9686. TAKE MY HANGING BASKET, pt. 15

TAKE MY HANGING BASKET

- my Jazz Loft, pt. 15, 1967 -

Another time, at 300 Central Park West, I

got mixed up  -  nothing really to do with

the jazz stuff, nor delivering anything  -

with what passed for the combined ethos

of 1967 breakaway family politics; which

was really weird to me. Kids and parents

were all having trouble, I suppose. Central

Park West has a stone wall the entire length,

original stuff, from Olmstead and Vaux's

original plans and all, and with that wall

come benches. It's all still there  -  people

walk along, or promenade, it's a really

expensive street, more massive and gleaming

pre-war apartments and condos. Expensive

people, rock stars, theater and entertainment

people, the whole gamut now. I was sitting there

once, just idling away an afternoon, and

some girl comes over to me. She was maybe

15 or 16, to my 18, I'd guess, and she was all

starry eyed about me, filed with  wonderment

of certain shades I couldn't quite fathom.

It was an odd moment  -  quite human and 

all above board. To be frank, it's the sort

of stuff that still occasionally happens to 

me, though, of course, no longer in the

guise of youth. To put it succinctly  -  she

sat down, enamored, and said she'd been

watching me, lived across the street (in

that very expensive building), a few floors

up etc. From the little front windows there

she could see the street below. Her father,

still upstairs, didn't know she'd slipped out,

she had had a huge family argument, they

thought she was in her room, she hated them 

now and all they represented, wanted 

freedom and just to get out, run off, 

breakaway. When she saw me, it 

represented, in the seeing, all of this 

to her, escape, I guess. She just had to 
come down and tell me that, talk with me, 

etc. She stayed a few minutes, talked a 

little, and she said she had to get back 

before her father realized anything and 

she'd just wanted to be sure I knew 

what she meant. Then walking a few 

steps off, she stopped, and said 'don't 

go yet, I'll be right back.' Then she left.

I waited, deciding it was part of our bargain

and that I didn't wish to be just another

crumb in her life who broke deals and

dishonored pacts. I was a bit stunned, and

still wondering what had just happened. 

Maybe 15 minutes went by, and she showed 

up again, with a shoe-box sized parcel which

she handed to me : gave me the biggest smile 

in the world, said 'Here! for you, while 

you're out,' and she went away.

-

Knowing she'd maybe still be watching me, 

and too self conscious about everything, I 

got up and walked down the hill into the 

park, to another section entirely (it's a

huge park). Sitting down again, I looked in

and realized she must have raided the kitchen

and refrigerator or whatever  -  there was assorted 

food in the box to keep me steady for five days,

with or without refrigeration. Cold cuts, bread

(to eat first, while cold and fresh), crackers,

a cup of peanut butter, two apples, cherries,

triangles of cheese. It was like a food goldmine

to me. I type this now, and it's probably near 

to 50 years to the day and I could still almost

cry over that moment. I wish I had gotten 

information, learned more. I hope she's still

alive somewhere, in peace and happiness, and

in fact I hope she's living the promised life

that all her parents' money and position had

in store for her. I wish I knew her now. I

really do. It was an exceptional moment all

around  -  without however me having a

chance to tell her, at the same time, what a 

useless particle I was  -  certainly not the 

caliber for mentoring her or acting as an

example of the free and the unfettered she'd

transferred upon me in her vitality and vision.

Man, sometime life is just all about Love.

-

That's the ''romantic' aspect of living  -  the

starry eyed and the faraway. We weave the

fantasy we wish to live, and maybe, if we're

lucky, for a moment, a day, a year, whatever,

we get to live it. The jazz guys, there was no

romance there at all. They had hard-knocks

and rubble. Maybe the incoming flux of

hippie-culture was the romance and the new

fantasy-level of things to be, but these guys 

would never recognize that. Their times and

their music and ways were just dark, purple and

blue tones, brown moods of music, drifting and

toiling over and back upon itself. Sometimes 

there's nothing sadder than the sound of a 

horn, walking blindly, dipping in and out of 
its own solo. Looking,  maybe, for something, 

and not always finding it. Or, if they do find

it, it's the wrong damn thing.

-

I was easy, and I wound up liking a lot of

things. If I didn't, and if I was the fussy and the

particular type, I'd not have been doing all this.

I'd have been trudging instead to one of those

big-ass universities, learning all the nothings 

needed to claim it added up to 'something.'

This was better than all that could have ever 

been, and I was leagues ahead. I did a lot of

thinking being around these guys, and one thing

I always hated, I mean to death, was the music

of Charlie Parker. The stories about him were

told over and over; he was a God of sorts already

to these guys, maybe ten years after his death. I

never knew why, and just couldn't stand hearing 

his stuff. He was like a speed-freak sentimentalist, 

to me. All that music, 'Cherokee,' and the others,

it all amounted to old, schlocky sentimental-tune

stuff, I figured, done up in his crazy man, 

choppy-speed style that really just made no sense.

He seemed to mess up every tune he touched.

That was 'Jazz' at one of its final dead-ends. Yet,

lots of guys followed that, and it all led just 

to further dead-ends. Showy. Flourishy. Dark.

Charley Parker was an addict, and that wound 

up ruining everything. Heart attack, liver,

chirrosis, everything. By the end of his life, he was

wrecked. Charlie Parker died on Fifth Avenue, in the

east 70's, in the apartment of someone name 

Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a Baroness of some

sort, who'd taken him in and had acted as his patron.

995 Fifth Avenue, they call it now; back then it

was the Stanhope Hotel, where she kept a suite.

He died, in front of the TV, mid-laughter, at some

shtick on the Dorsey Brothers TV show he'd been

watching. Boom. Just like that, keeled over. 
March 12, 1955. A real driving shame. This 
was the kind of stuff that stayed in my brain.