The Metaphysics of Jazz
Oct 5 2014


How many notes
in a musical scale?
A sweet round "C"
bent, sharpened, tweaked
in a continuum of sound
infinitesimally down
to its fundamental particles.

Like the constituents of atoms

the matter of song

can never be pure,

exquisitely altered
by having been heard.

How singers, in chorus
conjure that third voice,

surrounded

by the disembodied sound

of soft harmonic chords.

The metaphysics of song;

verse, given birth

by some ethereal choir
that sings, on-high.

The alchemy of jazz,
with its call-and-response
its handing-off, and improvised riffs
played by ear, and heart, and lips
in dim little bars
after hours.
Her rough-edged voice

simmering with sex,

and helpless as a little girl’s.
The high, nearly reached,
a half-step off
the propulsive beat.

It's her restraint
that holds us rapt,
the unbearable tension

of a powerful voice
held back.
Like a powerful engine’s

quiet throbbing

as it teasingly idles,

before foot-to-the-floor

and the turbine roar

of its wide-open throttle.

Until the last note
lingers on,
trailing away

on a final breath
in the blue smoky stillness.
As insubstantial as air
and as indestructible as matter,
all its energy
given-up
in a flash of naked light.
Exposed
down to our cold white bones,
or wherever the soul resides.


I've encountered far too many people who just don't "get" jazz. All I can do is encourage them to try listening again, and feel sorry for what they're missing. Not that my tastes are for esoteric or particularly challenging forms, since I'm most inclined to the so-called "Great American Songbook" style of jazz: especially the slower ballads and the great female vocalists. I love the clever lyrics. I love the space in the music, so unlike the "wall of sound" of more contemporary stuff. And I love the virtuoso sound of a tight jazz combo or a big band: the energy, the sweet pure notes, the musical genius of improvisation. (No swearing, misogyny, auto-tuning, or guns!)

I was listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. The podcast's theme was creativity. In one piece, they talked about jazz players improvising -- a perfect combination of virtuoso skill and creative chops -- in an fMRI machine. So I started to write about jazz.

Unfortunately, the same podcast also left me feeling unusually self-conscious: because I wasn't in that creative a mood to begin with, and because of the science itself. Since the experiment revealed a shutting-down of the busy self-monitoring centre in the frontal brain, I paradoxically became more self-conscious, and found myself becoming as hyper-vigilant as if I, too, were under the microscope while trying to be creative! But it's this shutting down that's crucial: not only as the source of that mysterious feeling of "flow", but by opening us to making mistakes, taking flyers, and losing our fear of being wrong.

It's clear how the science (or more precisely, physics) informed the jazz: from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, to metaphysics and alchemy, to the conservation of energy and Einstein's famous equation. In the final stanza, I'm picturing not just an X-ray, but the flash of an atomic bomb: its incredible energy rendering a fleeing human body momentarily transparent; the fundamental particles of matter a call-back (admittedly, pretty obscure!) to the first stanza.

I've written several poems about jazz. And I'm certainly guilty of -- once again(!) -- plagiarizing them, repeating some of the same ideas, words, and motifs I've used before. I like to think that I'm keeping the good parts and winnowing down the bad, and one day will produce the perfect jazz poem that supersedes all the rest. (Or perhaps, will simply block myself in to a narrowing passage of self-referential meaninglessness, as if running full speed into a rock wall at the end of a blind canyon!)

The race car analogy comes out of nowhere, and isn’t picked up again. My only justification is that the image immediately came to mind, and I couldn’t let it go. I could feel as much as hear that low powerful throbbing, and the excited anticipation of it roaring into over-drive, breaking free of all restraint. I think this is similar to that cathartic release when the singer finally opens up from the bottom of her diaphragm, carrying us along with the full force of her voice.

I apologize for any musical faux pas. I realize that, consistent with a descending scale -- with its arbitrarily designated notes, and infinite gradations of sound -- I probably should have said "flattened" instead of "sharpened"; but I liked the edge and energy of the latter, so let it stand. And I suspect the singer is Billy Holiday, and the style, mostly hers: singing the blues, slightly behind the beat. I think I heard Ella Fitzgerald when I began to write; but the tortured soul of the jazz singer pushed her aside. Other than that, I'll invoke the defence of ignorance: I can't play a thing, only sing in the shower (and still self-consciously, at that!), and have no formal musical training or knowledge. "I know what I like" is the extent of my musical authority!