Selections from: The Jazz Series: Spring 2005

In New York

When we're dancing
cheek to cheek,
ask if I love you
and make a funny face
You're here in my arms
heart of mine,
I want to be happy.
Just a lucky so and so,
stompin' at the Savoy
in summertime.
You go to my head,
But who cares?
It's alright with me
But now its my turn now
and it is a lovely day
today in New York

_____

Together Now

That sweet embraceable you
I'd dolphin dance in to a blues walk
like someone in love
like the old folks in summertime.
We can boogie-woogie
under old devil moon
only seven steps from heaven.

Just you, just me, and out
of no where, polka dots
and moon beams.
Let's watch what happens
Tangerine tenderly
my funny valentine.

_____

Perdido

We made Giant Steps
through autumn leaves
softly as in the morning sunrise
darn that dream
days of wine and roses
I jumped for joy night and day
when we fell from heaven
I still remember you
and quiet nights spent
on the sunny
side of the street

_____

Lady Day

As time goes by
In my solitude
I'll be seeing you
You were my thrill
My old flame
I'll cover the waterfront
Trav'lin' light
Until the real thing comes along
A dream of life
Say it with a kiss
That's all i ask of you
I'll never be the same
I'm funny that way
Carelessly
Foolin' my self
This is a fine romance

_____

To John

Bye-Bye Blackbird
And deal old Stockholm.
When the lazy bird
riding the blue train
locomotion awaits
the wise one
where crescent moons
and velvet sunsets
shine down on Avalon
west bound
til' Sunday,
remember your lady,
that promise of
a love supreme.

Grasping a New Aesthetic Experience:

7-11-09 A.M. Brklyn

From, break it you buy it -to- break it and send it back.

In many corners of this hyper interconnected universe of pattern interfaces and system functions ever expanding experiments on themes go by on and on like water flowing up and down the East River. Depending on what time your train crossed the Manhattan Bridge, the Atlantic will be pushing its salty waters up stream or the Long Island Sound will be rushing down with fresh drops of Hudson and Harlem Rivers. Anyway you look at it, it’s still all greenish brown.

Greenish, Brownish, ish is the new it. If it is, than it is. If it’s definitive, it’s pushy. If it’s vague, it’s noncommittal-- but ish-ish is the new real. It is now-ish.

Whatever art I have been seeing around me is ish. It is good-ish, bad-ish, faux-naïve-ish, and commercial-ish. The lines have been blurred that once separated the distinctions. Were there distinctions? I see artists working toward new problems in a way that is best described in an observation I had in my youth where a caged puppy had defecated and then comsumed his own matter. It’s efficient, contained and theatrical. It is banal, ostentatious, awkward, beautiful, poetic, silly, fun and sarcastic. Sometimes making a joke of the joke, these young artists are seeing themselves see. Not unlike self-consciously trying not to be self-conscious.

Our work, our Art is earthy, lofty, important, meaningless, synthetic, organic, plastic, biodegradable, recycled, handmade, industrial, fake, real, toxic, edible, wild, and domesticated. It is for the individual and for no one all the same. It is both consumption and production, like puppy.

What else could we know but what we know, what we’ve lived? Live our world of online, All-Mart consumer frenzy terrorism fragmented material culture of multi-stage chemical compounded experiences, we web surf, channel surf, reality surf, text, sext, smoke, joke, breed, feed, drink, think-ish.

Tonight like last night they hit the crumbling streets in hipster cigarette packs through the borough on their way to the infirmary. Can you swim to the other side of this anywhere?

Skip it man. You’re flipping your lid off like a soda pop top tab tossed out from a cab. Who’s got the money for the fizz, who for the guy driving this mess?

New Years Eve 2008

12-31-08

 

New Years Eve 6:03 p.m. I had spent most of the day laid up in bed with a mild fever of 100.8 or 101 tops. Just another day. Called in sick, it happened to be a half-day anyway. Most people were off on their vacations living fun interesting lives. Peaches & cream. A beautiful thing. Been listening to music and watched a documentary on ol’ Kerouac. He first smoked tea with Lester Young at a club uptown, who the hell else gets to say that? I dig. I feel so close to him in so many ways more so than my own brothers, father or friends. He could lay it down & with style & beauty – cool. Cool like when cool was still new. When cool was jazz blowing with smoke out of a saxophone in a dark club on 53^rd St. or a nightspot way out in Frisco, back in a time when Bird was on the radio. What did it sound like then? Did they know they had it that good? K & M are here cooking for tonight’s dinner party at their mother’s. Looks like we might roll out of here at nine to her place. We grabbed some sushi at our local place at 3 p.m. for lunch. Always hits the spot. Always about $20 bucks give or take a few Washingtons. What I ask myself are my resolutions for the year? Well, I am loosing weight at the club, gotta get into shape. Keep painting and apply to publications, but the real deal. Be happier with it all. The girl I kissed to start off this decade/millennium is getting married in two weeks. I’m happy for her. Life, love, it’s funny that way. I say yes. Yes to it all. It’s cold outside, going to have to keep warm feeling almost sorry for all those Times Square bums in the windy bitter cold tonight partying it up. Red noses, ears pink as valentines, noses running, and cheeks rosy. White people’s faces show the real temperature or what they’ve been drinking. It’s a fitting way to end a rough year for us all, our blood rushing around in a hustle to keep us from freezing in the bitter cold of the midnight hour.