Jazz aint Dead

I heard something on the radio about jazz musicians. Jazz musicians heads turn off when they play - the analysis/thinky part virtually turns off and they just sort of flow out with music. Have you noticed that jazz musicians close their eyes a lot? Eyes are very judgmental things - you know. Covering the eye-balls with the eye-lids I betcha works out pretty well for opening up with some sort of flow.

I have paintings on my desk and on my wall. My on-the-wall the painting is a group of rabbits huddled around a crouching kid who is focused on touching a rabbit group-member who is wearing sunglasses. He has to crouch so as not to be emblazoned by the dragon breath of another hopper who is hopping through a hula-hoop suspended from some unseen ceiling by a bow-tied string. With unshakable determination he focuses on the success of touching the weird one. I’m not being cryptic - that is the title of the painting - “I want to touch the weird one”. In a world where the status-quo is rabbits constantly blowing fire and jumping through hoops, a rabbit with sunglasses stands out as something finally worth getting interested in.

The painting on my desk, the off the wall painting, so to speak, is a of jazz musician gazing out of his world with tired and respectful eyes. I’m guessing at all this by the way. I guess that he is a jazz musician because of the patterns flowing through the air around him - even though there aren’t any instruments. There seems to be the movement of jazz there.

Jazz ain’t dead

I am working hard these days writing web applications. You do know that I am a programmer, right? Maybe you don’t know that it is not my tendency to work hard. You’ll see that so far there is not much reference of computers and programming and web applications on this blog. I am now immersed in all things Internet. I didn’t grow up in this world - I was 17 when I first used what was then a fairly obscure Internet. So I’m kind of an old man in this particular technology world. The whole day is busy with work now. As a result, I’m not day-dreaming so much - I seem to be more practical than before. Indeed immersing myself into work is very down to earth, actually. Many good spiritual teachers have said that work can be a very good practice - not necessarily something to avoid. Why do I say, ‘Not necessarily’? This reveals some old attitude of mine: Sometimes work can become the whole game - progressing, increasing, creating. You can live for work - let it define who you think you are. I have felt a lick of that living-working myself now that I have actually spent a day or a few days focused and creating. But I’ll tell you - its not necessary to live for anything - living just happens all the time. Haven’t you noticed?

That’s an important point. Living happens spontaneously. Not understanding that Living happens leads to some of us not wanting to retire because of an idea that retirees become complacent and and lose all their reason for for living. One is sure that one will just fall apart. So, here, a person “lives to work”. Or it might be better to shove this horse under the cart - and say he “works to live”.

But living just happens - there is no work. When we live to work, something is really being ignored - some basic quality of breathing and communicating and adapting. Hearts beat, suns set, pain increases and decreases. You and me - we are in this world and it is just happening like that, haven’t you noticed?

But life accommodates all of this. Everything is like this - art, science, spirituality, work, wives, children, the good, the bad and the ugly. All of these things are life spontaneously. They are each a grain of sand in life.

Life is jazz.

Typing on a keyboard. First a letter, then a word, sentence, paragraph web post. It goes like this:
Big Bang, Immaculate Creation (your choice), hydrogen, helium, etc, suns, nitrogen, planets, life, humans, Americans, Chris Young, Beesucker, typing on a keyboard, a letter, a word, a sentence. I hope you enjoyed it.

“Yellow Hatted Salute” by Claudia

“I Want to Touch the Weird one” by Stephen J. Yazzi