Straight No Chaser

Killing Time

damn, i just realized i wanted to call that last entry "(D)jango." oh well, next time. the first summer i worked at the camp in massachusetts, there were these two little kids, twins, django and djavan. they both went by d.j., even though the d sound was pretty much silent in both names. they had an older sister named naima, which at that point i thought was just a slightly weird but pretty name. i read it wrong off the roster, pronouncing it "name-uh," and felt like a particularly moronic oreo when she corrected me, "it's nye-eeeee-mah," in this gorgeous, tinkly, culturally aware little nine-year-old voice. later, i did a double take when i saw the vaguely familiar word on the track list to one of my coltrane compilations, gave it a listen, fell in love. it turned out to be a spellbinding tribute to his first wife, a converted muslim. i have never heard such obvious worship sans lyrics. i think it will take being written into a piece of music that gorgeous, and nothing less, to make me feel like a woman. well, that or being written into an equally arresting poem. i think that was my jazz summer. or, at least, it was when i developed the ability to match form and function, to recognize modes and to differentiate between, say, avant garde and fusion.

and actually, the entry would have been named after "django" the song, which i listened to on repeat in the car this morning. modern jazz quintet, nineteen sixty...one? something? anyway, the one where the vibraphone carries the tune (amazing, considering i can hardly play a scale on a vibraphone), named for django reinhardt.

i've always wanted a son named miles but i'm afraid it's trite. i'm sure eighty percent of the mileses born since the late fifties came from parents who had the same idea. i'm not gutsy enough to go any wilder, to name my kid django or naima or koko. i wish, though. i'd go absolutely wild with it, introduce them to their totem songs before they could manage anything beyond fetal appreciation, arm them with all the background information they needed to field the questions with ease. i could have the most cultured kids ever, if i weren't so terrified of looking stupid doing it. i'd have them scatting in their spare time and spinning records on their vintage turntables (tenth birthday gifts for everyone).

if i were some kind of jazz dictator, that is. in reality i'll be cool about it. i'll give them access and hope they take interest on their own. that's one passion i don't need anyone to share, but it would be nice.

my brother's basketball team just got their asses handed to them, for what i'm thinking is the third time in a row. chad needs to wear contacts; he is mildly astigmatic and has been wearing glasses for the blackboard since he started high school. he can't wear them on the court, obviously, so they tried hard lenses first (stupid stupid stupid, big mistake, hard lenses for someone whose pain threshold falls somewhere between "infant" and "pansy"?) and then soft, and he can't get the soft ones in his eyes. he and i sat in the bathroom for almost an hour this afternoon, me watching at first, then holding his lids open, then sliding them in while he held his eyes open. definitely unpleasant. anyway, he plays well without them, but considerably better with them. frustrating.

closing in on m again. hopefully you've noticed a theme by now. requests, anyone?

my iambic tetrameter sucks pretty badly. remember that daydream i had a few days ago? flowers orgasming to the sounds of marcus's guitar? i'm trying to give it life, but here is the problem with the lines i have thus far: they SOUND like THIS, so HARSH and TERSE, which MAKES the WORDS seem FORCED and DUMB. reviewers praised my diction with that sonnet, and that was inspiring, but now i think it was just a fluke. but that's ridiculous. no reason i shouldn't be capable of anything better than monosyllables.

i also watched corrina, corrina yesterday, and it was fabulous.