Jazz: the answer to life's big question.
So what’s this about? Life I suppose. As rhetorical as that may sound. So let’s focus that a bit. How about we simply ask... why? There are so many theories now that try and answer the big questions of life. But once you boil them all down to their root intentions, it’s pretty much always the same thing. How to get what or who you want out of life. I discard most of these ideas at the start for one basic reason, the theory is usually based on the idea that you can get whatever you desire, by simply believing you already have it. Thus sidestepping the physical process of attaining whatever, or whoever, that thing may be. I learned long ago, and am still learning up to this very moment, that nothing in this world or this universe will appear simply because you desire it to do such a thing. No... we must bleed for the things we want in our lives. Equal parts in, equal parts out, for ever and always. You will get out of life exactly what you give, no more, no less. Now, in my best Bill Clinton voice “that all depends on what your definition of “give” is”. Let’s look at that for a moment. The phrase “what you give”. Now, all things being equal and assuming a level playing field for giving in the first place, who’s the judge of what attributed value is involved in this giving process? Is it not safe to assume that one persons sacrifices in giving and working towards a stated goal may, to another person, be less than admirable? Perhaps limited by geography or asset resources. There are a million and one ways to spin this idea that results in the end goal remaining out of reach for anyone who may fall below the line of perseverance. With all things being fair and equal, I don’t believe the consistency of such a thought to be righteous enough to stand the true test of repeated application. I think there must be something else. Something deeper than the repetitive actions involved in building anything. A house or a dream. As I ponder this fissure of logic; as I start to fabricate a bridge made from reason and reasonative deduction, I find myself yet again stumped by the outright trivial nature of my quest to begin with. My thoughts wander briefly and land on one of my life long loves... Jazz. And as departed as the two maters may seem, I soon find the correlation and perhaps, my generalized answer. See, take some time and speak to any jazz musician and more often than not you’ll get to the part of the discussion that describes how the downbeat begins to flirt with disaster when applied to traditional Jazz. How, inside the hard standards of the mathematics of musical construct, jazz resembles more so a school bus, trying to parallel park in a space markedly smaller than it’s own mass. Yet somehow these two things marry one another and some of the most intelligent and breathtaking polyrhythms are given birth. But how? How does this seemingly impossible combining of rules and the breaking of rules, harmony and the intentional disregard for structure generate anything worthy of the term “music”? The answer is quite eloquent in so much as it is staring us all in the face, mocking us. The members of the band quit giving conscience thought to any of that questioning long long ago. If you hang around musicians long enough you’ll become familiar with terms like “the groove” or “sitting in the pocket”, things like “get ahead of the beat” or “slip in behind the quarter”. The drummer isn’t, in real time, calculating his next contact with a surface. A brass or woodwind player isn’t thinking about his next set of fingerings. Nah, those guys are, as I like to put it, gone. They aren’t with us during those times. They have transcended to a higher plain of thinking. One where the actions of this second or that second are scrubbed and instead, intention arises and the tones, the vibrations and sounds simply... exist. There’s no method that can be extracted from this which will ever be able to compile any realistic expectation for recreating it. The one thing I love so much about jazz and honestly, live music in general is, once it’s been heard, it’s lost forever. The only record of it ever happening in the first place is stored haphazardly in the minds of those who witnessed it’s birth and instant death. The actuality of sound in and of itself is something to be debated, perhaps in another writing. So how do we then tie these two ideas together and gain synergy from them? The idea of somehow being able to harness the methodology of acquiring that which we desire and somehow through will and belief alone, be able to manifest that in any subjective way throughout “our” reality is, numbing at best. Yes, I subscribe to the idea of what you think is what you get or, if you believe you can or can’t, you’re right. All those cliches have some grounding in basic common sense. But all that can be boiled off, yet again, to our choices. If I’m pissed, I’m going to make decisions based within that anger. If I’m depressed, I’ll choose actions which are indicative of someone who’s living life through that filter. But to find the key and the ability to firmly and decisively make positive gains towards our goals well, that’s what we all what to know. So here’s you’re nicely bound bow tie. Just as the Jazz musician is no longer here. Just as they rock back their heads and close their eyes and transcend the logistics of how the music is generated. In that space where they are nowhere and everywhere seemly in unison. Where the rules and the processes seem to fade away. That’s where we find the beauty. We must learn to allow life to compel us. We must trust that the work we are doing or, the step we are on or, the failure that we recently experienced and not so much individual instances experienced in our linear life. We must forget reason and logic. Suspend our subscription to time at it’s most basic definition. We are experiencing the grouped sum total of all of it. At one time. And our instinct is to fight it. We’ve been taught that to have harmony, we must count the specific beats and break apart every aspect of what comes our way when, in reality, we must do the opposite. We must take that moment in space to allow ourselves to be released from the rules. To be freed from the entrapment's of stated involvement and to float free in the notion that what we want out of life, and what life is, are rarely the same things. That the flaw may actually be the hyper focus on a goal at all. Understanding isn’t resonated with a rubber mallet. It takes the brisk and influenced tone of experiences to create the harmonies of this existence. What matters most isn’t really tied to our desires at all. What matters most is our openness and willingness to give our minds the permission to simply exist. To be. Let your mind breath for a moment. Stand there in awe of what you are able to do when you stop trying to figure out how to do it. When you allow yourself to float in the understanding that you are everything you were, are, or will be intended to be, right now, in this moment. Once you create a space within yourself where you can allow the bindings of this world to fall away freely, it is then, in that place, where these realizations begin to occur. Breath my friends. Take a moment and hear your heartbeat within your chest with your own ears. Feel the cool air as it grazes across the hair of your arm. With each inhale and exhale, note a new part of your body relaxing. And then, crank up some Jazz and close your eyes and feel the experience of life begin to supersede all your silly expectations and inhibitions. I dare you to try and apply that to all aspects of your life. I know I am. And it’s a struggle. But in the end I think it will be well worth the toil. As always, thank you for reading. I’d love to hear your feedback, no matter where you land on the idea. Let’s talk about it. ~Jason Haynie