November 17, 2006
Jazz
The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra came to town last evening and bent the air in our concert hall clean out of shape. You can’t have music without air to resonate or pluck or beat anymore than you can have life without spirit, and they proved that, doubled in spades.
God breathed an Adam out of clay maybe because the clay was there and he needed to get it out of the way. There’s a lot to be said for the notion that our lives don’t begin until we start breathing, for we’re sure a goner when we stop. And then, it’s what we do with all that air in between once we get some. Adam lost his lease on Eden because of the way he shaped his clay. We’re fast losing our lease on this planet because of the way we’re shaping ours.
A jazz band models community as well as anything I can think of, unless maybe it’s a basketball team. All the members know their and their neighbor’s limits and skills, respect them, then shape that “lay of that land” to something more and different than what it was before they got it. It’s called ad libbing, improvising, playing “at liberty” the basics we’re given in the melody at hand.
“Here’s your life,” God says, “there’re lots of tunes out there. Here’s your freedom and here’s your ‘ax.’ Let’s hear some improvising, but keep it between the curbs, er, the chord changes.”