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Art is paradox. It is no sense but it is sense. That coffee tastes of mouse shit. Tea is better.”
Jasper considers how loneliness is the default state of the world. Friends, family, love, or a band are the rare anomalies…You’re born alone, you die alone, and for most of what lies between, you are alone.
I asked if I could ever learn to play like that. ‘No,’ he told me, ‘because’—I’ll always remember this—‘you haven’t lived my life and the blues is a language you can’t lie in.’
Time is the Great Forgetter. She gets her notebook from her handbag and writes, Memories are unreliable…Art is memory made public. Time wins in the long run. Books turn to dust, negatives decay, records get worn out, civilizations burn. But as long as the art endures, a song or a view or a thought or a feeling someone once thought worth keeping is saved and stays shareable. Others can say, “I feel that too.”
The six of them are motionless. A Rembrandt. See? I know art. Painted by the candle’s brush upon the living dark…
Denmark Street is hot as engines and smells of tar. Pigeons row, not flap, through the humid air. Still half aglow from the champagne and buzzing from the coffee,
“At your age,” says Mrs. Hughes, “you think getting old and dying’s what other people do. At my age, you think, Where did it all go? If you want to do something, do it. ’Cause your turn to be in that box, it’s coming. No doctor, no diet, no nothing’ll keep it away. It’ll be here. Quick as”—she snaps her fingers and Elf blinks—“that.”
but I don’t want my last words to you to be a lie. So…I hope you’ll find a better version of yourself than the one you are now. For your sake.”
‘Grief is the bill of love, fallen due.’
The piano falls quiet. “Queens, queers, stiffs, straights, squares, givers, parasites, mediocrities, fellow artists, hypocrites, crooks, honest souls, old friends”—Francis catches Levon’s eye—“dark handsome strangers, and Muriel, who maintains this enchanted outpost of Utopia. For a brief spell, we share a stage. Others are coming to kick us off. But while you’re here, write yourself a good part. Act it well.” He looks around the bar. “Act it well. There’s nothing else to say because there’s nothing more to say. Wisdom is platitudes gussied up.” Someone at the back
“Our persecutors maintain that”—Francis sighs the word, regretfully—“ ‘homosexuals’ violate Nature’s law. A decrepit falsehood. Nature’s law is oblivion. Youth and vigor are fleeting aberrations. This truth is the canvas on which I paint.”
Salty air fills their lungs. Runaway shadows cross the crumpled sea. Gulls hover alongside the Arnhem. “It was an adventure,”
A celestial body never dies, Jasper tells the moon, but you never get to curl up with another body, either. “It’s
an honest manager in show business is as rare as rocking-horse shit.” —
Rivers of blood, he thinks, flow not in the street but through our species.
We are porous. “Old haunts fill me with melancholy.” The elderly man has the beard of God
“Labels.” “Labels?” “Labels. I stuck them on everything. ‘Good.’ ‘Bad.’ ‘Right.’ ‘Wrong.’ ‘Square.’ ‘Hip.’ ‘Queer.’ ‘Normal.’ ‘Friend.’ ‘Enemy.’ ‘Success.’ ‘Failure.’ They’re easy to use. They save you the bother of thinking. Those labels stay stuck. They proliferate. They become a habit. Soon, they’re covering everything, and everybody, up. You start thinking reality is the labels. Simple labels, written in permanent marker. The trouble is, reality’s the opposite. Reality is nuanced, paradoxical, shifting. It’s difficult. It’s many things at once. That’s why we’re so crummy at it. People harp
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Knock Knock bursts out, flooding his brain. Jasper’s sentience dims to near zero. Presence reverts to Absence.
Like Charles Mingus says, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” A woman nestles into Frank Zappa’s side. She’s holding a glass of milk. “Hi, I’m Gail. The dreaded wife. We dig your band.” Mr. Zappa smiles at Mrs. Zappa with pride and affection. “Nice to meet yer.” He tokes on his reefer. “Care for a puff?” “We’re abstainers,” says Frank. “The world is majestic enough.” Frank Zappa doesn’t do drugs? “That’s cool. So, Frank, how’d yer get MGM to release the least commercial LP ever made?” “My guile and MGM’s ignorance. If you think my stuff’s uncommercial, try Stravinsky. Try
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“What’re yer saying, Frank? That Laurel Canyon’s a bloodbath waiting to happen?” “I’m saying,” replies Frank, “that if you ever think, I’ve found Paradise, you are not in possession of the facts. Don’t be dazzled by peacocks either. They’re vain, ornery sons-of-bitches who shit like it’s going out of style.”
“So when we look at a thing,” says Dean, “we change what it is.” “Which is exactly why we never see things as they are,” says Jerry. “Only as we are.” A
“Your big mistake,” the bun tells Dean, “is to assume your brain generates a bubble of consciousness you call ‘Me.’ ” “Why is that a mistake?” Dean asks the talking bun. “The truth is that you’re not your own private ‘I.’ You are to consciousness what the flame of a match is to the Milky Way. Your brain only taps into consciousness. You aren’t a broadcaster. You’re a transceiver.”
