Page 77 - Jazz

Miles and Zavinul in eternity

With the intention of writing a few words about
what I am listening to at a particular moment, I realise
that I do not feel any interest – nor is it my role – in
rehashing all kinds of information and dates into well-
informed fluency, logically faultless and certainly, as is
only right and proper, intelligent. I probably ought to be
more relaxed and to list dates and details about the way
the various instruments work together in the composition,
or about the origin of the themes and the stories of the
people who are bringing them alive for us, about their
famous faces and what we know about them, and about
what we know less of, about the covered-up stories or public
actions that have stirred media interest, or about my simple
and disturbing memories of them, of words magically uttered
at a particular moment…
But all these things, although I do not regard them as
either pointless or to be neglected, are still so external, because
all that the character within my inmost being will allow me to
do is to sink deeper into my chair, to melt into the surrounding
matter, or to put one elbow on the table and rest my head on
my hand, enjoying the buzz of voices around me and any other
murmuring of living life, enjoying the melancholy feelings that
overwhelm me, the vague fragments of thoughts that wander
through my mind, the luminescent presence of those around me,
the way in which I listen to music to a point at which I disappear
from the room, from the universe of objects on which I depend and
which contain me and my appearance in myself.
Then, when the final sounds die away, I surface, reappear and
remember Joe Zavinul, who said that he wanted his tombstone to
say beside his date of birth “born on earth” - “born in eternity”. And
I remember Miles Davis in his concert in Paris and how, in a voice
that was weary, unreal and almost inaudible, he seemed to be calling
on Zavinul to somehow as it were help him in the coming eternity:
Jo..., Jo..., Jo...Jooo ... Only for him too, a few months later, to cross the

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