The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
“Jazz & You” by Evan Patterson
“The funny thing about jazz,” he said to me, eyes watering, “is nobody ever really knows how good anybody else is.”
The “he” being my Dad, eyes watering from jazz being played by three men across the park from us. One played drums—they were off-tempo. One played bass—it was inaudible. The other, wearing a stained hooded sweatshirt in addition to a fedora cap, slyly moved around whilst blowing the most incredibly loud saxophone I had ever heard. What was it about jazz in a sunny park in Manhattan that moved grown men to tears? I can admit, the wind and birds meshed with the idea of jazz sounded very moving. However, the real thing was, at best, just slightly more than bearable.
Is that true? Can people really not tell if practitioners of jazz are any good? I wondered. This stuck with me for some reason. I had the distinct feeling that I had been let in on something, that I would need this information somehow. It was like the first time you learn about major historical events in college and suddenly a lot starts to make sense about the world around you.
My Dad was visiting from Georgia, the state in which I spent the days of my youth. I moved to New York to do something. What it was, I can not remember. I work for the library now, I scan in returned books. I collect the returned books from the bins around the library and six days a week scan them, then place them back on the shelf to then be checked out and returned again. I tried to explain to my Dad how I got started doing that, but for the life of me, I could not remember. It had to have been financially motivated, I resolved, but surely I could have made more than I am in a job even one percent more exciting. My Mother is dead, she died last year. I reckon that is part of the reason my Dad decided to visit me, despite never having visited the six other years I’ve spent living here. They had a good marriage, they were fulfilled.
***
When I was young, I wanted to be an artist. I did not know what that really meant. I supposed it meant having ideas and putting those ideas out there for others. I didn’t, however, have any particular talents when it came to art. I never could learn an instrument, my drawings were sloppy and juvenile (and not in a good way), and I couldn’t write poetry. That was disappointing as I came to the age where money became a worry of the quotidian. I suppose I moved to New York still thinking I would become an artist of sorts, but I never actually made anything. I sometimes had inklings, urges to make something, the medium of what was always different, but once I collected the materials and sat down to do such, it inevitably passed in a fit of anger and frustration.
Sometimes I heard people say that talent doesn’t matter when it comes to art; if your heart is there, the work will resonate with others. They said to just make stuff and it will get better with time. I don’t believe those people, I reckon they are the type of people who were born with some predisposed natural ability towards a particular medium. It is easy to say produce, produce, produce when you are able to produce something of feasible conversation and thought. When I had a drawing idea, an idea that could be as intellectually rich as anything Picasso made, it would without fail end up as something totally illegible and dumb-looking. I would crumble it in a fit of rage and make sure nobody ever saw it for the rest of time. I wanted to be an artist who did not make art. That is, when you think about it, however, particularly Warholian—too bad nobody would ever be able to hear the idea to begin with.
***
My Dad and I went to dinner that night, I got us reservations at one of those uppity Italian places uptown. I hate Italian food, he loved it. Perhaps I am tasteless or dumb but something about wheat pasta doused in an acidic tomato blend is just not appetizing to me. Nevertheless, we went. We sat at dinner, it was dim, and it reeked of garlic. Somewhere, someone played piano—or was it a recording? For minutes I tried to discern, but could not figure it out. It was light but evenly dispersed, and it had a recorded quality, but there were unmistakable mistakes and changes. Before I figured it out, our food arrived.
“So what’s your plan, Mikey?” my Dad asked, making goo-goo eyes at a mountain of spaghetti set between us.
“What does that mean?” I said. I could feel my chest tighten, though I was not sure why.
“Well, you don’t wanna work at that library forever, do you?”
“I haven’t given it much thought to tell you the truth. Why, do you have something in mind?” I said, perplexed by the topic. I really had never given it much thought. Was everyone else always thinking about plans and futures?
“No, no. Just wondered. I’m your Dad, but I am not in charge of you anymore,” he said, lifting a generous portion of pasta from the tray to my plate. “You gotta do what you wanna do, son.”
After this talk, all I could think about was if I should be doing something else, if I had been all along. Did I make the wrong decision? I missed the portion of the dinner when the most pressing topic was if that piano was in this building somewhere. I would never be that guy again it seemed, I was now an anxious wreck worried about retirement.
My Dad teared up at some point. We were sitting post-dessert and having drinks. He was reflecting on the “perfection of the meal” we had just eaten. For one, it was not perfect, and two, why was he crying so much? I know he is probably bored, probably deprived of food containing anything besides salt in Georgia, but he seemed so easily moved nowadays. The only times before the two times that day I ever saw him cry were at funerals.
“Did you have plans that fell through?” I asked him, now not even able to worry about him crying, just totally consumed by plans.
“Yes I did,” he said, staring down at the floor. The way he said it it was as if I had spoiled them. Had I spoiled them? Did I do something I can no longer remember? I decided not to investigate, to let it go, to enjoy the meal and move on.
***
I grew up in a part of the country that, despite not caring about culture at large, had a weird affinity for jazz. An affinity that was not ever bestowed upon me. My high school had not one but two school-sanctioned jazz bands. My school taught a course on the jazz of America, yet spent less than three days of class dedicated to the rise of fascism in Europe. It seemed odd to me just how much this place cared about jazz. Jazz was an art form more passive than reading, but less passive than watching or looking at. You had to try to like the sound of insane noises, it made no sense. My Dad, it seemed, fell victim to this bizarre affinity though I am not even sure when. I, for my part, truly hated jazz. This was not to be contrarian or hip, but just a true, natural disdain for the “art” form.
I grew up liking the idea of paint, I thought it was sort of godly and magnificent to conjure images with colored oil-based goop. However, in practice, painting only proved to infuriate me and ruin my day. The smell hurt my head, mixing colors was exhausting, the feeling it left on my skin irritated me, and cleaning brushes in the aftermath only stood to torture me in some never-to-be-finished sort of way. As I said, I liked the idea of paint, the idea of artistry, but I just was not cut out for it in the end.
One evening, a few weeks after my Dad returned home from New York, I lay in bed restless and angry. I stared at the ceiling, it seemed to be impossibly static. My eyes burned from the inside, my stomach felt non-existent. I was terribly and irreparably bored. I was totally devoid of stimulus, my body had gone numb. The thought of scanning one more book haunted me like a stalker I know is behind me, but I just can’t see. I could not even cry, I could just sit, just think, just be bored. It was, for lack of a better word, misery. Then, it dawned on me. Everything came rushing in like a dam breaking and water rushing into me. It was as if I just came above water for the first time in years. I took a gasp of sweet, pure oxygen, I wiped my eyes, and I felt alive and real—something I did not even know I was missing. This was all on account of an idea I had, a reinvention I could undertake. I would fully and definitively rebrand myself as the greatest jazz saxophonist in modern New York City.
The how of it all was a bit fuzzier, however. I did not know saxophone, I did not even have access to a saxophone. I knew I could not afford a saxophone. However, it did not matter at that point—I was committed fully, this was the thing that would save me from my miserable boredom. My Dad’s joke reverberated around my skull, echoing and morphing: “The funny thing about jazz is nobody ever really knows how good anybody else is.” If I could fool myself, I could fool the masses. All there was left to do was to find a saxophone and start playing it. I felt an idea forming in my head as to how I would procure one.
***
I had never been a violent person, I never hit anyone, and I rarely ever yelled. I think it was just natural for me to be calm, I felt better than way. I couldn’t ever figure out what all the fuss was about with people hurting other people. How archaic? I thought.
That was until that morning when I got up, dressed in all black, and walked across Manhattan to Washington Square Park. I remembered how obnoxious that saxophonist was that day with my Dad, how much he filled me with anger. I figured if I did what I was planning for him, it was not bad, I was doing the park a favor, I may even be given the key to the city for this. So, I put my moral wallows aside and walked, planning for what I had to do.
As I neared the perimeter of the park, just as the arch came into view, I began to hear the wailing emitting from his horn. It pierced my eardrum, it reaffirmed my belief I was in a roundabout way doing a service to my neighbors. So, I covered my face (it was winter, you could get away with those sorts of things) and circled the park. I planned to come up behind him. I would keep it simple and not attract any extra attention to myself. I came up behind him, punched him across the face, yanked the saxophone away from him, and ran as fast as I could away. In the end, it was more simple than I could have ever dreamed of. The poor sucker didn’t even put up a fight, much less chase me. As I ran, I looked over my shoulder, and I saw him laying there clenching his cheek. For a moment, I felt horrible. I almost stopped running and returned the sax, but then the absence of an off-beat, untuned horn intoxicated me. Would I really let him ruin the tranquility of the city at that moment? Not a chance.
I went home and I called the library to let them know my days there had come to an end, then I waited. It seemed entirely disrespectful to try and learn any instrument before 11:00 a.m. in a city where fourteen people were living within twelve feet of me. That was what the now saxophone-less saxophonist never understood, that was what might have saved him, to be honest. At precisely 11:01 a.m., I blew into the saxophone. It sounded bad, though from what I learned, that might be good. I was ready. I played for about an hour, it was about as jazz as it got—random, improvised, sound of nightmares—I found my medium.
***
The next evening, I bit the bullet—I took it to the people. I had the privilege of plotting my career for the talk shows, plotting for what would become a good story. I realized that America loves an underdog, a real rags-to-riches type. Therefore, I went to the most democratic space in this city: the subway. I set up shop in the East Broadway station, placing a hat at my feet with three dollar bills in it to give the hint to the passersby. I took a deep breath, it was 4:55 p.m., just in time for the evening rush hour. I began to blow.
From my lips to my fingers, pure unadulterated spontaneity emerged. I blew long, then erratically, then in bursts, then soft, then as hard as I can. I pressed this key, then all the keys, then a few. I had zero practical knowledge and zero technical skill, yet one by one people gathered. Were they simply enjoying the view as they waited on their train? Probably, but they were electing to spend that wait watching me. It was exhilarating. Then, as the first train headed south rolled into the station, a few bills were placed in my hat. Then a few more, then a few more. I was doing it, I was a jazz musician. My Dad was right, nobody did know whether I was any good—and rest assured, I was not. The noise emerging from the piece of metal was truly apocalyptic. Yet, people were giving me their cold hard cash for it. After all this time, it dawned on me: I was not a painter, not an architect, not a writer—I was a jazz musician.
I stayed in that spot, blowing that horrible sound for six more hours. Finally, at 11:00, as the city began to really slow down for the evening, I simply boarded the northbound train and rode home. As the car traveled up Manhattan, I counted the bills in my hat. $353.84 left for me, that was more than I made in a day at the library. If I kept this up, I surely would be rich, perhaps even famous. It seemed to me that I had really found my talent and it just so happened to be the thing I hated the most. I got off at my station, emerging on the cold, windy street. Suddenly, I was stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t go home. I was becoming something I did not want to be. I got back on the train, traveling for Washington Square Park.
I left the horn where the saxophonist played every day of his life, I realized I could not take this from him. It had not occurred to me what playing this for a crowd of people would actually feel like. I was not doing the city a service—they liked him. He was probably making good money, so could I really take that from him? Of course not. I left the saxophone with $45 stuffed into it for his trouble. My $308.84 and I went home.
The next morning, it occurred to me that I was jobless. All of my musical aspirations were gone and all I really wanted to do was go scan books and talk to my friends. I thought about what to do. Just how serious did I sound? I thought. I decided not too serious that I could not fix it. I headed for the library, walking in and simply clocking in and starting. I could not quite reason what would be the best way to handle this, so I just didn’t. I began scanning books and talking to my friends. My boss came by at some point, but he just looked at me and kept moving. It seemed he didn’t think I was so serious either. And so I went on, day after day, scanning books and talking to my friends. The money was fine, the job was whatever. The thing about scanning books at the library is nobody cares whether you are good at it, they aren’t tipping you, and they hardly even look at you. In a way, it really was the perfect arrangement.