Everybody wants copy by Friday, a lost Coltrane tape has surfaced, and my radiator is humming in B flat.
LEEDS, England – The radiator has started humming a steady B flat, which would be useful if I taught the trumpet and is a nuisance because I teach everything else.
It begins at seven, before the kettle, and it stays with me through four emails from editors, one from a pupil who has decided to retire from the saxophone for a week, and a newsletter about jazz that is longer than my last three software licence agreements.
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Where Is It?
The first editor’s note says, in its entirety, “Where is it?” It is signed with a single initial and a smiley face, which I take to be a threat. The second note, from a different editor, asks whether I can turn the piece I have not yet written into something shorter, funnier and about a different subject.
I reply to both with the same sentence. “On it.” This is the oldest lie in publishing and I tell it with real style. Then I put the phone face down and go to teach.
Subject: Priscilla and the Tenor
Priscilla is a retired civil servant, and her tenor saxophone is a gleaming, serious, unforgiving thing which she plays with the hands of someone filling in a very long form. This week she wants to learn Coltrane. I tell her, as gently as I can, that Coltrane is not a thing you learn on a Monday morning. It is a thing that happens to you after a long career and a short rest.
So we do long tones. For forty minutes. She holds a single low note and I count the cars going past the window, and somewhere around the thirtieth minute the note stops sounding like an apology and starts sounding like a statement. Priscilla opens her eyes, looks at me and says, “Is that it?” It is, I tell her, exactly it.
Subject: FWD: Jazz News, Please Read Immediately
At lunch I open the weekly newsletter that actually does contain news. The UK Jazz News round-up for the end of October tells me that the EFG London Jazz Festival runs from 13 to 22 November, that the NYJO Under 18s Autumn Showcase takes place on 15 November during the festival, and that the NYJO Blueprint Orchestra will play “Ellington’s Nutcracker” at Sinfonia Smith Square on 7 December. Cadogan Hall has an “Out To Lunch” series from 16 to 20 November.
The newsletter also reports that Sanctuary Radio’s Jazz Kaleidoscope will stretch to two hours from 15 December. That is the best news I have had since the dentist moved my appointment.
Further down is a line from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, in an interview with theartsdesk, saying, “I personally think that drum machines have soul.” I read it aloud to the radiator. The radiator continues to hum, and I choose to hear it as agreement.
Subject: New Releases, Mostly C to E
The second thing in my inbox is Jazz Journal’s list of new releases for October and November, and I have to say that the titles alone could keep a person going for a week. The Elliott Caine Quintet have a record called Furiositee!, which is not a word, and which I adore. Ernesto Cervini’s quartet have Water Pistols At Dawn. Ray Charles has a live concert album out on Candid, and John Coltrane has The Tiberi Tapes on Impulse!
It tells you how these things work that a man who died in 1967 has more releases scheduled this winter than I have deadlines. I can only assume he has better editors.
I forward the Coltrane title to Priscilla, with the note “For when you are ready.” She replies in four minutes with “I am ready.” Nobody is ever ready. That is the whole point of a tape.
Subject: Money, Love and Other Fertilizers
A third editor writes to ask whether I would consider doing a piece for a fee that she describes as “modest” and I describe as “a sandwich.” I tell her that I do the work for love. She says that is wonderful. I say that love, as it happens, does not cover the gas bill.
I think of the farm.fm report with the headline that rural America has learned love will not cover fertilizer. The topic is a long way from jazz, but the principle travels well. Love is a wonderful reason to play a saxophone. It is an uncertain way to pay for the reed.
If you would like a gentler way of working out what a humour piece is for, I recommend this explanation of what commentary is and what it is not, and the page on British news told with a straight face. Both have been more use to me than the last three style guides.
Late: The Radiator Gets a Solo
By the evening I have written eleven hundred words that do not need cutting and four hundred that do. I send the first set to the editor who asked “Where is it?” and the second set to a bin.
The radiator has stopped. I notice it only because the quiet is suddenly very loud, and I sit there, listening to what a room sounds like without a B flat in it. It sounds like a room that is waiting for somebody to start.
So I hum one, very quietly, and let the pipes take the next bar.
More of this sort of thing lives on my daily notes at The London Prat, where nobody is permitted to ask “Where is it?”
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/