"Toujours, tout doux, tout doucement
Comme ça la vie c'est épatant..."That song from Blossom Dearie is in my ears again. Jazz has a way of snaking into my memories; it's like the primordial soup from which uncertainty crawls out of. I think of Blossom Dearie when I think of being in over my head, making peace with a level of confusion too twisted up to even stress over.
The thing is, it has nothing to do with the actual song lyrics. Tout doucement is about, well, "loving." It means "very slowly," and so I guess one could say it is kind of like that song Despacito...
That's my joke for this one. Not my best material, I'll admit.
I used to have Blue in Green warbling in my brain every day when I lived on campus. There was a useful kind of malaise that song. Miles' trumpet has a certain mood to it that makes it easy to backslide into some really somber stuff, y'know. Jazz, in my mind, has to remain the fundamental base particle of my understanding of music. It's not just the nuts and bolts, it's more like the bozons, quarks, nuons and gluons. It's not something seen with the naked eye; it's something fundamental.
Today, I'm thinking about jazz, and it's really because I'm thinking about myself. I remember when I used to play trumpet in the jazz band at Groves. I do really miss having a Trumpet, I should have stolen that one I kept at home. When I brought it back to the school, my teacher confessed that he did NOT know that Trumpet was in my possession. He told me I could have kept it with me forever, and he would have never known it was gone. It had a red case that was sort of broken, I found it sort of lying on the floor of the band room storage. I cleaned it up so I could play, actually. That's how much money these white people districts have got, you have to understand. They can afford to just give away several hundreds of dollars' worth of equipment.
So ... yeah, I have a history of fumbling the bag through a self-inflicted curse of "integrity."
All last week, in the corners of my mind I keep having these names repeat over, and over, and over. Not always attached to any songs themselves, you know? Errol Gardner, Charles Mingus, Herbie Hancock. I was listening to Fela Kuti on the way to the second day of the USPCN Conference.
It's weird because, I don't necessarily think of myself as a jazz person, per se, but it is fundamental to what I've grown into. Last week I remembered coming back from work and hearing dad spin some John Coltrane, but it wasn't one of the records I got for him, I think.
I remember watching that new doc about Ms. Rachel. Lindsay's perspective on this genocide opened the door to a lot of memories about my studies in undergrad, most notably what she went over regarding the Rwandan genocide. I think about how easy it is to get into that mindset of dehumanization, y'know. I think that's the scariest part of it all to me. When you really talk to someone who is more complicit in this stuff, you start to understand how... I guess I should say, weak minded, a lot of laypeople can really be about this stuff. It's just so, bizarre to me.
There was an idea that the average person of the modern world, today, would have chosen to act in the scenario in which a holocaust happened in their lifetime. This has always been flagrantly not true, we know this, but I have to say... is there nothing that will convince the average Joe Shmo that he should care about kids being blown apart in Gaza? That he should care about child slaves in Congo? That he should speak against UAE supported mass rapes in Sudan? There is no amount of suffering these people can go through that will endear them in the hearts of most laypeople, it seems like. Y'know, because it's not aesthetically consistent with their curated aura to care about something bigger than themselves, for a lot of people. I think that when dealing with Americans, some people have to understand that most of us can't really see beyond creature comforts, superficial ideas of what a "kitchen table" issue is really about.
Remember how many people voted for Trump who claimed they just wanted to see prices go down? It's that kind of stupid. The kind of stupid that's almost impossible to fix. If you say out loud, to their face, that they had the ability to do something great, to stand against a holocaust, and they actively chose not to, despite it being well within their ability... that wouldn't even get them to act. They would just get mad that you ruined their fun. That's what it is for a lot of people. There are many people out there who are only endeared towards foreign people if they can be convinced that they're exactly like them. Y'know, they've got to make a movie or a meme or a product that's interesting enough to make the American mind perceive them as actual people. Treatlerites, the lot of us. Think about what happened with Ukraine, how many people just don't really give a shit about that anymore. Real people are still dying in that war, you know? There was a feigned sense of empathy many Americans had for the plight of a nation in need, not motivated by a desire to defend the humanity of all people. No, I don't even have to say it. You already know exactly what I mean. So much of what this culture values are just skin deep.
Think about how a lot of Zionists and Israelis alike would say, "Name one invention from Palestine," or something like, "There is not one reputable person in Gaza," bullshit like that.
It's this sort of meathead dehumanization. Setting aside the fact that there are many inventions and influential figures from Palestine throughout history, the very idea that the humanity of a people should be validated by how many iPhones they've invented is just... we really are primates, aren't we? Just apes, with very sophisticated ways of flinging shit at each other. We might have fusion reactors and international space stations, but maybe the reality that our peak does not define our whole can be seen in an examination that is not solely "positive."
Breaking from topic for a bit to just say that, sometimes at work, you encounter people who are just... not intelligent. At all. Like, the information I just gave you should cover everything you are asking me about. I try not to be this kind of person, but good golly, good grief. They let some of these people vote, you have to understand. That's why he's president; it's a dumbass on every block.
I am thinking about what I posted yesterday. This isn't that bad, but it is boring. I think maybe I just came on a particularly boring, slow day at work. I am the only Rec Leader here, it's weird. It's just me and my supervisor. Despite being late, it seems like we're getting along better today. There have been a lot of very dull or irritating customers today, but I'm handling it better given my current mission I'm putting myself through. Head on straight, locking in!
Hepburn is still happening, despite my objections to my own project. I must apologize to the defeated, bitter Brielle from yesterday, but this is just too fun, too interesting to throw away. As much as there are parts of myself that I feel like are hard to love, I can't deny how much I enjoy all of the things that characterize my interests, y'know? My eye has been drawn so heavily to kitsch lately, as a design language. Pop artists, graphics, shock jocks and punk rockers.
"Oh, everybody goes to parties...
They dance this mess around!They do all sixteen dances!
They do the Shu-ga-loo... do the Shyyyyyyy Tuna... Do the Camel Walk, do the Hip O Crit, ahhhhh, hippy-hippy-forward-hippy-hippy-hippy-hippy-hippy-SHAKE..."
But you wanna know what is in my head non-stop, since 2 weeks ago? It's that Donna Summer song they used to play at Starbucks. It's not the one you're thinking of, no... it's they said it really loud, they SAID it on the AIR, on the radio, ooowhoaaaaaahhh, on the radio, ooowhoaaaaaahhh...
Last night I was tweaking track 6 of the album, called Judy. Initially it was gonna be a quicker paced sort of thing, that kind of punk. What I ended up doing was more Lou Reed meets Chipmunks on 16 Speed than Patti Smith, y'know. It's funny, cause what I was using as inspiration for my work yesterday was the gallery book I got, called Before, EASTER, After. I was, ironically, listening to Horses instead of Easter just the day before, cause I'm a fraud luddite (joking).
I think the next bag I'll dip into is Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Doors, Revolver era George Harrison, y'know. Psychedelic rock is what I mean. I would work in some Jimi, and maybe Jefferson if I really wanted to, but I'm not in that side of the bag right now, I think. I was in some Destroy All Monsters stuff last project, and I was thinking of, but did not emulate, Bob Dylan. I don't think I have the vocal quality necessary to do that.
Work got in the way for a sec, lemme remember what I was thinking about.
I'm up thinking about Fire Walk With Me again. Lynch has such an impactful method of winning over the senses; watching his stuff makes me feel like I'm living a different life. Experiencing the ballad of Laura Palmer through each incarnation of Twin Peaks really warps the senses and frays the nerves, y'know. It's a psychological malaise that infects my lexicon, everything about the warmth of tenderness and the chill of abuse feels more intense with such a fantasy on my mind.
Now I'm home, and I'm feeling fairly relaxed. Im gonna chill out for a second, and I might do a video update today. I'll see you in a bit.
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