My Paradox

I've done a substantial amount of thinking in recent years only to realize that one of the most important questions I will have to answer in my life may be unanswerable in my lifetime. Let me be more clear. The two sources of my spiritual and emotional health are nature and music. I am a musician who wants to live autonomously and completely off the grid in a land of natural beauty and preservation. I am principally a jazz musician, and jazz has historically been dependent on urban centers for its existence. It seems as though I will have to choose between one existence or the other. My problem gets deeper, however...

Jazz originated in slave songs for work and for leisure, so it was born of a more rural setting, but it didn't progress into an art movement until it was transformed in New Orleans. Dixieland, but especially the swing era and bebop thrived on people's need for emotional and spiritual release from the cages of their apartments, their jobs, various persecutions, and social homogenization that came with the Rennaisance, Western Civilzation, and Industrialization. Indeed, I don't think that early jazz could have taken off the way it did without this manic thirst for creative release. Jazz is very much a drug for society's diseases, and I believe that it is partially the human turmoil from which jazz was conceived that led to many jazz musicians' use of hard drugs. To be fair, the part of the brain that is active during drug use has been shown to be the same part that is active during jazz improvisation. I want to see the current economic system collapse on itself; to see humanity decide: live with respect for and in harmony with the rest of life on this planet, or suffer the destruction we have wrought on each other and this planet. Will only those who have practiced the skills necessary to survive life---grow food, make tools, build a home, etc---be at all capable of listening to the music? If urban civilization is the raison d'etre for jazz, how can I reconcile the need for jazz in my life or anyone's life when for most survival is a desperate reach made by those who did not retain the skills.

If urban civilization is necessary for jazz to exist, how can I live off the grid, in harmony with nature, and still play jazz? To bring my thoughts back to a more current reality, musical recording has been essential to the growth and spread of jazz. This means technology and money to record, the means to reproduce recordings on a mass scale, and most importantly, those with the technology to do this are generally interested in how it will make money. Moreover, musical instruments themselves are trapped in the same technology-money cycle, and there have been many forms of jazz that are completely reliant on technology for manipulation and even creation of sound. Fusion/funk and jazz guitar are only a couple of examples. If I have no means for or interest in making money, how could I tap into these essential elements of the art form? Additionally, music and most instruments are easily transportable, but what about the musicians themselves? Musicians of equal caliber and similar style/interest are harder and harder to come by, and urban centers are often necessary for their connection. If I had to live 30-200 miles away from an urban music venue to live where I want in the way I want---for instance, in the Rockies above Denver, or in the rainforests near Seattle in Western Washington---how could music making be made possible? Would I hike or bike 200 miles to a city for a rehearsal, gig, or recording session? In 1600s Europe, composers such as Bach would make month-long pilgrimages to music meccas like Vienna and attempt to live the musician's life the way they couldn't in their rural homelands. This is not unlike many musicians' fantacization of New York City. Musicians are made famous in these meccas, but they often do it unhappily, leaving life with their humanity and souls dangling from a string. And, if urbanity is the raison d'etre of jazz, when people are reconnected with the natural life they depend on, will jazz become irrelevant or unnecessary?

Music can be made with such a variety of people, and in so many ways that I'm certain that as a pianist, I'll have to abandon the ideal setting of a baby grand piano, acoustic bass, and drums trio playing in a dimly lit, close-quarters room, together reaching a transcendental plane of coexistence in the moment of musical communication at its highest level. Will I simply play for myself and the birds? Will I think with nostalgic pain of moments past, forgetting the suffering that buttressed singularly blissful musical experiences? Or is there somehow a silver lining, a way to reconcile these two halves of my individuality? This is my life's question; and in my opinion, it should be humanity's question. How can we reconcile the beautiful art created out of a world suffering from a disconnection with nature? How can life survive without this re-connection? I wrote a poem once, a spontaneous creation of a moment that lasted about ten minutes. It was inspired by these questions, and I didn't realize the depth of my dilemma at the time. Perhaps it will be a little clearer by lyric than by vomitous thoughts...

It's called Birds' Urbanity
          A fiery orange hue
 disturbed by boiling yellows
                              mellows to blue notes.
       Bluesy wails cute above and
               beyond a sea of faces,
                                       each letting their sufferings
                     melt into nothingness.

 Elation and creation always
                                       trump but not transcend our
                                destruction-dominated world.
           Same as neon bright lights
                   dominate our vision in color,
      so the energy boils
                         in the guts and hearts
   of people listening, yearning
               for liberation of a soul
                               imprisoned by Imperialist desires.

The saxophone's jubilant swaying breathes for lungs that no longer meld into the sound of wind rustling through trees.
The drummer's thunderstorm of sound ornaments a deeper pulse, a base line defibrillation for hearts that have been forced to forget to pulse in time with the crashing of the waves, the dripping of Spring's melt.

      Music cuts through the fog
                   of tomorrow's elusive possibilities
to revive that inner soul,
                                the power nature etched
         into our genes
         to be one with life.
   Gray cityscapes and grimy streets
               are not the pinnacle of existence,
and this realization moves Bird's audience to tears, the way heroine tears him from consciousness.

               His was the fate of a
               mockingbird trapped in a
               prison with no trees.
               No way to be alive
               no way to sing
               above the bustling noise.

               Remember to sing, BbBbird
It will give you back your life!
               Remember to siiinng......