Jazz

Narrate; remember what happened, and what did not happen. Bringing home from school a story that my parents saw. ‘It’s supposed to have a beginning, middle and end’, said my dad. The end was lacking – and the beginning. An old man reminisced, that was my non-story. Reminisced – and reawoke what happened, and also what did not.

These difficult days, I have wanted another past. I buy CDs, and cover the counter in my living room with Blue Note reissues. Reading the history of jazz, and the autobiographies of performers. I want another history. I enfold myself in their past, and in the world of their past.

And so the days have a forward momentum. To the office, where the CDs I bought online await me. To the books that list and rate recordings. Reassurance: the past classified, the past weighed. And the other past, my own? Know that it is the past, forget it. Forget what could have been your future.