Blues For Jeff

Last time I saw Jeff was back in '58. Or it it could have been '59. I can't remember anymore. He was sitting in his dusty, gray '51 Chevy two-door Streamline, parked in the red zone across the street from the Jazz Workshop, with his gig bag and a roughed up copy of Finnegan's Wake on the dash, his alto sax in his lap, and a bottle of wine between his feet. Dago Red, he called it. And then he smiled, like he was smiling to himself, and passed the bottle.

"Just 'cause it's cheap," he said, "don't mean it ain't no good."

Jeff was sucking on a new reed and fingering some kind of figure around the circle of fifths on his alto, without blowing in it. So he could play it in any key, he said. So his fingers would know what to do, and he wouldn't have to think about it. And the pads would open and close against the key holes in a rythm, with a soft, percussive sound, making their own kind of music.

"Sometimes they call up a tune in some weird key," he said. "Just to see if you can cut it. And you gotta be ready to blow, or else just go right on back to the woodshed." And then he said he was just hanging around, killing time, resting up for a jam session at Bop City.

"I might be blowing all night," he said. "Maybe I can line up a nice gig. Or maybe something else. You dig? I don't know if I'll get to sit in though. Too many names in town."

"I just caught Rollins at the Workshop," he said. "Sure sounds rough, man. Like he's playin' half an idea, an' then just leaves it hangin', like takin' fours with himself. Rollins oughta quit playin' in public," he said, "til he gets it together." That was before he found himself On the Bridge.

Jeff asked if I ever read Finnegan's Wake. I told him I started reading it once, but then put it down. "Because I have a hard time reading stuff I don't understand," I said. Jeff said I should just read it, and don't try to understand it.

"Just read it, man," he said, "and absorb the words. Like the way you listen to music." And then he passed the bottle, and then reached back into the back seat and started digging through the pile of clothes and books, and old newspapers, and Downbeat magazines and fakebooks, and manuscript paper, and old, broken reeds, and Tick-Tock hamburger wrappers, and empty wine bottles, and empty beer bottles, and pulled out a brand new Brew Moore record. You know, the one with the weird, purple, snaky, elephant trunk-looking thing on the cover. And then he said I could keep it. Because Brew was an old partner of his, he said, and he had a whole box of them.

"Man, I gotta get my tenor back," said Jeff. "I shoulda hocked the alto instead. I guess I shoulda known better. You get more Jobs with a tenor. You dig?"

"An' I just blew a job across the Bay," he said. "Like I'm tryin' to show the piano man the right changes to some tune, you know, an' he gets all pissed off, "cause he's the leader, an' he don't like to look stupid. So I tell him, man, like some tunes got more than three chords in 'em, an' he says if I'm such a great fuckin' genius, what am I playin' in his band for, and I should take my axe and hit the road."

"So I might be takin' off down the coast," said Jeff. "Get my tenor back and go to L.A. There's more jobs down there. I gotta get a good gig, man. Like maybe a nice studio job. Like I'm gettin' tired of just playin' rock 'n' roll blues. You dig? don't knock it though, if that's all you can get. If you don't mind gettin' paid for takin' your solos all on one note."

We laughed and sang a few one-note chourses, and finished off the wine, and then Jeff said he had to get some sleep.

"I gotta rest up for the session," he said. "I might be blowin' all night."

And that was the last time I saw Jeff. Like I say, I think it was back in '58. Or it could have been '59. I can't remember anymore. But then about a year later, I heard they found him down the Coast, sittin' in his Chevy, and there was bloody glass all over the place, and his horns were missing, and there was an empty gig bag and a book on the dash, and an empty wine bottle next to his feet.

I don't know if that's what really happened. That's all I heard, and that's all I know. But sometimes, even now, I like to get a jug of red wine and listen to that Brew Moore record he gave me. I still have it. You know, the one with the weird, purple, snaky, elephant trunk-looking thing on the cover.

And some day I'm going to try and read Finnegan's Wake once again, the way he said: "Just read it man, and absorb the words. Like the way you listen to music."

And sometimes, when I'm not thinking about anything, I find myself singing a few one-note chouruses, like a blues for Jeff.

Kenneth Leroy Hill (KL)

16 March 1939 - 20 Sept 2001

Photo Cee

Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face. Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human, silly human race. On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place, if the summers change to winters, yours is no, yours is no disgrace.

-jon anderson

Terry and Cyn (The Projects), circa 1964

Trailer Park Cyn, Christmas 1969

Cyn and Steve, Winter 1977

and sometime later...Cyn & Ger, June 1, 2001

Musee D'Orsay, June 2001

Paris, Pere Lachaise, Morrison's Stone

Father Jerry and the Pilgram, at Morrison's Stone

Morrison's Stone

Sightings II

Douglas Ray Tucker stands before me
in ballcap and grin, hair nappy,
clothes lurched all to one side,
holding a cup, and says
jus' cause you have a CUP
don't mean nuthin',
I'm a man!
I'm tryin' to make some PROgress here.
I'm from Florida.
People different here.
People don't see nuthin' but the CUP.
Butchoo a different kinda woman, he says.
I got a sister who wears glasses, he says.
You might wear glasses, butchoo see better than most!
There is a God, he says.
We might meet each other
another time down the road!
Faith before reason, he says,
and keeps on grinnin',
faith
before
reason.

dixie's war

oh the battleground's littered
and the cold light is coming
and i can't help wond'ring
and you can't say why
oh i am the only
soldier worth fighting
and you keep on wand'ring
away from the sky

here now, we are not wise enough
and we go on wanting
but the battle is killing us
and the kitchen is haunted

and the hill where i found you
burying your dead
has followed us here
and lives in your head
oh i'm not a prophet
and i can't read your signs
and you keep on wand'ring
away from the sky

oh the day is not long enough
and the night will be falling
and there's no use resisting
when the allies are calling

oh the battleground's littered
and the cold light is coming
and i can't help wond'ring
and you won't say why
oh i am the only
soldier worth fighting
and you keep on wand'ring
away from the sky

hAve U hEarD tHe oNe aBOut tHe bRowN pApeR bAg?

I am not a part of your dying,

pace yourself and BREATHE.

There is a blue place in the night

like a brown paper bag over my head.

Your kiss is like multiplication tables

and eight parts of speech.

Don't crowd me into your spine,

that heated pool is YOUR place of worship.

I am sleepwalking on your thin ice.

Keep your eye on the ball and BREATHE,

and don't COMBUST if you can keep from it.

The blue place is lit by candles, but they don't flicker,

they absolutely DO NOT go dancing, so why would I?

If i talked like GOD, who would know me?

Who would believe tha I am not SANE,

that I have squandered EONS on the likes of you,

paid DEARLY to be here watching you writhe,

just to put my nuts in THAT bag, that STUPID brown paper bag,

BREATHE,

BREATHE!

The blue place in the night in NOT my heart,

is not an echo or a reverberation.

You MADE it with your MOANING and your INDIFFERENCE

and your EAGER grimace.

Open the window an take it in,

and take the brown paper bag, too,

and see if you can feel me then,

and remember what if felt like

to touch air.

A Rattler Hollingsworth Sighting

He nodded and blew smoke rings, picking his way throught the crowd with his talons hidden beneath a worn piece of leather jacket. Head down, eyes narrowed, he tried not to provoke greetings and positioned himself, unobtrusively, in a corner, and began to hum. It was a glacial thaw of a song that hit the ear burning and caused scars on accidental listeners. Like the jacket, it belonged solely to him. In a different kind of light, he would have been easily noticed, but here he was camoflaged in oddity and unrecognizable.

"You're gonna give us all some kind of conSUMPtion if you keep on whistling like that." she glittered at him. "Anyway, that song's been dead for 50 years,...it's startin' to STINK."

He took a breath and continued as if she hadn't spoken but she could tell he knew who she was. She'd seen the camping equipment in his room. She knew how to put up a tent. She couldn't remember how to make a fire with two sticks but she knew his song as well as she knew ones and zeros.

"How many lives have you got left?" she asked him sagely, narrowing her eyes to match his.

"Snakes don't have lives." he mumbled and continued hum-whistling.

"Neither do dogs." she said and put her hand out to touch the top of his small head.

"Oh no! Don't do that, don't DO that, that's how it starts, that's always how it starts." he whimpered in mock disgust as he stood still as a rock and allowed her fingers to fumble through his hair.

"You don't even know what you're whistling." she said, shivering, and turned to walk away. "It's Colder Than A Well-Digger's Ass," she said. "I oughta know, I WROTE it." and disappeared into the undertow of the dim river dream rain.

He stood on the street watching her fade.

"Was that Levitt Tate?" somebody asked him.

"I don't remember." he answered into the fog. "Now I gotta drink alone." he thought to himself and glided off down the wet night sidewalk, not touching the ground. "Colder than a well-digger's ass and I gotta drink alone."

Coat in a Boat

For years I went wearing
a coat that I borrowed
and would not return it
for fear of exposing
that no one could see me,
made out like a bandit,
disguised and intriguing,
I lay where I landed,

but, now and again
I would listen for something,
a fin in the wake of a boat
I remembered,
and sank like a shadow
whenever it neared me,
clear and distinctive,
like a name I was given,

sewn into the collar,
hemmed into the lining,
and time was deceiving,
the coat growing thinner,
I entered the mainstream
without ever knowing
there were rats in the galley
and no one was rowing,
there were rats in the galley
and no one was rowing.

For years I belonged
to that moth-eaten stranger,
my hair full of tangles
and no comb to pull
through the fury that gnawed
at the crumbs I let fall
from the cake I was eating
and kept on repeating
there’s a vessel afloat underneath all that coat!
there’s a vessel afloat underneath all that coat!