JAZZ IN THE CITY

I just finished reading it. I got it as soon as you told me about it, that same afternoon. Was it yesterday? Maybe the day before. I started it this morning in the office, this very morning. It was precisely one of those days when I get to the cubicle and I ask myself, “And now what do I do to escape? How do I step beyond the real and imaginary boundaries that surround me?” You know, when it’s all computer screen and beeping phone and the voice of the people next to me and the subdued noise of a slowly waking office and maybe the sound of the cars and buses in the distance, maybe even a loud voice that manages to get all the way up here from the distant street.

It was this morning, a morning like all the other mornings. Like all others, but this one. I get on the bus, the route 38, the one I always take. And I start looking through the music in my Ipod. It’s the same routine as always. I get on the bus and I look for the music, I try to find the right music, the music that will fit, that will fit with the mood, with the colors of the day, with the faces of the other passengers, with the stories I imagine them telling me if they were to finally speak, if we were to face each other stop trying to act as if we were each alone. Alone on the bus, on the route 38. Maybe if we don't look at each other, maybe if we don’t speak, then we really are alone. And maybe that’s what we want. We all make it seem that way.

So I’m looking for the music, the perfect song for this moment, for this short journey that has happened so many times. And today, precisely this morning, looking for the right music on my Ipod and there it is, again: Coltrane!
For some reason He always fits, for some reason the sound of his saxophone seems to match all moods and colors, mutating comfortably through any variation, adjusting to any shift in the faces or the weather or the time. So once again, Coltrane slipping against my ear from some other place where I wasn’t, some place where I wasn’t but He was, Coltrane coming to life inside of me where I could once again respond to his movements, to his impulses, to his explosions of energetic vision that pushed uncontrollably against the vibrant edges of my hidden neural networks.

So once again, I listened to jazz, to His jazz, to jazz coming through him, through this particular recording of Him, fixed in time so long ago and still able to come alive, to bring me the jazz of that distant moment, to place it right next to my ear and let me swallow it like strange honey. I took it in, all the way in. And I saw jazz through my eyes, I saw jazz all around me, I saw it expanding from the small circle of my own world, my body, my breath, my ears, my eyes- I saw it inside the bus, on the thick coats of the other riders as they hunched over themselves trying to not fall asleep on this cold gray morning, I saw it on their gloves, on the metal poles, on the back of the driver’s head as he turned the big wheel of the bus, I saw it on the bus stop ads and billboards that quickly lost their intended meaning, as their words changed to a shifting stream of sticks and balls and curves in empty space referring to shapes beyond reasoning or logic.

I saw jazz moving out further, further away from me, from the center of the thing I have called me all these years, I saw jazz outside the bus, right outside the half open windows, rolling and skipping on the long empty sidewalks pocked by fire hydrants and mail boxes, I saw it spiraling around the parking meters, I saw it on the colorful windows of the closed shops, on the first tall buildings of downtown that let me know that soon I would be arriving at my destination, at this cubicle from which I write you now.

When I got down, stepping carefully down the tall metal steps with the head phones still on my ears, I saw the many cars zooming by, and the people, the crowds of people walking in a great rush, moving in all directions, and just like that I saw it, as distinct as ever, maybe more than ever before, all these moving people, they were moving like musical notes, like short jumpy phrases and long sliding melodies that reached across time with heavy hands made of nothingness, I saw them moving with a rhythm, a disordered rhythm of contradictions and divided impulses, a chaotic rhythm that was somehow harmonic in the purity of its chaos, a burst of noise hiding a carefully constructed melody of microtonal intensity, somehow all these many singular movements, all these many notes and sounds, they all added up to one very distinct and clear beat, something so polyrhythmic that it couldn’t be measured by me, and yet it was there. I could hear it.

I saw it now on everything, on the car windows that passed before my eyes as I waited on the corner for the signal that would let me know I could walk across the intersection, I saw it on the reflections of the crowd on the glass walls of the modern buildings, blurred reflections which made them seem even more like one, like a single strange being with many heads scattered over this wide and flat land of rough concrete and rolling boxes of painted tin. I saw it on the red light of a traffic signal that flashed off and on, but by that point, strangely I would say as if all this wasn’t strange enough, by that point I didn’t just see it but I also heard it, I heard once again the music that had become visible and now had become audible once again at a higher level from where it had started.

Coltrane had helped me out once again, he had lifted his hands from the grave of the past and had guided me to this place, this chamber where my eyes were once again wide open, where my ears could hear the music that usually chose to hide, where my whole body could sense the deep rhythm that was so easily missed, so easily set aside. It was now in my muscles, in the deepest recesses of my carbon vehicle, as it was on everything that surrounded, on everything I could see or feel or hear or sense. Coltrane had helped me once again, he had once again shown me how to fly.

I wanted to dance because I felt that the entire city was now dancing with me, a vast strange creature made of metal and concrete and bricks and flesh and vibrant melodious copper, it was dancing in all directions and letting me know that I could join it if I chose to, that I had already joined long ago but now I could finally dance with it, now that I could hear the music that it made, now that I could feel the rhythm that its complex body was dancing to.

I got on the elevator and I noticed first the apparent quiet of the moving chamber I now found myself in, I noticed the absence of all that I had been feeling just a few moments earlier. There was only me in a metal box sliding up a long dark vertical tunnel to the place where I spent my days, my lazy mornings and my tired afternoons. It was just like any other day, this day, this morning, today. Then I noticed that there, there in the elevator, there the rhythm was strong and alive as well, it wasn’t gone, it had only changed its nature. The mood of it was different, the same but different, it was the seductive mood of a slower note, a long lilting note that shakes as it holds on tight for its short measure of existence, a long gasp of life that finally breaks into shards of time as it slips away from its ephemeral moment of triumph, of vibrant manifestation.

The rhythm was there, in the blink blink of the buttons, in the ding ding that marked the arrival at the right floor, my floor, the place where I spent my days, most days, the days like today. There it was, there it was, even here, even here where it was quiet, even here where it was all metal box and me and nothing else. It was here and I could see it.

I walked through the long carpeted hallway and I could still see the music and the mood all around me, it was threatening to finally fade away but it was still there. I could hear the mutterings of other workers arriving at their assigned work stations, I could hear yawns and laughter and the little melody that the computers sang at the moment of being turned on. I could feel myself becoming part of it, I could sense myself losing the street, the colors, the sense of unified chaos, the Coltrane, the jazz, the waves of truth wrapped in disorganized bits of light and sound.

Soon I would be this me that worked here, this me that the others knew and recognized, and I would be on the phone, on the computer, writing on my desk and all of that other thing that had just happened would be a vague memory that I would not have the words to locate in my clouded mind. But even then, I could still feel that particular mood which was so important, so crucial, so delicate, so distressingly easy to set aside. I arrived at my cubicle with a sensation of agony, a deep anxious feeling of loss. “Oh no! The game has ended!! The routine will start once again and the music will fade away and it will be so difficult to recover it, it will be so arduous to find it once again.”

But then I remembered, I remembered the book that I had downloaded to my computer, the one that you told me about, the one that you told me to read. I opened it quickly on my screen, knowing that it was too early for anyone to notice, I opened it and started to read it, quickly, trying to not allow for that single gasp of emptiness that can take everything away before one even notices, that single thieving moment that is too strong to be stopped, to sly to be caught, that single moment that leaves nothing behind but a cubicle, a computer and some noise in the background, noise that makes no sense, noise that is not music, or rhythm, or anything. I read quickly, trying to find my way around it and maybe today I did jump over the gap, maybe today I was fast enough to avoid its sudden tight grasp, its violent pulling into known reality.

How interesting, you know? What Johnny says, how interesting I find it, how clear it is to me, how precise that I would read it today of all days, what with the morning and the sounds and the rhythm and all of that, everything I’ve been trying to say to you. How exact, how precise, how interesting.

“The subway is a great invention, Bruno. One day I started to feel something in the subway, later I forgot… and then it happened again two or three days later. And at the end I realized. It’s easy to explain you know but it’s easy because in reality it’s not the true explanation. The true explanation simply cannot be explained. You would have to get on the subway and wait until it happens to you…”

As I read, I saw myself, me myself, this me that is now writing to you, I saw myself sitting in front of the therapist, in that other quiet chamber with the half open window and the yellowish light streaming sideways against the corner of the wall, I saw myself looking at her, talking about route 38 and about Coltrane and about how something happens when you observe, something happens that I can’t quite explain, but maybe she would understand, at least I could hope so, maybe he would, maybe he will, maybe someone will, somewhere, because I know that it happens, I know it, it has happened more than once, it has happened many times, to me, almost to the me that now writes to you, to me it has happened.

So often I try to explain it, I try to describe and show it in words to others, but how can I explain, how can I describe, what I can’t even talk about to myself?

I saw myself sitting there, looking for words but I had none, none that were good enough, none that would flow like the colors and bring them spiraling into the room so that I could point at them, “see? There! And there! Right there! That’s what I am talking about! You see now? Do you? Do you see?” I saw myself looking for clear phrases and failing, failing terribly, stumbling over my own sentences and twisting myself in knots, stopping in mid phrase to try to fix what was unfixable, to try to reassemble a forest with a set of Lego’s. And I looked into her eyes and I saw that they were starting to worry, “maybe she thinks I’m getting worse instead of better, maybe she thinks this is some kind of symptom, some kind of outward manifestation of an unspoken lack, something from memory, from dreams, from forgotten traumas that slide out of my skin like grease or bacteria.”

When I saw her eyes starting to worry, when I saw her eyes shrink and pull together in a subtle frown, when I saw her pencil moving, I stopped. I finally had nothing to say, I discovered suddenly that I’d had nothing to say all along. I simply stopped, realizing that it was no use, not that day, not another day, maybe not ever.

And then I read, I read more, I keep on reading. I read the book you recommended, the story, the Cortazar story, the tale of the two men in Paris, the one that you told me about. It’s about a Bruno that tells the story of some Johnny, a Bruno that is fascinated by some Johnny and also worried for him and disgusted by his lifestyle, by his way of acting, by his general demeanor, a Bruno that wants to help but doesn’t know how, a Bruno that can see some things but not others, a Bruno that looks to Johnny as a strange prize, a wild beast with a treasure hidden in its lair, a beautiful talent, a perverted drug addicted loser, a womanizer without merit, a brute, a mad man, a friend, a genius, a legend, all of it and more, all of it is what Johnny is for Bruno, all of it in one single name, Johnny, a name written on a page by another man that is not Johnny or Bruno. Cortazar.

It was Cortazar who created both characters, out of memories or dreams or other stories or pure raw imagination if there is such a thing. It was Cortazar who brought them together, it is Cortazar who looks through Bruno’s eyes, yes, even today, when I read it, it is Cortazar who is fascinated and repelled by Johnny and it is Cortazar who looks out at Bruno with blood shot eyes, trying to say what can’t be said, trying to suggest what can only be lived, trying to leave traces that are too easily erased. Cortazar is Johnny as much as he is Bruno. One person, two, three, maybe more, definitely more.

I read this story, about Bruno and Johnny, and I remember, I remember it so distinctly now because it was only this morning, this very morning! I remember my experience on route 38 and I remember Coltrane, and the music, and the light and the rhythm and the color, and it is all here, it is all impossible to explain, it is all only possible to experience, and I have experienced it, today, this very morning!

I say to myself, wait a minute, wait just one minute, this is my story, this story that was written so long ago, was it fifty years ago, sixty? It doesn’t matter, this story is about me, it is clearly about me. I am reading it and I am a character within it. I am telling it and reading it and I am also inside of it, and I am the one who believes and I am also the one who doesn’t, the one who can’t believe, the one who can’t bring herself to believe for too long, I am the one behind the glass of language and I am also the one on the other side, the one who holds the saxophone in thick callused hands and pours out the raw creative force of the universe through its curving meal birth canal, I am the one who points, I am the one who can’t follow and I am the one who leads the way.

Who writes this? Who is writing this? Who will write this again someday? Who is this voice that now talks to you? Who is the one who now reads it, maybe thinking it’s a story about someone else, someone who takes a bus, someone who goes to work every day, someone who thinks strange things, things that don’t apply to me? Who is it that really writes this? Who is hiding underneath these words that you now read or hear as if they were all about another?

I just keep reading and I just keep moving, flying in all possible dimensions, knowing that soon I will have to come down, but not just yet, not just now. Once again, like I have before, I see everything is full of holes, so many holes, an infinity of holes in all directions, a colander through which nothingness passes and passes and passes once again, and as it passes it changes, and as it changes it becomes briefly something, something vibrant with music, shaking with noise, sweating with rhythm, the jazz that is Coltrane and Johnny and Bruno and Cortazar and me, me that now writes to you about the story that you mentioned, remember? The story that you told me about.

You are now here in this story, inside this story that now I am telling you, and I am here as well, and we slide through the holes, bumping against concrete when we’re solid, flying straight through glass when we’re light. You and me and the one who writes about us. All together, all flying, all eventually coming back to the ground.