Trumpter of God - untitled by Daniel

She says she doesn’t date musicians. No musician worth a damn would leave it at that. A man who takes after a woman like her needs to be gifted with plenty of things, imagination not least. A woman like that will send you places you never thought you’d see and you need to be ready to go with it. If you’re not, better just leave it alone. Not everybody can ride the tiger. Some men would find themselves jabbering in the streets if they tried it. Maybe it takes a musician to date her. Maybe she only dates musicians and wants to be sure she really has one before saying yes. All who play are not players any more than all who love are lovers. Love being what it is, a lover is played and not player. So, too, are musicians.

She moves away and stands stately, looking out over the room; eyes lit with reflections, like a sax played solo; hair dark and falling, textured; lips closed but ready, like a note about to be sounded; very fair skin showing at her shoulders. Grey slacks and top with diamonds in her ears. The effect is powerfully direct and yet it sets her apart; the room keeps its distance knowing that she wants it that way.

Her date for this evening emerges from the crowd to stand at her side. He leans close and says something. Her head swivels slightly to look him in the eye. Overawed, he looks away. She looks back out at the crowd and shakes her head slightly from side to side. Whatever the question, the answer is no. He leans in again and speaks with a bit more animation. Her head is shaking as he speaks and the beginnings of a frown appear. She looks at him again. He stops talking and turns to take in the room. Then he stalks off into the night. She doesn’t even look at his retreat.

I, too, am overawed. Forced to make my own retreat, I take my place with the group. Standing there in the dark, ax strapped to my chest, I miss my cue on the intro. The lights come up and she is standing right there at the foot of the stage, in the aisle, and looking at us, at me. Swaying slightly with the sound, she still manages to seem effortlessly still, the essential listener, empty of all except the desire to be enraptured by the rush of sound. Looking her straight in the eye, I stroke the guitar, summoning a clear note that hangs in the flush of rhythm. Just as the note starts to fade I go into the solo for the intro to the set. I play for her alone and she knows it. The music moves me to move her and being moved, we move together. Me up here on the stage and she down there in the aisle but together nonetheless. Together.

The song is a standard that everyone knows; maybe it has always been known to people like us, to those that play and are played. I play and the music goes out to her and she takes it in, makes it her own, and then sends it back to me augmented, intensified. The first verse takes us through that. As the second verse begins the drummer starts kicking the base and adds the occasional cowbell. I push the guitar into high gear and let everything go. I’m picking sixteenth notes and hammering the fret board, my fingers circling the pickup, the vestigial sound hole. She is with me as we go into the bridge and we both know that this is the moment, this is the time to surrender to the flowing music. I drive the sound into her with recklessness and abandon and she takes it all, everything I have to give. The last verse is as sweet as morning light and the last few bars end high and pure; an ending that satisfies that primal ache we all have; providing a moment of completeness and perfection. The clarity and honesty of that moment encompasses lifetimes. Then it’s over; the audience explodes and she disappears in the advancing wave of humanity and raucous delight.

For a full ten minutes it feels like the place is going to come apart around me. The whole human horde is on their feet and surging toward the stage, shouting, screaming, throwing things. Security rises to meet them and keep them from mobbing the band. Everywhere I look there are people spontaneously dancing with everyone they see. Men are tearing off their shirts; women kicking off shoes and coats. Hats and underwear are thrown at the stage. Right down in front of the stage a middle-aged house-wife is practicing her belly dance while wide-eyed men encircle her. Up the aisle a guy in a suit is standing on a chair, Bible in his left hand, shouting to be heard. Another guy gets up on a chair and starts giving him back. In just a few seconds there are mobs within the mob giving it back and forth. A couple guys out in the crowd have picked up chairs and are menacing some of their neighbors. Their neighbors have more than chairs in their hands. I’m thinking that the police will show up any minute to put down the uprising and then I see her.

She’s standing on the risers in the back. Small, alone, motionless, expressionless, as if she’s standing on the prow of a great ship, staring out over the vastness of an ocean; waves bounding and rolling, and not nine hundred people going quickly over the edge of the world. She seems unmoved by the calamitous berserkers bobbing and undulating beneath her. Slowly, like the eternal falling of the leaves of autumn, her hand rises to her mouth and she blows me a kiss. As her kiss reaches me the crowd seems to pause and look about in surprise, realizing where they are and what they’re doing.

I motion to Seconds to punch it and he starts in with the roll that leads into the next number. Seconds, he’s flat out cold; nothing touches him. He’d give us a steady 54 beats per minute on judgment day. Maybe he’s auditioning for the gig. Jamus puts down the bass line and the horns come in grabbing the audience’s attention. I play the accompaniment like I’ve done five hundred times before while she’s up there doing nothing, taking nothing, giving nothing back. Finally, she turns up the aisle and out the door into whatever world she inhabits.

As we play the audience starts to unwind and get back to what you usually see at a jazz concert which is to say they are every kind of person, young and old, suits and sweatshirts, black and white, brown and red, eyes aslant, pointed, oval, and pied. They are middle-aged couples, bangers in white tea shirts and matching caps, although most of the caps were thrown on the stage and are being pushed to the side by the crew. Pretty reserved compared to rock and roll. Pretty laid-back compared to the black tie crowd, what was once called the long hairs. And the band is my band and sure, we’re pretty well known.

By the fifth song of the set things have settled back into something like normality. The police finally show up to find only the detrius of the riot they were expecting, seats out of place, clothes on the floor, people sitting wherever they found themselves when the music mania stopped and we started to play. Standing in the aisles they look out of place at a jazz concert.

Finally, the show is over. At the end we receive muted applause. We are not called back. Nobody wants any more. Not tonight. I collapse in the dressing room. Performing is draining under ordinary circumstances. This is not ordinary. I feel like I’ll need surgery to repair the damage, like some sort of reservoir has broken and my spirit has drained out into the surrounding ether. Maybe my mates will notice and call an ambulance; the medical technicians will come and give me a shot, put some more spirit into me.

Then they let in the dressing room guests for the night; fifteen, maybe twenty slobbering sycophants, looking for comic book heroes. Let me tell you something. There is nothing heroic about jazz musicians. We’re flawed, selfish people. We live each day with our hearts on our sleeves. We exaggerate every feeling, every passion so that we can put it into the music. There isn’t any bigger bunch of drama queens anywhere. But every time we play we invite these fools to come and tell us how great we are and how much we made them feel alive.

I find myself afraid to look up; to look and see if she’s there among the groupies. I’m afraid that she will be there and I’ll have to talk to her, find out who she is and all about her pathetic little life. And I’m afraid she won’t be there and the ache inside me will go on forever and me, finally, afraid to find out what this particular passion will do to me, what price for the few minutes on stage of absolute sublimity.

I take myself to the bar. Sam is standing behind it. Sam’s our manager and knows me well. She see’s my face and upends the bottle of Stoli. I tip myself backwards and drop the clear, cold liquid into my throat. The spirits seem to rise up from the fire that’s kindled in my midsection. Fucking spirits. What good are you going to do me if she isn’t here after all? I turn to face the room. People take it in turns to look at me, acknowledging the great Mars Paisley, jazz all-star. None of them are her.

Brunette leaning on the wall near the door isn’t her. It could be her in somebody’s drunken dreams, in the longing her absence leaves behind. I close my eyes and almost feel it again. I can almost remember losing myself in the song that is her. My song; my song of her; her song of broadcast chaos. Christ, how did that happen? Am I the pied piper of jazz, leading everyone over the edge and off into the uncivilized hinterlands of human degeneracy? And if she brings that out of me why would I want it so much?

I sit down next to Seconds. Listening to Charlie Parker playing muzak, feeling the blood pound the rhythm inside my head like the rattle of a child, a Charlie Parker zen rattle of accompaniment, I wait for this to be over. I wait for it to be over so that I can begin piecing together what I will do with my life now that this is over and she is gone.