Memoirs of a Junkie Part 3: My Blues

      When I was still a fledgling I considered myself to be somewhat adventurous. I was athletic, explorative, and was a smart-ass. As a soccer player, the only goal I ever scored was against my own team, I scouted creek beds for salamanders and obsidian, not girls, and I developed a catalog of snappy remarks such as, “Why don’t you…,” or “What do I get out of it?” Talented kid, huh? I’m not sure if I was normal, but I would learn, of course, after the fact, that being normal would have been a problem. One thing that I’m sure was normal was the need for a vice. As a child I was addicted to Jolly Ranchers and Blow-Pops, as a pre-adolescent, to Nintendo, and as a teen, to caffeine and grunge music. How can anyone be surprised today when I find myself trapped in my bedroom surrounded by stacks of CDs so high they are blocking the door? Can you believe it? My own means of escape has become the very thing keeping me in.

      Realizing this, in Floyd fashion, I tear down the wall (figuratively, of course…I may be crazy but not insane). I must return to where this all started. I need to find that door. That entrance I saw as a kid. That ocean of sound. And on and unpredictable path, I have found that door, not on the street but in my literature text: “Sonny’s Blues,” by James Baldwin.

      This short story, like most great literature, is about many things. But on the surface, it’s about a black high school algebra teacher coming to grips with both institutional racism and his younger brother’s way of life, which is heroine and be-bop. It is not until the narrator watches his brother play at the jazz club that he realizes that people have different ways of exhausting their feelings and suffering. For me, the story taught me what music is about and what addiction and suffering really are, and that while the two may seem similar, they are nothing alike. I had opened the door:

The quartet busts its way through some tough chord changes, races across tempos that could raise the roofs off Harlem’s neighborhoods, becomes frightfully chaotic and eventually finds resolution in a well improvised piano piece played by Sonny. We find ourselves wrapped in Sonny's rap, Sonny's blues. We feel his pain. We feel his joy. We become subdued by Sonny's junk, and find shelter in his numbness. The music we hear becomes much more than rhythmic notes. It becomes an idea, it becomes comedy, it becomes tragedy. It changes again, into a conversation among the four players. It's almost like they are daring each other with their jazz. "You go first," the horn would say to the piano. And the piano would double dare the horn. "No. Why don’t you?" This would cause a trading argument composed on the spot. The piano would give up the last word as the horn begins courting the bass. While this affair is in place the   white keys would begin gossiping with the black keys, telling each other what the horn and bass were saying to each other, or at least paraphrasing. The bass would take the horn's line. "You took the words right out of my valves," the horn would say. The band would play on. The music would argue over phrases. "It was my turn," the piano would say. "Oh, no it wasn’t," the bass would argue. "Oh, no it wasn’t," the piano would mimic back. The argument becomes resolved in a new key change and the instruments make up and decide to throw a party on the stage which the cymbals would decide to crash!

Sonny would play, rattling the snare drum with his low notes. Our eyes would close in on Sonny as the rest of the quartet would circle around him. The crowd applauds, having just tagged along in this journey. Music is a language few can speak but all can feel. Music takes you into the moment, to the exact present tense. There is no past, there is no future. There is only now, designated by the amount of pitch and quality of timbre. The quartet is a family inside a night club, outside of the watching world. Music takes you places you've been before but can never remember, and then forget when it's over. Music becomes you. Sonny became his instrument. He spoke through his fingers and vibrated the soundboard with his thoughts. He was so involved with his music, there was no outside world, there were no problems, there was no heroine. There were just four guys jamming, dancing. I can hear Sonny's blues.  I can feel his pain, his suffering. He had to break a few rules to get there but he is there nonetheless.

Charlie Parker said to play well, you had to learn all the rules and then forget them. Perhaps he was also referring to rules in life. To be a musician, one must realize the similarities and differences between them and the audience. The two share the music but the music belongs to the musician.  No one should be able to take that away. Perhaps that's part of the struggle. The music can't help but take form on other people's lives. It can't help leave impressions on their minds. Then the music belongs to everyone. Sonny is playing my blues, too.

Funny to think it took words, and not notes to realize what I had been looking for. And to find out I was not looking for a way out, but for a way in. Thoreau and I could chat all day about this, but my struggle and evaluation have led me to one simple conclusion: Music is life. The tempo is the heartbeat, the chords and composition form the skeleton, improvisation is the brain, and phrasing and accents are the language. If music truly can be an addicting, then that’s an addiction I would like to have.

Note: This concludes my exploration. I will be returning to the stuff I’m known for: satire and social commentary. Stay tuned…

More from Kenny Kast:

Memoirs of a Junkie (Part 1)

Memoirs of a Junkie (Part 2)

The Snowball Effect