Some people write poems, I write paragraphs. This occurred to me a couple days ago, and how Facebook and smart phones have made paragraphs the ideal length since it matches both screen size and attention span. So I write pretty paragraphs. People ask me why I don’t write a book. But what is a book but hundreds of paragraphs? I’ve already written hundreds of paragraphs. Thousands. Zillions. I spend my nights in indented servitude, writing paragraphs.
Monthly Archives: December 2015
Blue Christmas
Come Christmas I especially miss Charlie O’s…many a chilly December night I spent time in there sipping whiskey and listening to saxophoned renditions of Blue Christmas. A reharmonized Blue Christmas, perhaps, alien and even utterly unrecognizable to those of us not be bop musicians, but the head would return soon enough and it would be a blue, blue Christmas all over again. Herman Riley would let the last notes fade in a sigh and the sound of pads closing, one by one, till there was nothing but utter silence in a stilled room. The patrons would wait till every last air molecule passed through the bell of his horn into the ether before applauding. I think about that often now. For some reason I’ve thought about it even more this Christmas. The vibe is some rooms seems timeless, but alas they are anything but, and once their time is over there’s only silence and memories.
Saxophonist Chuck Manning on some night at Charlie O’s.
Eleven hours
Damn. Eleven hours. That might be a record. We considered breakfast but the place looked like the remains of a riot so we settled for cookies and scrapings of hummus and cup after cup after cup of strong coffee, punctuated with beer and other things. John Ramirez was reading aloud from my blog of parties past–that was new, people reading my blog aloud at my own house, but it was so late I was past the point of self-consciousness–as Carey Fosse was spinning jazz at the stereo. Heard so much Bud Powell my ears we’re ringing with it as I awoke around eleven, then noon, and finally a few minutes ago. Bouncing With Bud, over and over, every take Michael Cuscuna could squeeze into that double CD, rattling through my head between all the seizure meds and Benadryl and memories. Hadn’t heard it that album in years and certainly never heard it played in its entirety, both discs, every out take, at five in the morning. He played good, that Bud Powell. Better than I can write right now, and certainly better than I am cleaning the house right now. Instead I am sitting here stumbling through this post surrounded by wreckage and listening to Shin Joong Hyun and thinking just how groovy and swinging and punk rock a bohemian life style can be. No responsibility, just happenings, experiences, and the lies–well, exaggerations–we tell about them later.
Great tree, too. A beautiful Christmas tree. Each one like a work of art assembled by all these weirdos, and after two weeks it’s gone forever.
A wad of gum
Had one of those surreal evenings last night, with middle aged men threatening violence, bottles breaking crazily on concrete, a very drunk clown chick, and an angry man shouting about a vomit covered floor. Inside, a man was singing Black Sabbath songs in a Santa suit. Outside a group of guys discussed Ollie Halsall, which I didn’t think was even possible in Los Angeles. At one point I stumbled into a cloud of weed smoke so thick I thought I was Bob Marley as a guy was telling me how somebody fucked somebody and somebody was mad that somebody fucked somebody even though somebody wasn’t fucking somebody anymore so why would somebody care who was fucking anybody. I said I didn’t know. Finally, at three in the morning, I received a call warning me that there might a wad of gum in my car. I didn’t pick up, but let the caller prattle on about the wad of gum (and his words now remain, like oral literature, among the blinking messages on the machine) as I sat on the sofa in the dark, wide awake, listening to Heinrich Schütz.
I love this town, I really do.
Brick Wahl 