Notebooks Tony Tedeschi

It is to be learned –This cleaving and this burning, But only by the one who Spends out himself again. Hart Crane

NOTEBOOKS

By Tony Tedeschi

Caffé de Perugia: Mid-afternoon snack. Bel paese cheese; warm, crusty slices of bread; ripest, sweetest black figs and a fine chianti. Sunny day, cloudless sky, light breeze. The highlight of this summer’s Northern Italian Jazz Festival for me was last night’s Armstrong/Holiday Classical Jazz Orchestra, 12 pieces performing dead-on versions of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday songs, fully deserving of the orchestra’s titling itself “Classical.” Chicago-based female vocalist Betty Blanchard’s amazing channeling of Holiday’s version of “All of Me” was matched by her fellow Chicagoan tenor saxophonist Jimmy Redfield’s beautifully rendered cover of the Lester Young solo. Just one of many gems. New Orleans native Jean-Paul Andre’s vocal of Satchmo’s “La Vie en Rose,” along with his doing double-duty on trumpet, ala “Loo-iss,” white handkerchief and all, was nothing short of Armstrongian. The jazz orchestrations –

Look at those three. Extras in a Fellini movie? Especially the one on the left. Fashionably dressed on this warmish Italian afternoon. All three sipping an Italian red, holding the wineglass stems with the delicacy of aristocrats.

Where was I?

The jazz orchestrations would have been fodder for my father in our battles over the supremacy ofhis music versus my allegiance to the new rock ‘n’ roll of my youth. My music’s growing dominance of the radio airwaves had exiled my father to listening to old ’78 rpm records of his songs because his favorite radio networks had been taken over by fast-talking DJs, spinning just my rock ‘n’ roll. My father would lambasteme for my bands, who were now even filling the musical guest appearances on the TV variety shows, shaggy-haired groupings he felt should have remained consigned to the cellars or garages where they rehearsed. “Do you call that music?” Whatever I called it, his broken-record response was always that it couldn’t compare to the velvety sounds of tuxedo-clad musicians in big bands and their sophisticated artistry. “You can’t jump up and down and play anything good on those wood-plank guitars they swirl around and swat at.” OK, admittedly, now in my let’s just say later middle-aged years –

Did that one on the left just sneak a smile at me? Is she only pretending to listen to her two companions?

I raise my glass to take another sip, hold it straight in front of me for just an instant, using it as a transparent shield through which to establish eye contact. For just an instant. Did she? For just that instant? She rejoins their conversation. Oh God, Nick, not again.

Back to the music review.

This year, I found the other performances formulaic: progressive trios –piano, bass, drums; or replace piano with guitar or vibes; maybe add a sax – not progressive. What they were playing would pass muster as “progressive” maybe forty years ago. Then the dissonant, atonal groups, each playing their own solo, all at the same time, within a performance that bore no resemblance to anything –

I stop writing. It’s boring me. Once past the Classical Jazz Orchestra owning their genre’s history, the rest of it is the same shit as last year, disguised as innovative. The potential for drama hereis a far more interesting dynamic. I raise my head slowly. She is saying something to her two companions. One attempts to look over in my direction while trying not to make apparent what she is doing. She gives up and says something to the other two.

I need an elixir.

Where the hell is it? I rummage through my overstuffed backpack. Need a reminder of what not to. It’s all there in the first new notebook I bought right after I got the backpack. Squeezed in now, ancient history, somewhere down there in one of the innumerable pockets these packs contain to keep you from finding anything quickly. Giraffe on the cover for no good reason. Never been to Africa. Been to a lot of places, but never been to Africa. Here it is. Leaf through the pages to . . . here. The page pasted in. Carefully typed, cut to size, then pasted in. Some need to preserve the words. Need to remind myself that I never learn. I take a breath. A deep breath. I lay the old notebook down on the table.

This year’s festival even expanded the concept of jazz to include –

Fuck it. I take up the old notebook, return to the pasted-in page and the memory of a conversation . . .

“My editor, the one who had published many of my travel articles, she kept trying to make me stop. Her recurring theme: ‘Why do you need to transform some observed reality into an alternative reality of your own making? I pay you good money to deal with reality.”

“She’s right, you know. That other prose you’re writing isn’t real. It didn’t happen.”

“That’s what they call fiction, mon docteur.”

“Of course. But you write about it like it’s what actually happened.”

“Fiction, doctor. Fiction.”

“But when you write it, it somehow seems real to you.”

“It is real to me, isn’t that why I’m here?”

He studies me a moment, as if my side has scored a point. He now needs a way forward.

“Tell me about it,” he parries, “the real versus the surreal. The . . . fiction.”

“It’s all in my notebooks.”

“Your self-analyses, then.”

“No, my fiction, dammit. My stories.”

“So, tell me about them.”

“Why don’t I just bring the notebooks. I’ll bring them, the notebooks.”

Instead of the notebooks, I condensed the most biting passages down to one page. I just brought the one-page condensed version. I even gave it a title. “Stark Remarks from Disasters Past.” Purposely rhymed. Have a little fun with it. Fun fiction.

Siobhan: “I had only prayed that you had felt the same, Nicholas. Perhaps it was merely my pathetic need to have had you feel as I did. My belief that I could not have experienced such a connection if you had not as well.”

Aldina: “You’re a sweetheart, Nick. I have nothing but warm feelings for you, but we are from two different worlds. You could never live here, in my world; I could never live there, in yours.”

Gabby: “Who are they all? What is the meaning of all their lives? Tell me, have you ever written about me?”“No,” I answered, feebly. “Hah!” she blurted. “I don’t believe you.” “Nothing I’m happy with,” I said, again lamely.

Laura: “Let’s just say you gave me a year of joy, Nick, and leave it at that. Can’t you see what you did for me? I love you, Nick, butI’m trapped.”

Contemplative look. “I see,” he says. “You see? What do you see?” “It’s not about what I see.”

“What am Isupposed to see?” “You know the rules. I ask the questions.” I nod. “So, what have you learned from all that?” “. . .”

Circumstance will be my salvation, this time, right? There are three of them. No way to section her off from the other two. She’ll leave with her two companions.

Back to my writing.

This year’s festival even expanded the concept of jazz to include more blues, even some hip-hop scat with a horn section. OK, so now we know that my father’s music is on life support, short term, even at the festivals that were created to preserve it. Did I save his old 78s? What the hell would I play them on? Wherethe hell are my old jazz LPs? Does my stereo receiver still work? Can I still buy vacuum tubes?

They’re starting to stir, draining their wine glasses. They get up. Two of them drop money on the table. The other two; not her. They do those two-cheek kisses. She sits back down. Still has a little wine left.

I continue writing, with my head down, but just up enough to see what she’s doing. She lifts her glass, takes a sip, holds it in front of her for a second and tips it, almost imperceptibly, as feigning a salute. The wry smile again.

Oh, God!

Deep breath.

Can I get it right this time? . . .

Evening, Brooklyn Queens Expressway, New York City Photo by Tony Tedeschi