What I Am Not

 I'm reading the autobiography of Edward Dahlberg.  His prose is uniquely compelling-- descriptive and  'limber' with literary intelligence.  He is classically trained and gifted... in a way that writers do not seem to be, these days.  From the very first sentence I was enchanted and hooked.

Last week I watched a documentary about the jazz scene in Pittsburgh, called We Knew What We Had.  I was in tears-- the quality of musicianship, the wholehearted commitment to performance-- people like Art Blakey, Erroll Garner, Earl Hines, Ray Brown...the exquisite command of what their instrument can do and what they select in the moment.  I was actually standing in front of the television.  Tough for me to call myself a bassist.   Most of these musicians have passed; the documentary relies on their surviving colleagues and successors to describe them.  A few players have famously left their life story-- Miles, Mingus, Art Pepper (my personal favorite) but not many are really writers, nor did they all have the luxury of the retrospective.  Their lives and deaths were jagged.

While I cannot put myself in the same sentence as these masters, I have the skill to appreciate what they did/do, the good fortune to have enough education to find them... the belief, maybe, that when we expose ourselves to things that are really good-- to 'art' (or Art, as in Blakey), it makes us better.  

Solitude and confinement in the past year has forced on us the bandwidth to contemplate our own autobiographical truths... who we are, what we love, what we miss... and while we are focused on health as a priority, and politics-- social change, issues... I'm not sure we've all made the effort to improve our solitary human condition.

When I was a girl I imagined each person was given a sort of scroll of life-- like a map-- and certain things were 'set' but others were chosen.  As we got older, we passed through this trajectory; I'd imagine 100 years and at 50 I'd be halfway done.  But people died-- they left us before their time.  Was this 'written'? Preordained? Was death a punishment?  I struggled with this and came up with a sort of darker version of  life's 'certificate' as a tiny core on which we built day by day-- like a tinker toy city that expanded.  I laid out plans for things-- I listed ambitions and designations... books I needed, records.... like recipes a chef collects.

Now that I'm in the winding-down phases... I see life as the finite infinite we are given; as we grow, we become-- we annex and enrich-- the focused among us-- and we subtract.  We lose daylight on the way to winter, we pass up opportunities--moments... we watch television, we look at social media... we read endless posts and news articles... that stack of magazines by our bed has now become a three-story virtual pile.  We also spend a good part of life butting our heads against things-- trying on relationships that don't fit, changing our bodies to become our heroes, imitating and following instructions that lead nowhere.  I have become aware of my own autobiography as what I have done-- not nearly enough-- and despite the so-called best-laid plans, what I am not.  

Like those brilliant jazz pianists, I tried to incorporate a fair amount of improv into the course of my life and that brings with it the added risk of failure, of tangent-travel that is not always efficient.  I don't regret most things-- even the failed love affairs that broke me.  I am not a partner.  I have not grown 'with' someone, which seems, in the past year, to be the privileged state.  That said, I have watched so many people lose their personal 'half' and mourn and grieve in a way that seems irreconcilable.  

I am not a collaborator; I am fairly solitary.  Musically I have worked with wonderful artists but have not been a partner, nor a celebrity.  As a player,  I am not a 'noodler'.  I don't fuck with other people's songs and play what I think is right.  I don't really like writing for others; I have too much to say on my own, and need to be edited.  Lately I am less of a scribbler; I attribute this to technology and to the pandemic: we don't carry pens and paper with us-- we don't wander and converse randomly, we don't dawdle and gape and listen to the dreams of others because they are publicly masked and sober.  

Several times this week I was asked 'what I do' and I have replied 'I am not a musician' with that 'lol' gesture I've grown attached to.  I am not in love; I am not sure I have the capacity for these things, although I remember well how important they are.  In my projected or actual autobiography these episodes are married to songs or poetry or places I may or may not revisit.  They are recorded in letters and diaries... I am not sure anyone will discover these things and I will perhaps not spend my limited time revisiting them.  I am not unhappy.  As I told my son over and over when he grew up, we are rich people; we do not have money.  He had a hard time wrapping his teenage brain around that one, but his little one-line Valentine's Day message to me indicated that he may now understand.  

I am alone; I am not alone.  I am surrounded by wonderful things and opportunities-- many of these in books and audio resources.  The present is here, but the past has so much to offer.  People like Dahlberg or Erroll Garner who are utterly brilliant but so little 'searched' compared to the celebrities of today.  I fail myself every single day and the fact that I commit each night to the possibility of growth tells me I am not dying yet.  We are strong; we lift weights and play football... and then we bleed out in a second.. we are crushed, we are broken-- we drown, we suffocate.  I am not nearly enough, and yet several times I have been something to someone. Does this comfort me?  It does not; I am not counting deeds.  I wrote a song for a jazz musician this year-- she will never record this now, but she loved it... in the modulation the lyric went 'Well I've been somebody's lover/But he don't need me now/ Like a broken clock, an open box/Some things are just too late.'  The repeat... Some things are just too late.  I am trying to be tough and go forward; the night is not gentle or good.