Depression

DELETED!

You know that feeling when you read your old blog post and marvel at how immaculately crafted it was, remembering all the hours spent poring over those gut-wrenching edits you made to get that exact feeling across that you had at the time…

And then you remember that half of what you wrote was utter ideological bullshit, and the other half was true enough, but written in the wrong spirit, because it supported the ideological bullshit?

So you have to delete it because, being who you are now, you can’t stand by that shit you wrote then?

Yeah. That sucks.

Oh well.

So you’re giving me up?

Me? Ethyl Alcohol? The molecule?

Are you giving up beer?

Or are you giving up the condensation on a craft-brew bottle on a sweaty afternoon in Brooklyn?

Are you giving up sloppy basement billiard booze-ups with your buddies?

Are you giving up wine? Or a slow Italian breakfast that bleeds into lunch, overlooking the cobbled mountain village you call home?

Are you giving up cider, or the damp smell of the earth, a face full of wood smoke, sitting on a haybail in 14th century Devon?

Аяе уоц gиviиg цр неаят-то-неаят шiтн наяdеиеd, ехряеssiоиlезз Rцssiаи fатнея-iп-lаш ои соlф фау шiтн шаямiйg vодка?

Are you giving up the collective hunt for greasy food when you wake up? The surreal introspection and sharpness of the morning after? The question ‘stay for another?’, to which you know the answer?

Are you giving up the lapse in judgement you owe your ex tonight (he’s gained weight and an ugly look of desperation since the break-up.)?

Are you giving up the first glass of champagne in your newly bought house, the sober gulp of your father’s prized bourbon in honour of his life?

Are you giving up your marriage therapy medication, to tolerate your wife?

Are you giving up your poetic existence as Billie Holiday? Ernest Hemingway? The spinster? The lone woodsman? The emancipated defector from Islam? The no-nonsense sports fan? The travelling musician? The misunderstood artist? The overworked business executive?

Are you giving up everything it means to partake in the millennia-long history of an alcohol-drenched society?

Or just me?

Dream

I’m examining an extraordinary cigarette whose paper has been artfully twisted and folded into the shape of a human brain. Each sinew is interconnected with the whole so as to make this model of the brain a single, uninterrupted tube akin to the small intestine. It’s a work of art, but also looks invitingly smokable. So I attempt it, lighting the spinal cord. It’s a challenge to get it burning, but after a short while, dragging on the frontal cortex is quite satisfying. I shouldn’t be doing this, (someone has obviously gone through a lot of effort to make the thing) but it burns so easily and the resulting smoke is silky smooth – if air was milk, this smoke would be its cream. Of course, it’s not just a cigarette, only a crazy person would build this thing and crazy people put drugs in their cigarette. I keep pulling – it’s burning deep within the brain now and there must be some trickery with wax to avoid the obvious problem of cross-contamination. I know this because the whole thing is not now on fire. It’s a one-track mind, a property that we share. I look down at my feet. They’ve disappeared. This doesn’t alarm me, in fact, the whole thing is blissfully inevitable. Once entrained on a task, there’s no reason to tense up and put the brakes on it. My hands don’t exist anymore. I see beautiful non-existence creeping up from my extremities, feel it oozing up my spine. Every physical entity has a purpose, and this cigarette-brain’s purpose is to disappear. As I finish smoking, I’ve finished existing. Everything is, as it should be, nothing.

Fuck Jazz

Not you, Duke Ellington. Or Autumn Leaves. I don’t even mean fuck Stanley Crouch, the music critic that claimed Miles had sold out and promoted Wynton Marsalis’ retro-fetishism.

I don’t even mean fuck that guy at the jam session who calls Indiana and then shits a load of quavers out his horn, peppered with Donna Lee quotes just to show everyone that he knows the melody.

Nor do I even mean fuck that other guy at the jam session, sitting behind the (very evidently mentally ill) piano player, continually pestering him, telling him to stop playing, because his notes aren’t appropriate.

Yes. These are both real things that I’ve seen happen at jazz jam sessions.

Personally, I’d be delighted to see everyone on the whole bandstand just stop playing mid-tune, take a prolonged look at each other, before bursting into uncontrollable, maniacal laughter for half an hour and then promptly leaving music for at least five years.

But such is the ego of a ‘serious jazz musician’ that they think some ineffable force for good, the spirit of jazz, is holding them there, urging them to play all the modes of the melodic minor that they’ve shedded so hard. This isn’t just an existentially pointless endeavour we do, you know, for fun. It’s for the greater good of mankind, right?

That same ego-driven religious zeal is what moves this dickhead (probably a perfectly nice guy outside of the jazz jam) to interfere with our mentally-ill pianist’s performance. The thinking being, in order for this godawful version of Take the A-Train to begin and end predictably godawfully, it must not be disturbed by an uninitiated musician (read: someone that didn’t get your memo about directionless chord substitutions and rhythmic superimposition)

Only jam sessions can make me this angry…

So when I say fuck jazz, it’s like when they said ‘we declare war on terror’. It’s not a group of people or a tangible thing that should go fuck itself, but an idea. Whatever that force is, that which motivates people to inhuman acts of anti-musicality and righteous unkindness, lack of compassion for their fellow man, needs to go fuck itself so deep and hard that it implodes out of existence.

However, if we want to rid the world of this mentality, we’ll want to see real-world results. My suggestion would be to round up anyone that’s ever said anything that implies music has rules. For example ‘it’s his turn to solo’ – straight to the gulag. ‘that F# doesn’t fit with the harmony because it’s actually a flat 13th over a…’ – GULAG! GET IN THAT GULAG RIGHT NOW!

But, at the root of the problem is the man commonly referred to as ‘the spirit of jazz’. He wears a beret, goatee, and reeks of cannabis. He talks of ‘hangin out’ and ‘sittin in’. He’s the mad psychopath behind all of this, and if anyone brings him to me, I offer you the reward of every volume of every fakebook in every key.

Right, back to the shed. Those Airegin changes aren’t gonna learn themselves…

A story in sixty words

Why can’t you believe that the rest of the time we spent together I was only pretending to be a professional jazz musician, when actually, I’m much more skilled at psychological misdirection? I know you saw me play, but you were so much under my spell you didn’t look at anyone else in the room. They all had earplugs in.