Under the Brightest Stars – My Story

The memory, as most of my fondest do, begins in Japan – more accurately, in the least accurate terms, somewhere amongst the scattered tourists and natives celebrating the New Year, spinning through the crowds like an oceanside torrent, a current of life. I’m six stories up, staring at a white wall, bobbing my head silently – Tower Records is a strange kind of place, hidden away at the top floor, minimal in it’s complexity, yet complex in it’s absent minded decoration. Walking past a kiosk, I had heard jazzy beats emanating from a pair of headphones, suspended off a hook, vibrating to the ‘bumps’ and ‘ticks’ of the drum line, and was intrigued – though I was a Jazz fan, I was more a fan in the school of Take Five and Bunny Berigan, and had not yet heard the smooth beats of club jazz and acid groove. Nonetheless, I was intrigued, and upon hearing several fifteen second clips, I promptly demanded a piece of paper of the hostess, who responded kindly in good, yet broken, English – “Is Indigo Jam Unit – good jazz!”. After writing their name in semi-inebriated and exhausted scrawl, I bid my farewells, and joined Aya and Wayne on their exit with the Mars Volta and The Pillows secure in my backpack. I spent the next week checking to see if I had the name written down – one in my wallet, one in my pocket, one on the laptop, over and over again. For some reason, I felt it was important.

Almost two years later, it’s occurred to me – jazz is like life. Well, any music really, but particularly jazz. Life is like jazz in the sense that there are a multitude of parts, all working in harmony, to produce one of two classes of jazz (and really, there are only two main classes) – pure unlistenable noise, or pure delicious audio sex. Of all the comparisons that can be made, however, the one that catches my attention is the drumline, in all it’s complexity and planning. The drumbeat is but a section of life, and to me best represents the concept of memories – not the memories themselves, but the grand overall place for them in the human experience. Each hit, each cymbal strike, each roll of the bass, is a memory – all with varying degrees of recollection and strength, all with varying levels of pertinence. The pattern rolls on, forgetting each note, driving forward always – however, no matter how driving the beat, it means nothing without referencing a previous sample of sound – after all, how strange would a song sound if the composer refused to remember any previously played note?

Memory, as a whole, proceeds in much the same equation, though we tend to go to one of two extremes. On the one hand, there are those that pick each note and hit methodically, bogging so far down in details that the overall composition suffers, or refuses to be completed. On the other hand, there are those compositions that drive fully ahead, with no reference point, continuity, or logic – the aforementioned noise. In each of these cases, the overall line suffers, and a song is only as good as it’s weakest part. If the drumline fails, the bassline will lose rhythm, the guitar will strike absently, the brass and percussionists will fail to find their place – it’ll be a mess, punctuated by horrible authorship. It is only when a delicate balance is discovered that the song comes to fruition, and it’s potential is realized. For those who live in the past, picking each detail one by one, the future rushes by – for those who spend their live pushing forward, it all ends suddenly, having experienced nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Really, it’s not the composers fault in the end – it’s the human condition. We tend to think of the moment as being of singular importance – Carpe Diem, as they say. The only thing that matters is us, the here and now, the impermeant. It’s a defense mechanism – when the hatred of our condition and situation exceeds of tolerance to pain and loss, we retreat into the past, or march ignorantly into the future. It’s pure escapism. What we need to realize, though, is that there is more than one song on this Earth – there are millions of drum lines, millions of songs, and our single instrument, though important to us, is really, truly, and completely insignificant. This is not a thing of despair - a record can only work with songs that are in harmony. When we recognize the darkness in the world that we wish to change, we can then flood it with the light of understanding and peace. I’m sure we’ll meet again, old friend. In this life, or the next.

So long, Tokyo.