2010: A Cyber-Jazz Odyssey

Back in 2009 I was without computer, in Japan, on the road, through slaughter, now, computer in hand, in Hong Kong, 2010, resume. A bit of my present mind:

COWBOY BEBOP ‘MUSHROOM HUNTING’:

Cowboy Bebop \”Mushroom Samba\”

COWBOY BEBOP OST 1 ‘SPOKEY DOKEY’:

SOIL AND PIMP SESSIONS ‘FUNKY GOLDMAN’:

AIR FEAT. BECK ‘THE VAGABOND’:

DUB FX FEAT. WOODNOTE ‘FLOW’:

MUDDY WATERS ‘CHAMPAGNE AND REEFER:

SELECTIONS FROM ‘COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER’ BY MICHAEL ONDAATJE:

“But here there is little recorded history, though tales of ‘The Swamp’ and ‘Smoky Row,’ both notorious communities where about 100 black prostitutes from pre-puberty to their seventies would line the banquette to hustle, come down to us in fragments. Here the famous whore Bricktop Jackson carried a 15 inch knife and her lover John Miller had no left arm and wore a chain with an iron ball on the end to replace it – killed by Bricktop herself on December 7, 1861, because of his ‘bestial habits and ferocious manners’. And here ‘One-legged Duffy’ (born Mary Rich) was stabbed by her boyfriend and had her head beaten in with her own wooden leg. ‘And gamblers carrying cocaine to a game’.”

“No matter how much you took with you, you would lose it all in paying for extras. Such as watching an oyster dance – where a naked woman on a small stage danced alone to piano music. The best was Olivia the oyster dancer who would place a raw oyster on her forehead and lean back and shimmy it down all over her body without ever dropping it. The oyster would criss-cross and move finally down into her instep. Then she would kick it high into the air and would catch it on her forehead and begin again.”

“He was the best and the loudest and most loved jazzman of his time, but never professional in the brain. Unconcerned with the crack of the lip he threw out and held immense notes, could reach a force on the first note that attacked the ear. He was obsessed with the magic of air, those smells that turned neuter as they revolved in his lung then spat out in the chosen key. The way the side of his mouth would drag a new of air in and dress it in notes and make it last and last, yearning to leave it up there in the sky like air transformed into a cloud. He could see the air, could tell where it was freshest in a room by the colour.”

Nora’s Song

Dragging his bone over town. Dragging his bone over town.

Dragging his bone over town. Dragging his

bone over town. Dragging his bone

over and over dragging his bone over town.

Then and then and then and then

dragging his bone over town

and then

dragging his bone home.

“There were his dreams of his children dying…

The other kid came in with the news he’s dead, sobbing, and he jumped and ran in one movement and caught the boy’s shoulders WHO IS he heard himself weep out loud and being told floated into the kitchen picked up the wood handled knife with the serrated edge and pushed it again and again into his left wrist, then the open hand which was numb already, through the door and the police amazed at him his white shirt bloody looking at the cops who brought the news he’d always imagined each night – hit by a car, god. After the boy’s words he hadn’t heard a thing but his own screaming, went past the cop and leaned over the hot metal of the hood of the police truck, his face and his wet arm on it.”

“The silver knife curves calm and fast against carrots and fingers. Onto the cuts in the table’s brown flesh.”

“He woke to see the train disappearing from his body like a vein. He continued to stand hiding behind the mail wagon. Help me. He was scared of everybody. He didn’t want to meet anybody he knew again, ever in his life.

“He collected and was filled by every noise as if luscious poison entering the ear like a lady’s tongue thickening it and blocking it until he couldn’t be entered anymore. A fat full king. The hawk its locked claws full of salmon going under greedy with it for the final time. Nicotine from the small smokes he found burning into his nails, the socks thick with dry sweat, the nose blowing out the day’s dirt into a newspaper. Asking for a glass of water and pouring in the free ketchup to make soup. Sank through the pavement into the music of the town of Shell Beach.”