Live Jazz In The Old Pueblo — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The Weary Blues
— Langston Hughes
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway . . . He did a lazy sway . . . To the tune o’ those Weary Blues. With his ebony hands on each ivory key He made that poor piano moan with melody. O Blues! Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. Sweet Blues! Coming from a black man’s soul. O Blues! In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan— “Ain’t got nobody in all this world, Ain’t got nobody but ma self. I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’ And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor. He played a few chords then he sang some more— “I got the Weary Blues And I can’t be satisfied. Got the Weary Blues And can’t be satisfied— I ain’t happy no mo’ And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
In June of this year, George Booth passed away. Like so many people, especially
readers of The New Yorker, I love his cartoons. For the last three years, this one I
look at every day and shout, “What the hell is happening?”
But, more importantly, for several years starting in the early 2000s, my brother
Tom placed the cartoon in the upper right corner of copy paper he used to write
letters to me, always written in large capital letters. His letters, sometimes unable
to read without having a dictionary nearby, were always informative.
He once wrote:
“OOOOOPS . . . LOST MY FOCUS . . . (WHAT A HOOT!) I’VE BEEN, AS OF LATE,
DWELLING UPON THE YIDDISH IDEA OF DRECK . . . “MATTER” WHICH PRESENTS
ITSELF AS NOT WHOLLY RELEVANT (OR INDEED, AT LL RELEVANT . . . WHATEVER
‘RELEVANCE’ IS!) . . . BUT WHICH CAREFULLY ATTENDED TO CAN SUPPLY A KIND
OF ‘SENCE’ OF WHAT-IS-GOING-ON. THIS ‘SENCE IS NOT TO BE OBTAINED BY
READING THE WORDS, THINGS . . . SORT OF NON-SEMANTIC STUFFING OR
‘SLUDGE’ WHICH ARE EASILY CONFUSED FOR CONDUITS OF COMMUNICATION . . .
BUT PERHAPS OBTAINED BY CHECKING OUT THE INTERICES OF THE DRECK . . .
SPACES SURROUNDING THEM.”
Events are always perceived with reference to a particular frame; in another system of coordinates, the ‘same’ events are not the same.
“I am in the midst of ‘trying’ to memorize a poem . . .
‘Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour’ by Wallace Stevens . . .
never mind why . . .
although the exercise was triggered by a piece by
George Steiner in which he wrote:
‘The danger is that the text or music will lose what physics
calls its ‘critical mass,’ its implosive powers within
the echo chambers of the self.'”
Tom was aware that what is committed to memory
and susceptible to recall constitutes “The Blast of The Self,”
an intensity of outward attention — interest, curiosity,
a healthy obsession was a motivation stronger
even than love or hatred or fear.
— kenne
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth, A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves. We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole, A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind. We say God and the imagination are one… How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough.
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