Throughout the entirety of the writing of this I have struggled with
how to begin. There's the once upon a time of fables, the starting
from the ending and working your way back to the beginning, the
how-I-got-here beginning as well as the piecemeal,
drop-you-in-the-middle-of-nowhere beginning that forces you to start
reading before you are even aware of what is going on and who is
talking.
This doesn't exhaust the possibility of beginnings of course but
simply samples the possibilities that have exhausted me in trying to
figure out where to start.
The way I look at it, you don't meet friends or even strangers from
the beginning but you meet them right in the middle of nothing
usually, somewhere in your life and theirs where the stories
intersect and if there's any kind of spark, any kind of adhesive
substance to that intersection then the stories come later, the
histories are unravelled with time.
Ernesto reminds me the Bible seems to begin from the beginning.
Fair enough but I'm here right now. Three of us, actually.
Two dozen bars or so into "Better Get It
in Your Soul," the band mossy with sweat,
May 1960 at The Half Note, the rain
on the black streets outside
dusted here and there by the pale pollen
of the streetlights.
William Matthews, from "Mingus At the Half Note"
Before you even open the door, you can hear the strains of music
leaking out and once it's opened, a blanket of sound and smoke and
promise shields you from the truths of the world outside, wraps you
in the womb of jazz.
As we descended the short stairway into the main room, the stage was immediately to the left, crammed with musicians like a rush hour
subway. In such close quarters you can smell the respect of one
musician for another. Competition reeks. It's humble but it's a
humble one-upmanship. Sacrifice for the development of initiative.
To the right, a row of booths all flanked with black and white
photos at crooked angles and dust-collected frames; the club's
highlights through the years, spelt out in haunting images as the
past so often is.
The interior smells of years embedded in the walls and the floor,
tobacco smoke, drinks spilled in 1957, the stale feet of Handsome
Eddie who played barefoot here throughout the 60s and whose photos are prominent in every corner, the breaths drawn and expelled through Rico Royal reeds, everywhere, the interminable hours of music, which unexpectedly, if collected throughout the years, would still have numbered less than a lifetime of a single one of the musicians themselves.
There is a tingle of perfume from a trio of women who stare up at
the stage like groupies, wet with excitement, lips parted
expectantly, dressed exuberantly for a big night out, coaxing,
preening, gawking. One of them, a redhead with nearly matching
lipstick, lit a match and held it against her cigarette whilst her
foot tapped to the syncopation.
In seeking out accommodation for the three of us, we spoke in
respectful whispers as though we'd arrived on camels to see the
magical Jesus baby in a crowded little tent. A tenor sax, which had
been giving birth as we approached the entrance, had hushed, its
holder's head bowed as the pianist went into a solo to subtle
applause for the saxophonist.
There was little conversation at other tables and even those
conversations were muted, respectful. The pianist, tall and lean
with age, was the only regular at this once-weekly jam and he was
not unlike a reverend speaking psalms through the keys he touched
with expertise. And jazz, at its most mournful is not unlike a place
of worship.
This outing had been conceived by Ernesto Zambrano, self-promoting pioneer of the modern guitar montage who, within a few weeks of our first meeting held an impromptu exhibition for me in his flat: chilling photographs of mothers holding dead babies, the rotting corpses of Frente Martí Liberación Nacional fighters on the dirt roads of the peasant underbrush, graphic imagery everywhere, life histories he'd constructed from dust and put to music, composing song after song, a Goyaesque concert to the capricious affairs of incessant human cruelty. Quite an introduction.
Now he was sat in front of me, anxiously fiddling with the sugar
packs in the condiment set on the table, waiting for the first beer
as though he were in a hospital waiting room expecting bad news.
Beside Ernesto was Lydia, his girlfriend, a non-cloying but powerful
presence of dark curls hiding all but the chin and the mouth and the
nose, symmetrical until the eyes, housing some spirit indelibly
powerful, shone through like beacons leaning you toward her. The
kind of girlfriend a boyfriend spent a lot of time fending off the
advances of other predators for, the kind of girlfriend everyone
else around the boyfriend was secretly in love with but never spoke
about, men and women. She could be lively, fiery, brutal and
persuasive all at once; dragging others in around her the way the a
whirlwind makes pieces of paper dance on a chilly autumn afternoon.
But more than anything, she was Ernesto's. Yes, Ernesto was talented
and handsome even without her presence but the fact of her presence,
the fact that he and he alone was immune to her, shall we say,
magnetic qualities, the fact that he could maintain at the worst of
times a sort of playful indifference to her made him artificially
seem even more so.
And to maintain his hold of her, the grip of the relationship firm,
not dissimilar to the way a horse is handled by its trainer in a
circus or a groom at a stable, he had the habit of taunting her when
he spoke in Spanish. He was a gentleman to her when he spoke in
English, cognisant of the ears of Americans and their politically
correct hypersensitivities, aware of what others might learn and
judge about him but in that labyrinth of Spanish which hid all the secrets of their relationship, he could be brutally indifferent.
Ours was an easy triangular friendship forged in the vertigo of
intoxication and smoke, laughter and creative tension, hidden
thoughts and secret glances. Playing at feeling.
They had initially arrived in New York by virtue of, and then far out-
stayed, their student visas both, from the same fishing port town in
the northern Spanish province of Asturias, called Llanes, intertwined
by history, love, language and experience, and had both clothed
themselves in the appropriate anonymity escaping both discovery by
the INS and, perhaps by virtue of the transient nature of their
immigration status, even themselves, neither of whom ever seemed
particularly destined to anonymity in the first place so mutually
exclusive were their personalities and characteristics, somewhere in
a Bronx we never bothered spoke much about.
To them the Bronx was a place of habit, of hiding, of housing. For me, a borough I avoided for years and took care to block out both in rare daylight hours and even in semi conscious thoughts in midnight bars with the sound dulled for reasons I might explain in greater depth a little later but for the purposes of describing these two accomplices in front of me without deviating too far from the course of the describing, I will say only that somewhere out there I was certain my mother still existed, somewhere there even though I hadn't seen her in years since she'd disappeared without a clue.
But there, I've deviated already and Ernesto is getting impatient.
As a means of survival, Ernesto is a photographer and guitarist. He
is classical enough with his fingers to find studio work with his
guitar and disturbing enough with the view of his camera that in
Spain, he had already published a pair of books photographing human suffering. Not that I'd ever heard of him before I met him. Coffee table books on human suffering was not a priority of mine before meeting Ernesto and whilst it still isn't, the knowing of Ernesto
has lent more credibility and poignancy that might have otherwise
escaped me had he remained an anonymous soul and traveller to me.
It makes you wonder at all the millions of things people have ever
written or created in the history of humanity, books, scraps of
paper with recipes, diaries of profoundly disturbing secrets,
unpublished chronicles of misery and delights, photographs taken and
lost in moves or in estate sales, poems that have never been read by
a single other person in history and have long since disappeared
like the papyrus they were written on, brittle and then dust.
For Ernesto, such endeavours were merely part of daily life, a
shrug in the face of complexity. He was talented and he was talented
in that nonchalant way that only artists and athletes can perfect
without appearing to give even the minimal effort in making it
happen, despite all the hours and years of practice hidden behind
the façade.
In her role, which Ernesto would say in Spanish to her, sotto voce,
as the human footnote to the life of Ernesto, Lydia appeared content
to revel in her dewy infatuation, her own talents like a child that
doesn't cry and attracts little attention.
She still struggled with shaping the English language like bashing
the dents out of a Mercury's body despite her best efforts. In a
sort of fitting rendition of the competitive struggle she endured in
their relationship, Ernesto, predictably, spoke a fluid, guttural
English and had mastered American idiomatic nuances with a flourish.
Whatever she endeavoured, he could outperform, wherever she went
he had been before, whatever words she spoke, he had already heard.
Ernesto was a competitive man and Lydia, perhaps inexplicably, was
content to be in his shadow. Perhaps she thought he was greater than
her, perhaps she loved and admired him, perhaps because her own
insecurities prevented her submitting a wilful personality of her
own, a proper competition to face Ernesto with, or perhaps just fear
of losing. You don't know these things about people when you know
them solely in a social drinking way. You can only guess, or make
assumptions. And whilst some of their personality will rise up like
a dead body in a water other elements of it will remain deep and
distant, unspoken, unknown, a human hieroglyphic which can be
interpreted only by the partner.
There was nothing to dislike about Lydia, she merely dulled in
comparison given how little she was willing to compete against him.
Ernesto often speculated aloud that she should have been with a much more usual man, a man she could outshine by merely remaining in repose. But it was up to the relationship gods that she should be
saddled with an overbearing bundle of inexhaustible achievement like
Ernesto as a lover.
They came as a matching set, his and hers illegal aliens,
multi-talented, infinite wells of surprising phrases, compelling
angles of observation and despite the distances they had travelled
carrying personalities stunted by a foreign language, they were
appealing to me from the first meeting, as much for the intrigue as
their capacity for drinking.
Our first meeting ever had been the Oblong Club. Albert and I and a guitar player we had hooked up with for the occasion named Ernie Lee stood on stage, between numbers, standing in postures that bled indifference and fatigue when I smelled the unmistakable black odour of Ducados wafting through the air. Through the crowd, I searched tables before spotting Ernesto sitting back calmly, exhaling Ducado smoke like a factory worker on mid morning break. I coughed into the microphone and requested the culprit come forward and donate a Ducado.
Ernesto obliged and as we chatted at the foot of the stage, Albert
and Ernie Lee pretended to tune up, act busy. And with the crowd,
shuffling and restlessly murmuring, it came to light that he was a
guitar player himself and although he wasn't so very well versed in
the blues, or really much in jazz either, well, he was sure he could
fake it if we wouldn't mind his joining us on stage for a song.
Of course it would not surprise me any longer, but then, I didn't
know this guy but for his Ducados and it was a shocking surprise
when he borrowed Ernie Lee's guitar, fumbled quickly with the
strings and then burst into a sort of flamenco version of Cry Me A
River, which bowled the crowd over and pretty much ruined any
semblance of being coherent musicians I and Albert and Ernie Lee had the rest of the night.
I didn't resent it of course. We knew we weren't very competent
musicians. Maybe we even took pride in it. But from that moment on,
Ernesto and Lydia were with us like mascots to our mediocrity.
In any case, here I was, months or perhaps years, it is sometimes
difficult to tell, back from the grand journey, one man's dust
scattered in the East River, another decomposing and the two
remaining friends sat here as we all pretended I hadn't been moping for weeks, that they had to nearly physically drag me out and bring me here, this once-favourite haunt of ours.
Adding to the tension was the revelation that they'd invited a date
for me to this meeting, a date who was running late already and who,
even if she did show, was not likely to be impressed with the speed
of my beer consumption, the ragged edginess of my discomposure and the rapidity of my frequent descents into quietude and drunken
reflection.
She arrived in a rush, this Tamara, although despite the rush, the
outward presumption of regality of her entry was a dead give away to
me, straight away that Ernesto and Lydia had been overly optimistic
about our pairing, their matchmaking. I could sense like an animal
sensed fear that this meeting was going to be doomed and perhaps it
was fear and it was Tamara, not myself who sensed the fear and knew
at once we were not destined to be despite the matchmaking and we
would all simply have to hunker down for a socially acceptable
period of time before one of us made our excuses to leave.
I wasn't sure if I could like her at all no matter how much Ernesto
and Lydia genuinely wanted or pretended to want to believe that I
would like her at all but we all seated ourselves and listened to
the music as it gradually poured on to us like a spotlight, grateful
for the temporary distraction.
There had been others my two matchmakers had involved in the past,
and I, a somewhat willing albeit pessimistic participant, had
suffered them freely these matchmakees, perhaps eager for
affirmation once the minimal interest had flickered and faded as
quickly as it originally appeared.
Fortunately we had the music to transfix us for awhile after cursory
introductions allowed us all to seat ourselves at the same table
under the semblance of knowing one another before allowing the music to distract us.
I'd been briefed on her for days. Tamara would come along like an
unannounced song whose melody was familiar, rebounding from a bout of post-infatuation traumas emitting milongas which were as they say, pleasing to my ear. Mutual pain attracts and the assumption was we might get along well primarily because of our mutual yet secret pact never to bother spreading the miseries of our past relationships like a runny egg yolk ruining a perfectly good piece of dry rye toast.
The pianist's solo sutured seamlessly with a trumpet player who'd
suddenly stood from a chair on the stage having previously sat
motionless, head bowed, a mannequin springing to life, a flower's
petals opening.
Our rapture was broken by the waitress' long awaited arrival with
beers and even though we seemed entranced by the trumpeter, once the beer had made its appearance, gradually the humble sense of our
silence began to give way, the music a background rather than the
speck of sound the spotlight sprayed upon.
We were two couples, minutes into a binge without specific
purpose, two couples feeling their way through each other, trepid
syncopation as we fumbled through the chords of conversation
attempting to find one mutual note.
The talent was too sobering and the intoxication too fleeting.
None of us felt any particular compulsion to speak despite the auspices of this blind date sort-of gathering. We nestled, the four of us, at this table, clarifying our silences with taciturn sipping, as the musicians lifted us before gently bringing us back down.
Later there was a break. Even though the musicians from shadows were gradually replacing each other, taking turns to be spell-binding, the tall and lean pianist stood his full height at the end of one song, raised his arms above his head slowly, turned his head left and right. He slurped at his drink then mumbled a vague banter about taking a break, everyone taking a break.
And into this new silence came the suddenly oppressive need to address the issue before me, the blind date before me, Tamara who now, equally cogniscent, as were we all by this point, of the begging need for small talk, began a few tentative forays.
Lydia and Ernesto tell me you are also a musician, she urges. I am in the midst of rolling a cigarette but nod wordlessly until the roll-up is done and lit and I can speak between exhalations of smoke as though this action somehow lent me an unspoken credibility.
Yes. Not very well, of course. Not like Ernesto, for example. Not like any of the musicians assembled here for this jam. But yes, I play. Saxophone. Just back from a somewhat ramshackle tour of a few cities in Europe. Not sanctioned or official, mind you. You might even consider it a sort of glorified busking but with indoor venues. Or you might consider it a bunch of shit me and a friend or maybe two friends cobbled together on the run in the spare moments before the drinking set in. In any event, wow, there I’ve gone and not even taken a breath, in answer to your question again, yes, I am a musician. Of sorts.
This sort of long-winded reply was not going to help me at all. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Lydia and Ernesto had exchanged nervous glances while Tamara bravely feigned interest. Or perhaps it wasn’t feigned. Perhaps, at least for the first 30 seconds of explanation, it was interest but an interest which was fully capable of retracting, waning, shutting down and closing shop.
Naturally I allowed myself a silent self-castigation. Nothing was easy any more. Simple conversation with strangers.
But Tamara was up for the task, temporarily anyway.
Wow, she allowed herself to exclaim delicately balancing real interest with phoney over-exuberance. She attempted to move her head away from the stream of my cigarette smoke. Europe. I love Europe. Where were you then?
Holland and the Czech Republic, mainly. But a lot of other ridiculous and occasionally sublime places in between as well. Far too many places I think sometimes now in hindsight. But, there you go. I shrugged.
And now she was allowing herself, having completed her trepid toe-in-the-water line of questioning, to bring out both barrels of her powerful, powerful ability to talk. Ironically, I found myself amazed that I’d ever worried about my own verbosity, which now, in comparison, seemed like a miniscule little single chirp in the wake of her verbal onslaught.
It was a losing bet, I knew this. But I’ve mastered this little technique over time. You don’t have to listen to anyone, not the words anyway. Just the intonations which instinctively, you can pick out from the regular rambling sufficiently to discern where one juncture of the sentence or breathless run on required comment or acknowledgement. I see. Or uh huh. Or wow. Really? These kinds of fillers.
Worse still, the free time now allotted to me by virtue of Tamara’s extrapolative discourse on Europe and European culture and European anything, time for my mind to wander.
And wander it did.
It was as though no one was with me any more. As though I’d left my body and was floating not above this table observing me pretending to listen to Tamara or even floating above the city the bar was situated in. Just floating. Far and away, as I was prone to do lately. Away from the present. Hovering yet again over the past…
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