL eau-de-nil tiles

  • Jazzpenhagen

    I’ve cycled past this jazz club in town maybe half a dozen times & never had the nerve to go in. Today in the afternoon sunlight both the doors were standing open and, oddly, two tables with bottles of soft drink stood at the entrance guarded by ribbed plastic cups. A handsome-looking man was pouring. I got off my bike. “Is this – open? I mean,” looking at the people in coats milling around inside, “are you… rehearsing?”

    He flashed me with his blinding Amway grin. “It’s a church. You’re very welcome.” I stepped back. Looked up at the sign. “It’s not a… jazz club?” “It is a jazz club, just not today. But we have lots of music!!”

    Who could rest their faith in a church that’s willing to use disposable cups? Looking back, I could have given him many better responses, the least of which might have been, “My only religion is jazz” (a lie). Instead I had that protective feeling one has around people who seem to look out wistfully from inside their own club and wonder why more don’t join. “Jazz,” I said, “godliness…. they’re related.” And we waved each other off, a pair of heathens, neither one willing to convert.

  • only Kneipes

    Went out to a bar with a new friend who is musical, Tuesday nights is quiet night in Berlin so we walked and walked, trampling snow that had reached that pearly soiled colour that is not grey nor is it brown… so beautiful, it’s my new favourite colour, most of the restaurants were closed and only Kneipes and bars left trading and we walked into bar after bar to be beaten back by the solid wall of smoke. The one we loved I had been past many times, a sign in the window says Street Musicians Welcome and after we had fetched our beers to the bar’s corner couch and made friends with the shy, elderly bar dog who curled up under my friend’s musical hand two fellows walked in, festooned with instruments though – when I focused again – they were carrying only one party apiece. Dude with a beaten-up double bass, dude with a steel-strung guitar. They had a beer then they sat at the corner of the bar on stools and set up this most wonderful racquet, a quiet riot of music like water that runs underground. The bass player was fearless and gentle and had this fuck-it air, I don’t mean he don’t care, I mean he would do whatever it takes to get the sound. Would slap, would percuss, would pluctern, would bowie. The guitar player almost honed himself to one note. We were entranced. The dog fell asleep. The girl who had served the beers came to perch on the end of the couch and lit a cigarette and curled her legs. Walking home the streets were the streets of the quietest sleeping city in all the world.

    When they finally brought their first song to a close, it was wordless and almost twenty minutes long, compelling, the guy playing bass held his hand out and announced clearly, “My friend So-and-So is playing guitar with me this evening.” The guitar player shook dreadlocks off his face and held his hand open, like a limp version of one of those guns that says, >bang<. “My friend Charles is playing bass this evening.” But before that the two of them clasped their curled fingers together for a tight moment and then each picked up his beer and they clinked.

     

  • cafe dating

    First date in a cafe. “They always play such excellent jazz here,” he is saying. “Try the cakes, they’re always good.”

    “Right,” the girl says lightly. He has over-ordered, wanting to induct her into his routines. “I think heaven must be an eternal breakfast,” he says. The girl is drinking coffee as though it were ice cream, with a spoon. Elbow on the table she slumps onto her hand. “May I?” She tears the best bit off his croissant, the fresh, unbroken, creamy end of the horn. I watch him watching it all the way into her mouth, his resentment almost audible.

    Now the waitress brings his fruit salad, poignant with yoghurt. The yoghurt shimmers fat and glossy and unbroken. “Go ahead,” he says, “try.” She shakes her head. The third dish arrives, two soft-boiled eggs in a glass, with pretty salad arranged all around it in a tide. “I’ll just try a bit of your egg,” says the girl to her date, having presumably told him she is not hungry, that she never eats breakfast. “Or maybe I can just take half, some salad, a little of your bread?” She draws the saucer from underneath her coffee cup and holds it out.

    “I usually don’t ruin it,” he says. “They always arrange it so nicely here. But – yes! Please! Of course you can! Please: help yourself.” They are neither of them native speakers but both speak in English. I think she is Spanish and I think he is German. His voice is soft and seducing but I think the relationship is off to a stony start. Now they are talking about her work. “It’s an animal. No, it’s a fung, a fungus, right?” “Ja,” she says, “a fungus.” “Have you ever given a name to a bacteria?” he asks her. “There must be some good bacteria out there.” Maybe tonight this girl will call one of her closest friends. “There must be some good men out there,” they will say. Maybe the man will ask himself how come a woman can be so resistant to being induced into the world he has already arranged so perfectly for her. It just has this one hole to be filled, a her-shaped vacancy. Why won’t she fill it? Don’t women want love?