RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,281
(a history of joyful gamesmanship, pt. 2)
One time, along e4th street, I
was sitting in Swift's (Jonathan
Swift's Hibernian Lodge), just
wiling away the time towards
late afternoon, one slow beer
after another. The bar-girl's
name was Bernadette. She
was in NYC working her
way through various jobs
to pay her keep. We talked
alike - all the usual stuff -
bordering on the tendentious
or the mad. She'd said she
liked my motorcycle, and
asked if I'd take her for a
ride when she went on break.
I said sure. Nothing was afoot,
don't get me wrong; she just
wanted to see the uptown
canyons, live and real, from
the back seat of a motorcycle.
I was game. I only had one
helmet, so I let her use it; just
a small beany pod, it was
hardly even a 'helmet. I wore
none; no one in NYC that I
ever saw, cops and such, ever
cared about that. Maybe, as I
saw it from just noticing, they'd
pull over and go hard on those
new kind of rider-guys with
professional looks and fancy
bikes and crap, usually just to
bust ass. Those guys really
stood out as newbies and as
dumbbells too. But, as a
hard-rider, in NYC, if you
rode low and hard, with the
right specks of bad attitude
and screw-you sass, the cops
for the most part wouldn't
touch you. Who could blame
them. So I took Bernadette
for her hard ride, and we got
back some 25 minutes later.
She was all keyed up and
loved it. Good egg, that girl
was, and she could draw a
mean Guinness too!
-
No sooner do we get back in,
and she goes to her spot, and
another girl comes up to me.
Just talk, more of the same
prattle. I start talking, and I
notice - around her wrist -
a tattoo that reads 'A Love
Supreme.' Like a bracelet.
Now, I knew that immediately
to be a big-time John Coltrane
title, classic and oft-played.
One of the landmark jazz LP's
back when, that defined the
category and carried the name
of John Coltrane aloft. I sort
of smiled and said 'A Love
Supreme, huh? Coltrane fan,
you?' She swoons, 'Oh, I Love
Coltrane, and that's my most
favorite album!' I figured, in
person-to-person stuff, you
gotta' start somewhere, so I
went along and kept it going.
Someone who utters 'My
most-favorite' usually irk me,
being a grammar indelicato
as I am. I let this one go and
said nothing about it. If she
wanted that to be her 'most
favorite,' so be it. We talked
a little about Coltrane, jazz,
and the rest - she was all
fluffy and enthusiastic, almost
cheerleader-like, over things,
but at least she didn't break
into back-flips or some weird
dance routine. Small favors,
I always ask. Some girls flip
for rides, others for jazz.
-
I told her about Coltrane's
house in Philadelphia - where
it was and how I'd gone there
often. It was just a wreck of a
place now, just off from Fairmount
Park, in an older, decrepit black
section. Even in his fame days
and after, he would return to
revisit the place, where he lived
from 1952-1958 - the house had by
then (1990's) fallen into disrepair,
was crumbling and ratty-looking,
and abandoned too, with only a
civic/municipal plaque placed
there by the city telling what
it once had been and who had
lived there. I never really knew
the connection for him, but the
city of Philadelphia had once
made its own connection for
itself, notwithstanding the fact
of its otherwise utter hatred of
black people, black culture, and
jazz itself. The old house stood
adjacent to some shitty ballfield
entry turn-off to the ass-end of
Fairmount Park - an otherwise
pretty darn nice place. This section,
in the days of Frank Rizzo, bestial
Mayor, would have thought nothing
better than to have made it a 'Blacks
only' part of the park, is such stuff
was still an option to him in the 1960's
and '70's. But, never caring, he sort of
did it anyway - and it included blacks,
low-lives, hippies, protestors, dogs,
loonies, whores and addicts. It should
have been called 'The Rizzo Section.'
That's brainless police-stater finally
had a statue of himself, long after his
death, removed from its plaza area
downtown, and it was removed by
the very same people he used to beat,
batter, ram, and trounce, when he
was racist Mayor and racist Police
Commissioner, and probably young,
racist, cop too. (I', way 0ff-subject
here, so I'm dropping it. But I hope
they banged his head in Hell, just to
give him a taste of his own medicine.).
-
Anyway, the girl disappeared soon
enough after we exchanged Coltrane
notes and ideas. If she had any sort
of a better head I would have gone
a little deeper into the subject, but
I sensed she wouldn't get it. 'A Love
Supreme' is real fine, yes, to listen
to, but it too veers off - try listening
to cut #3, carefully, as it roils and
leaps and crescendos, with all its
different colors and tones, but in
the end winds up stalled, in its
own manner, by flops and false
starts and lack of any real direction
or motivation towards a conclusion.
Perhaps just a strange grouping of
black guys rattling off in a jazz-panel
of their own maybe kickless and
without focus, but cool and massive
and tough enough anyway. However,
'A Love Supreme' never did it for
me. I veered to much in one edge
black-mystic stage of cosmic-music
awareness that mixed everything
all together - God, Christian and
religious consciousness, black longing
and mysticism. All that 'Love Supreme'
stuff always missed the point, for me.
-
She wouldn't have known any of that,
being such a booster. Wearing Coltrane
as a style. Shouting 'I Love Jazz' as a
motif. The rest of the bar, as usual
remained sour and dark. There was
no real crowd, the hipsters never really
took over until like after 7pm - music,
talk, promptings, flattery, and the rest
of the more pompous and asshole stuff
that kids and pick-up artists do so well.
Stuffing the NYU college-girls with
the usual mindless thrust; hoping to
enter panties from below the waist
and forgetting about the brain. Older
guys, and crusty old Irish drinkers,
as usual, sat around at their end
of the sulking bar. There was a
window or two looking out to 4th
Street, and these old guys would be
there, burying themselves in booze
and any of the copies of the Irish
Times or whatever newspapers from
Ireland were brought in daily. The
talk was coarse and rude, and each
of these guys thought they could
run Ireland better that it was being
run, even when they were drunk.
Which meant....at any time at all.
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