I don’t get jazz. Or symbolism.
I’m not fancy.
I went to a friends play the other night. She was wonderful. I had a good time, but I knew I was missing something. Something else was going on. The greek style chorus of three women in white represented… something. The stories, told, but not finished meant… something.
Sometimes I feel like Charlie Gordon in the end of “Flowers for Algernon”. I know I should know something, but I just can’t grab it. Even there, one of my favorites, I missed the ethical theme — I was busy with the story, busy letting it break my heart.
I’m the same with fine art, “art” films, smart books, politics. When things are not direct I hear the wah-wah-wah voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher.
I meet a lovely man. A musician, a teacher, and successful artist. I went to his website and it was over. Jazz. Abstract art. Apparently very good abstract art, but it’s all Greek to me. I need my stories told simply and directly. I need a melody I can follow. I like my art, straightforward. Give me Michaelangelo, Seurat, Van Gogh, Monet and Manet. Dali gives me a headache. Warhol is totally lost on me.
I dated a jazz musician once. Coltrane. Davis. He told me I had to listen to the notes they weren’t playing. I’m tone deaf, I’m happy I can hum along with the notes they are playing.
I spent a day at a county fair recently. Nothing big and showy like the 168 acre Dutchess County Fair (but I’m going there too, yup, you betcha). Just two dozen animals from local farms, draft horses and oxen bigger than my car. A man with a thick black mustache played a saxophone, three men in civil war regalia attempted to recreate the entire Civil War, popcorn was fresh and a dollar, a freshly barbequedchicken dinner was $9 and everyone was smiling.
When I was younger, I yearned for sophistication, to recognize fine wines and cultivate highbrow tastes.
I’m a fan of Norman Rockwell. I love Andrew Wyeth.
I don’t get jazz or symbolism.
I like my food fresh and uncomplicated.
I’m not stupid, but I sure am simple sometimes….
Coming from a girl who loves jazz and has a double major in visual art and art history, you don’t have to know anything about it. All you have to know is how that shit makes you feel. I took so many classes and read so many books telling me what each painting meant and what each movement was about. It was good info to store in the back of my head for conversations to have with uptight educated people who lacked the heart of art in their souls. But, it was when I lost my breath and started to cry when I saw my first Rothko, that’s when I knew art/symbolism isn’t about knowledge. It really is about feeling. My professors would teach me HOW to draw, paint but they couldn’t teach me WHAT to paint. It always came from a place I couldn’t take people to. And then when asked about the meaning behind it, I couldn’t give one. I said, whatever you’re feeling is what it’s about. What I paint means so many different things to me at so many different times. I can’t put it in to words. If I could, I would be writing not painting! The amazing thing about being creative, is the process, how it comes to be. It comes from such a personal place (and again I’m just speaking for myself) that I think any experience you have with music, art, literature is your own and can never be wrong. Anthony used to teach me about Jazz and explain it to me. And even tho I appreciated what he was telling me I still didn’t totally get it. But I did like how a lot of it sounded. One nite after a lucid explanation of Freddie Hubbard, he and I fell asleep listening to him. I woke up in the early morning after that deep slumber. It was still dark, there was a mourning dove looking right in the window, watching over us as we slept, and Freddie was still playing. That was how I got jazz, with no explanation, just with my own form of symbolism…
And with that, might I add, (it was whole point in writing this but of course once it becomes about me, forget it) whenever I read the things you write, I am touched it many ways. You may not go out of your way to put symbolism in your pieces but it is every where and your writing truly is art to me. Written from a place that is from the gut, raw, and moving. I am so grateful you do it because it stirs things up in me, it’s provocative. Whether it’s about hookers or crackbaby’s heart murmur, I am moved every time…
I don’t think I have a jazz soul, but sometimes, sometimes I do have a techno dub brain…thanks for the sweet words. It means a lot to me that you read me and that I reach you.