safe as houses

seagulls are protesting / in the dawn skies / above the post office

we’re waiting / by the hot dog cart / for our buses to

Baltimore / Pittsburgh / Boston / Washington

it’s cold enough to snow / but the young Australian / is wearing an open / denim jacket / over a t-shirt

trying not to shiver / as he discusses college / with an Asian woman /
who has a British accent

no one knows where to stand / for which bus / so the affable coffee drinker / in his knit cap / says “Boston” / over and over again / to each person who approaches

the ride from Brooklyn / to Manhattan / was stereotypical / of the kind of New York / you don’t really see these days

vomit on the A train / (twice) / the smell of sewage / rising like a physical presence / from the grates in the street

that said / New York is cleaner now / safer / in every sense of the word

you can’t imagine the Velvets / blasting into the world / with this New York / as a launching pad

not when Katy Perry / stands five stories tall / in Times Square / next to an illuminated M&M

listening to Tom Waits’ Small Change

you’re sleeping close to me
holding one of my hands
in both of yours
there’s a candle on the dresser
another on the night table
a third behind the two Buddhas
on my map, our rivers
don’t meet anywhere
which just goes to show
it’s worth getting out
to see for yourself
the mapmakers can get it wrong
there could be just one big river
right off the edge of the page

can come with an open hand
or at the tip of a sharp tongue
it covers up the salty taste of tears
you call me “sweetheart” afterward
I can’t think of anything to say during dinner
that won’t sound like a lie
later, in bed, you lace your fingers in mine
I hold my breath like a condemned prisoner
my hair is turning gray on this diet of ashes
my tongue lies heavy in my mouth
I’m betraying the fading light beneath my skin

/ / /

It’s been a while since I finished a poem. I wrote this one at the Museum of Modern Art in New York today after seeing the “Sweet Violence” exhibit for the second time. Please go see it if you can.

Photo source

sing me a Haitian song

sing mules and horses on the mountainside
          a calabash of river water to wash in
          another to drink

sing to me of the climbing tree
          four uncles on the summit waiting
          for the return of the prodigal nephew

sing me an African rhythm
          drawn from the source of the one true river
          that became the ocean and surrounded the islands

sing to me of proud women with straight backs
          burdens atop their heads as they appear and disappear
          on the peaks and in the valleys

sing me a policeman’s song
          a wide-brimmed hat his badge of office
          his horse weary from climbing

sing me a Brooklyn dance, no music but the drum
          to remake their lost island in an old meeting hall
          filled with vegetable stew and mountain stories

sing me sixty-odd years since then
          the boy once mesmerized by the drummer
          returning to old ground as a man of the drum himself

/ / /

This poem is inspired by an interview I conducted with drummer Andrew Cyrille. You can hear the interview here.

post office, Sunset Park

digging on Mississippi John Hurt
the definite article
watching a guy try and fail
to zip his leather jacket

Italian-American bus driver tells
African-American postal clerk
he’s looking for Tony Bennet stamps
“I’m still stuck with these Kwanzaa stamps.”

“Lucky for you it’s Kwanzaa again.”
          Laughter.
Mississippi John Hurt is singing about
fish and money. But not really.

Orion on Prospect Avenue

sharp sword dangling from his belt
swinging back and forth
above the Chinese grocery
the Middle Eastern restaurants
the yarn shop with its scarves-to-be

I’m walking up the hill wondering
just how far away those stars are
I know they’re not even near one another
Orion is a picture people made
from a story they invented

the cold, cloudless night
makes the hunter’s broad shoulders
stand out above the Catholic church
where tomorrow’s worshipers
will gather to hedge their bets

a little farther up the hill
is a three-story brick building
where rice is cooking and curry
with potatoes and carrots and onions
is bubbling on the stove

meanwhile the hunter stalks the avenue
in a city where people seldom look up at the sky

Hi there! Thanks for visiting jasoncrane.org. This post is always at the top of the site to help you find your way around.

This is primarily a poetry blog. You can scroll down for my latest poems, or select the My Poetry category to get ‘em all. Most of my poems have audio recordings, too, so you can hear as well as read them.

If you’d like a larger selection of performed poetry, please visit the Recorded Readings page, where you’ll find a collection of my featured readings from the past couple years.

Foothills Publishing was kind enough to publish my first book of poems in 2010, Unexpected Sunlight. Get your copy in the store. Makes a great gift, too, particularly for someone of whom you’re not all that fond.

Over on the top right of this page is a navigation menu. Farther down on the right side is a list of categories. Both of these menus will help you find specific content on the site.

I’m quite active on Twitter. You can follow me at @jasondcrane. And you’re always welcome to email me at jason@jasoncrane.org.

That’s it. Enjoy the site!

If you’re reading this post at jasoncrane.org (rather than via the RSS feed), you might have noticed a new photo at the top of the page. For months, the header was a photo of me, taken by my sister in front of the Lincoln Center fountain.

I took the new photo last weekend in Bushwick, Brooklyn, outside the Pine Box Rock Shop, where I went for the Vegan Shop-Up. These buildings are on the corner of Grattan Street and Bogart Street. It was a gorgeous day and I loved the way the light hit the buildings.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

expenses

$1.00 for the three congueros
          on the D train
          black men with beautiful braids
          down their backs
          too meticulous to be dreadlocks

$5.00 for queso made from yeast
          bought from a friendly former hippie
          in a Bushwick bar
          where a bomb would have
          devoured all the vegans

$1.00 for a bottle of water
          on the subway platform
          at Columbus Circle
          to wash down the pills
          that make the sun shine
          ”better living through chemistry”

$10.40 for an everything bagel with
          eggs and cheddar
          and a plain bagel with
          tofu cream cheese
          eaten with my lover
          on a bench in Prospect Park

$104.00 for a MetroCard
          to let me move between boroughs
          for a month
          until it runs out when I’m broke
          and on the way
          to somewhere important

$3.87 for yet another bagel
          and a strawberry iced tea
          before the sun came up
          in Sunset Park
          where I wouldn’t have been
          but for her

I’ve done quite a few poetry readings over the past year, several of which have been recorded. I finally got around to putting them all together on one page — Recorded Readings. You can also access this page from the navigation menu on the upper right. Enjoy!

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

cotton candy

God was on the G train today
disguised as an Ecuadorian man in his 40s
He was selling cotton candy
dozens of bags of it like palm leaves
stapled to the top of a long stick
it’s a thankless job, being God
and also selling cotton candy
having to ride the G is a bit of a drag, too
especially on a Sunday
still, though, after all the years
pushing abstinence and devotion
cotton candy is an easier product to market
the kids like it, too, in a way they
never cottoned (sorry) to His book
at Bergen Street the Devil got on
selling blinky lights and flashlights
for two bucks a pop
he is the Light Bearer, after all
and let’s be honest, he’s a much better salesman
funny that after all the casting down and the weeping
and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth
they’re both on the same train
trying to make a buck

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

sorry, Larry

after being called downstairs
every four goddamned hours
I justifiably killed Larry
maybe not on purpose (quite)
rather seductively, tentatively
under very wan
xanthic — yellow — zinnias

/ / /

I’ve been reading Charles Bernstein’s Attack Of The Difficult Poems and decided to try some of the poetry writing experiments he mentions there. You’ll find them listed here. This experiment was to write a poem where each word begins with the next letter of the alphabet.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

This poem is a combination of images from my past and images from the present.

natsukashii

genmaicha leaves
in a clay pot

Tokyo sounds
subway travels

tatami mats
against our legs

tangy curry
from little cubes

Tonari no
Totoro &

a cat who steps
on his belly

maybe you should
kiss me again

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

hiccup

I’m not even sure how to spell it
hiccup? hiccough?
one of the body’s mysteries
a reminder that our agency
is illusory / at any moment
the physical can reassert control
stop a heart at the dinner table
collapse legs on a busy street
as a packed bus bears down
I could awaken tomorrow
having taken my last step
handwritten my last poem
are these words worth it?
in the constant glare
of oncoming headlights
I reach for
(my notebook)
(the phone)
(my lover’s cool white hand)

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

Tonight I went to see Foolish Hearts, a duo with Peter Eldridge and Matt Aronoff. They were amazing — a master class in musicianship at the highest level paired with an incredibly emotional connection with the crowd. As I often do, I wrote a poem while listening to them. This is an acrostic poem. Not a format I often use, but it seemed like a fun place to start. I took several photos tonight, too, which you can see here.

From

poems for foolish hearts

1.

picture me
even now, waiting
till you arrive
even now
remembering the last time
even now
looking toward the back of the room
darting ever-so-casual glances
ready to wave you over
I have to confess I
didn’t expect to be here alone
giving myself over to the music
even now

2.

meet me
at Cornelia Street
tonight, wearing
that dress
ask me to
remember
or kiss me
now before
one of us
falls to earth
from this narrow ledge

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

cafe conversation

boat pulls alongside
cannons firing
captain peers
through the smoke
for signs of a hit
shouted orders
harsh commands
the meaty thunk of balls
rammed into cannon mouths
tongues of flame following
as they fly
into the manufactured fog
a moment’s quiet would reveal
that his prey
slipped into the night
long ago
•
the sea floor
is thick
with misplaced iron

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

noir

I could write a hundred poems
about the look of your sleeping face
here where the wood stove waits
for fast-approaching winter

I’m on the floor in front of your couch
surrounded by books of poetry
kept company by the constant hum
of our modern age and the ageless
sound of your breathing

not even Sam Spade could unravel
the intricate mystery of how
we came to be here tonight
but as soon as you walked into the cafe
I knew you were trouble

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

Thanksgiving Day

Prospect Ave rooftop
two sisters, one lover
endless blue sky
iced tea and cigarettes
next roof over pigeons
gathered for the holiday

we laugh, hold hands
feel the sun on our faces
grateful for the morning
for bagels and cream cheese
for reunited families
for the laughter of children

half my heart is missing
the other half is here

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

Elwood P. Dowd

these days
everyone is
beautiful

I may not
have a
rabbit

but I’m trying
to make
friends

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I wrote this today on the 6 train while listening to John Cale’s album Vintage Violence.

/ / /

Cale on the 6

John Cale’s on the uptown 6
singing about Adelaide
Spring to Bleeker to Astor Place
on a November day
that finally feels like winter
there’s a guy a few seats down
who’s a ringer for Robert Pinsky
(whom I last saw in Boston
reading poems to commemorate 9/11)
five more stops and I’ll be at the temple
with the money lenders and usurers
meanwhile there are happy hands
clapping on the Cale album
and a tambourine that sounds
like a baby laughing
I feel I should tell you this
so we’ll both know

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I saw Mark Turner play at Jazz Standard a few months back and wrote a poem while watching him. The poem was longer than this version and I kept trying to figure out what else to add. Finally, after being away from it for a while, I not only decided not to add anything, I decided to take things away. Here’s the result.

/ / /

the king’s clothes

corduroy-suited tenorman
plays non-clichéd blues
in clichéd suede shoes

on his furrowed brow
the image of a lotus

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Sometimes you meet people who immediately become family.

/ / /

for Andrea and Ken

my socked feet
on your couch

noodles
with burglar’s thigh

this table
feels like home

Listen to this poem using the player above.

My sister and I went to the Museum of Modern Art to see the new exhibition of murals by Diego Rivera. I wrote this poem based on one of them.

Rivera’s The Uprising

it’s her hand, not his
that stops the soldier’s blade
while with the other
she cradles her newborn child
who cries from the noise

the dead and wounded
cover the ground like fallen leaves
as a phalanx of armed men
in earthen brown
swing wooden rifle stocks
at the faces of the newly free

men in peasant caps and overalls
no weapons but their fists and hearts
stand shoulder to shoulder
under a sky red with waving flags
on ground red with spilled blood

she holds her crying child
with the hope of a new mother
and the desperation of the wall
against her back
she will not give in
she will not give in

Listen to this poem using the player above.

Tohoku
(for TR)

there’s a woman on this bus
who looks just like you did
when we met twenty years ago

it’s hard to look at her
without losing my grip on this world
arriving back in Tohoku

where we ate soba noodles
until one of our friends threw up
trying to prove his strength

you were so beautiful
not like a painting
on the wall of a museum

forcing the viewer
to stand behind the rope
or risk damaging its brittle surface

no, you were like a field
of pale cherry blossoms
under the sun of northern Japan

inviting us all closer with a warm smile
as we orbited like honey bees
entranced and attentive

two decades later
the young woman on this bus
could almost be your daughter

for the last few hours
every time she’s smiled
I’ve been back there again

remembering that first taste of freedom
those cold winter days
in the mountains of Tohoku

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I wrote this tonight at Cornelia Street Cafe. The three lines in quotation marks are by David Budbill, from his book Moment to Moment.

/ / /

passing notes

nothing is more beautiful
than Portuguese at night
and everything sounds better
in your fickle accent

I’m drinking peppermint tea
watching you watch the band
like you’re memorizing them

I started this poem
on five separate pages
almost didn’t write it at all

but I’m listening to Judevine
the mountain sage, who wrote:
“Never be deliberately obscure.
Life is difficult enough!
Don’t add to the confusion.”

so while this may not be clear
it’s as clear as I can make it
at least without more tea, less sleep
or a longer walk to the train

I traveled back to Albany, NY, this weekend to do a reading in nearby Voorheesville, a small town full of poets. The audio of my reading is available to stream or download using the player above.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

hardhat

they’re digging up the street outside my building
putting something in or maybe taking something out
one of the workers left his hardhat on my stoop
I snuck it inside while he was at lunch
now I wear it while I write poems or update Twitter
my desk has become a construction site where I build new selves
assembling them from all the might-have-beens
putting cardboard cutouts of myself on every street corner

this one never left home / stayed in the Berkshires
this one convinced Mom and Dad to send him away
on this corner is a me who graduated from college
he’s a music teacher in a small town in Massachusetts
this one got while the getting was good
drove west with the top down and the right companion

even though it’s me who builds them
I’ve never figured out which cut of the scissors
which angle, greatened or lessened, makes the difference
allows me to split into a new being
to take on the trappings of a new life
I’m worried that my scissors are getting dull

I wrote this brief poem tonight while listening to Darius Jones play at iBeam in Brooklyn. The photo is also from tonight’s show.

/ / /

Click for a larger version.

Listen to this poem using the player above.

I went to see Amy Cervini sing at the 55 Bar in New York tonight. She was joined by many guests, including vocalist Nicky Shrire. I got the idea for this poem from their duet performance.

/ / /

a cappella
(for Nicky Shrire & Amy Cervini)

she waits at the bar
till her name is called

then sings her way to the edge
of the cliff / kept from falling

by the sound of four hands clapping
two voices wrapped like vines

a cappella — from the Italian meaning
“in the manner of the church”

surely this is prayer / sent up
through the tin ceiling

to where she imagines
her ancestors to be

Listen to this poem using the player above.

/ / /

crossing Canal

we crossed Canal Street like royalty
me holding a scribbled poem
you holding me, stopping the cars
the newspaper boy had a beautiful voice
like an angel crossing a highwire
when we reached the sidewalk
we kissed
and I thought:
this is why we have sidewalks

Last night I took a trip from central Pennsylvania back to my home in New York City. It didn’t go well. Here’s my account of the doomed voyage, as told to my Twitter followers. You can be one of them by following @jasondcrane.

The story begins about an hour into the trip…

• 8:48 p.m. — Looks like our bus has broken down somewhere in rural PA. No announcement yet, but we’ve been on the roadside for a while now.
• 8:54 p.m. — It is very, very, very dark out here in rural PA. The bus is completely off. We’re sitting in absolute darkness.
• 9:00 p.m. — Aaaand now we’re moving again. Let’s see how long this lasts. I keep expecting the bus driver to be Rod Serling.
• 9:04 p.m. — I’m no mechanic, but I give this bus a 40% chance of making it to New York City.
• 9:06 p.m. — I also love that the bus driver hasn’t said one word to us all this time about what happened.
• 9:50 p.m. — We just hit a deer. This bus is doomed.
• 10:03 p.m. — Post-deer, we’re pulled over again. The bus driver asked for a male pasenger to go outside with her. I went. Front of the bus is smashed.
• 10:15 p.m. — We’re going to limp along to a rest area where we’ll switch to another, hopefully less doomed, bus.
• 10:42 p.m. — I’d like to publicly thank @reneeyoxon for suggesting I make this Voyage Of The Damned today.
• 10:46 p.m. — Picture, if you will, a man trapped on an eternal bus ride through Pennsylvania. There’s a signpost up ahead. It reads…The @Megabus Zone.
• 10:57 p.m. — Driver has MacGyvered part of the busted headlight and Mr. @Megabus has cleared us to leave. Driver is eating a salad. Then we’ll go.
• 11:01 p.m. — “@Megabus: We’ll get at least part of your bus to its destination, no matter what we have to kill along the way.”
• 11:08 p.m. — Sweet weeping Jesus, we’re on the road! New York here we (possibly) come (if we don’t hit anything else)!
• 12:34 a.m. — You have got to be kidding me. Now we’re stuck in a looong line of cars on the highway at 12:33 a.m. Accident? Construction? God hates me?
• 12:45 a.m. — I don’t know what I did to anger the gods before this bus trip, but I’d like to apologize.
• 1:03 a.m. — People are getting out of their cars and walking around on the highway. That’s a good sign, right? I hate Pennsylvania.
• 1:06 a.m. — It’s on nights like this that I wish I still had the cyanide tablet that Mom used to pack in my lunchbox.
• 1:32 a.m. — Guy behind me is having a heated argument with a woman. He keeps smacking my seat. I ask him quietly to stop. He starts yelling at me.
• 1:35 a.m. — A breakdown. A deer strike. A huge accident. We haven’t moved in an hour. Six hours and counting for a 4.5 hour trip. Not out of PA yet.
• 1:47 a.m. — We are doing a k-turn. In a bus. On the highway. No idea where we might be going. Doesn’t look good.
• 1:54 a.m. — Off the highway. Driving on surface streets through a small Jersey town. Presumably toward our next accident or hijacking.
• 2:01 a.m. — Passed a billboard that said “Think Red.” Guy behind me yelling into his phone. At someone on the upper level of this bus. I’m thinking red.
• 2:07 a.m. — The guy behind me is so loud that the bus driver just turned on her mic to ask him to be quiet. And you’ll never believe why he’s angry…
• 2:08 a.m. — …He’s angry because he apparently fell asleep with his thumb in his mouth and his partner slapped it out. And he’s enraged.
• 2:16 a.m. — Every other truck that was rerouted by the cops continued straight on this road. We exited. We’re pulled over again. Driver on her cell.
• 2:24 a.m. — If we ever do reach Manhattan, I’ll still have to get to Brooklyn by subway in the wee hours on a Sunday.
• 2:41 a.m. — Hour 7 of this 4.5 hour trip.
• 2:55 a.m. — We’re at the Lincoln Tunnel. I may start crying with joy.
• 3:04 a.m. — Off the bus. Headed for the subway.
• 3:55 a.m. — Home. Going to bed. My 4.5 hour trip took 8.5 hours. Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

I used to post readings along with all my poems. It’s a little harder to do that with the gear I have in NYC, but given the response to my readings in this interview, I’ve decided to start doing it again. So you can listen to this poem via the player above, and read the text below.

/ / /

avalanche

it didn’t start out that way
I promise
at first there was just you
walking down 7th Avenue South
readjusting to a body in rebellion
I knew it was you from a block away
because you’d warned me
not knowing me well
so all at once we became real
and then
and then there was more
jazz clubs and cafes
apartments full of foreign adventurers
free flowers from the maitre d’
your ever-present smile
and then
and then there was even more than that
slowly
very slowly
like the first ice pellets
foretelling the avalanche
I looked up to see the wall of snow
crashing down around me
I raised my arms
let it fall

I just watched Before Sunrise for the first time since I saw it in the theater in 1995. I haven’t really been able to watch it since then. I also watched Before Sunset for the first time. This is poem is a true story brought back to the surface by those two films.

I wanted to be Ethan Hawke

I walked out of the movie theater / that night in 1995 / holding in my insides / like I’d been gut-shot

the drive back to my apartment / took the rest of my life / trying to write the perfect line / that would make you leave Rochester / and join me in Tucson

I couldn’t see the road with your face / clouding my eyes / I drove like the old man / I was afraid I’d become without you

why did you call me every day? / what didn’t I say / that would have made you love me?

my little red journal couldn’t hold it all / couldn’t trap the longing / free me from that parking lot / where you held my hands in yours / said “we’ll see each other before you go, won’t we?”

my last night in town was in your bedroom / on your bed (an unfortunate preposition) / a cat between us, our hands touching

you were all I wanted / but I still had to leave, had to get out / had to find my own ground

I came to rest in the desert / but 3,000 miles of driving / didn’t do a damn thing to put you behind me

eventually the phone calls stopped / the longing subsided / but not the feeling of missed opportunity

there is no train platform on which to meet in six months / no sweet reunion movie nine years later

just one of those connections that didn’t quite take / a lost chance to make a new universe

everything is a poem

the baby on the N train who laughs
        as her mother tickles her feet
the way the stop-motion animator looks down
        at her hands / talks about puppets
the little bit of “residual foam” that floats
        on top of a hot cup of espresso
the ring of condensation like a holy circle
        of protection beneath my glass
the young Brooklyn barista beaming
        as she tells me how smart her sister is
the way my friend rests one slender arm
        behind her head / smiles across the space between us
the cat putting his front paws on my leg
        so he can rub his head against my freshly shaved chin
the moment when I step out of the subway station
        and remember that it’s a sunny day in New York City
the part where Stevie’s voice jumps an octave and the song
        goes up a whole step and I can’t feel the ground

the worst kind of poem

is the one you write while
trying hard to hide its meaning
like bringing a leopard
to a dinner party
and acting surprised
as the other guests hurriedly clear a space
staring as you feed it a canape
murmuring to one another
while it licks itself

you can pass it off as a joke
pretend the leopard is an
expensive handbag, maybe
eventually though, you can’t hide
the growls, the knocking over of glassware
the sharp intake of breath as
the cat makes eye contact with a partygoer

finally you’ll be forced to admit
that yes
it’s a leopard
and no
we won’t be leaving

From Trixie Whitley at Rockwood Music Hall (9/27/11)

dark child

she pounds the stage to splinters
with a booted heel
rips melodies from the strings
beats the piano into submission
all the while apologizing for the violence
singing us onto the rocks
with a voice won from God
in a game of dice (fuck you, Einstein)
her strong blood is on the keys, the frets
a hum from the amp like crazed wasps
I hear Belgium is nice this time of year
but on Allen Street the rain is coming
and there’s no way to escape it
rats are running in the tunnels
we couldn’t be happier

From Trixie Whitley at Rockwood Music Hall (9/27/11)

The sublime Trixie Whitley performed a (mostly) solo set of (mostly) new songs at Rockwood Music Hall. Here are my photos:

the whip

ain’t nothing moist in a whipping story
she told me / showed me
the bruises on her knuckles
held an ice pack to her left thigh
then there were delicate silk straps
across her shoulders / her hair fanned out
on the cloud-white pillow
the only color the red on her lips
bruised hands beneath the sheets
it’s an acquired taste
she said / and turned away
I’m trapped / held against my will
like one of her customers
they ask her for it / beg her for it
with me no force is necessary
I’m begging the moment she arrives
even though I never feel the hard slap
of her palm / or the sting of her toys
I tell her I’ve given up
released her back into the wild
where she feels more at home
but it isn’t true / the truth is
I keep a corner of my closet
cleared out / just in case
and I steel myself for the blow
I hope she’ll someday deliver

cafe song

the rain is falling in Sunset Park
as the potbellied men come into the cafe
for their noontime sandwiches
rare roast beef and a slice of cheesecake
washed down by hot black coffee

*

a ponytailed professor reads comic books
on his laptop and drinks Japanese tea
while a bald kid writes song lyrics
and nurses a glass of water

*

up in the balcony, two young lovers
(aren’t they always?)
play Brooklyn Monopoly
dry their wet heads with paper towels
hold steaming cups of chai in four hands

*

the baristas, men and women,
are young and beautiful
smoking on their coffee breaks
falling in love with the customers
who are falling in love with them

*

come away with me, she sings
as the cappuccino machine whirs
and the dumbwaiter rumbles
up to the balcony with something
to take the edge off the rain

curiosity killed the cat … but the monkey was only wounded

are you curious, George
about how you ended up here
on a September evening
under the Christmas tree lights
that they never take down

you told me your secret
waited for me to hate you
expecting as little of me
as of others before

your secret was small
I held it in my palm
closed my fingers over it

she wears a feather on her arm

she wears a feather on her arm
because a heart is too personal a thing
to expose to the changing air

after the gig, in a Paris bar
she makes conversation with the damaged man
tends to the cuts on his hands

she rides a Harley on the interstate
worrying about the crash
dreaming of the Big Sky Country

she deflects the too easy “I love you”
longs for a secluded hideaway
nestled among the Brooklyn streets

someplace they could be together
where he could play the guitar and she
could make new entries in her book of happiness

for now she’s bumming a ride to Florida
one blackbird in a flock of doves
the feathered girl looking for a place to land

Based on a true story.

orgasm

“Mary never had an orgasm –
God put that baby in her stomach,”
says the subway preacher
while the high schoolers giggle

he warns of sex with a lady
two ladies four ladies
seven ladies twenty ladies
then his imagination runs dry
and his stop comes

the car is as silent
as subway cars ever get
then something sets the girls
to giggling again
“That’s New York,” one of them says

I’ll meet you at St. Mary’s Street
you said on that September Saturday
when summer returned
from Brooklyn to Brookline

there were bluebells at Hall’s Pond
a single egret awaiting nirvana
surely you know by now that yes
they were beautiful and no
they couldn’t compare

we saw an improbable flower bed
planted in a pothole
we watched the moon over the Fens
spotted Venus above the Emerald Necklace
but that’s not what I mean

that’s not what I mean at all

These both feel too tortured and overwrought. I spent a good portion of the afternoon and evening writing several poems just like these. Guess I’m feeling a bit date-deprived today. Ah well. Here’s the evidence of the afternoon. I’m posting them mostly to keep my recent streak going.

/ / /

chainsaw

I’ve been in this restaurant four times
twice with imaginary friends
twice by myself
I think the server is lovely
and in a million years wouldn’t say anything
I told a guy today he was charming
to me that’s like juggling chainsaws
except that given enough time
I could probably learn to keep the blades spinning
a friend said I need a lot of casual sex
she couldn’t know that’s the one thing
I can’t take casually
where does that leave me?
eating Buddha’s Noodle Soup
in a restaurant with a lovely server
waiting to catch the next whirling saw
before it tears me in two

/ / /

the whole 90 minutes

after a while all the beauty
all the noise, all the weird
become background radiation
afterimage of the big bang
that raised these buildings
so high above this island
when she brings my tea
I smile the way I think
I’m supposed to
but I’ve never known
how charm works
I’ve been spoiled
by too many movies
where it’s easy
the people who should meet
meet
even if takes
the whole 90 minutes

I went to see guitarist Gilad Hekselman at Jazz Standard tonight and wrote this poem before he started playing. I feel like many of my poems are as much diary entries or small pieces of reportage as they are poems. Or maybe they are those things and also poems.

/ / /

a man without a bank card will do almost anything

when I went to pay the cafe bill
I realized I’d lost my bank card

now I’m at the Standard with 13 dollars
enough for an iced tea and a bucket of fries

it’s what I would’ve ordered anyway
but now I’ll be broke at the end
in that I’ve-got-plenty-of-nuthin way

meanwhile I’m mired in a conversation
I’d give anything to not be having
but my mom raised me to stick with it
so I’m stickin’

everyone around me is speaking Japanese
I eavesdrop when my tablemate takes a break

one table over is a sax player with a US Census bag
sitting by accident next to a fellow Census worker
they’re telling Census jokes, which are the best

I’m holding a seat for my English friend
a surprise gift from the rain god
to whom I did not even think to pray

there’s a Swiss philosopher eating steak tartare
I say I think I know him, he says he thinks he knows me
we’re both wrong

the seat across from me remains empty

I wrote this after many hours of traveling.

the river under Rockefeller Center

the river under Rockefeller Center runs beside the third rail / garbage floats along it / rats bathe or swim or drown

on the D train a man with a voice like Miles Davis sings Stevie Wonder’s “Too High” / says, “Everything has got to work out right”

the woman next to me is reading the same book you were reading / which makes me suspect her instantly

I feel self-conscious when I write on the train / as if I’m doing it so people will see me writing

but when the words are ready to come out it’s lucky if I have a pen and paper to catch them before a song lyric drives them from my head /

to float down the river under Rockefeller Center

I wrote this poem tonight while listening to pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Ches Smith at Korzo.

From Matt Mitchell & Ches Smith at Korzo – 6 Sept 2011

danger

you were dangerous and angry
red wrists and flashes of light
in the Hungarian bar
with $5 goulash

After careful study, I’ve decided that my life
needs an extra day and a cloning device
or a world without rock stars
and foreign bars

the reds are oppressive
walls, neon Czechvar sign
you
the red star in the center of the universe

I know this sounds like a love poem
but it isn’t
I don’t write those anymore
I’ve lost the knack

instead I take black-and-white photos
try to preserve these red nights
with the ink from a cheap Bic
and the rush of blood in my veins

Tucson

we fade
we stop
we start anew

cresting the Tucson Mountains
the city like a field of diamonds
reflected in the October stars

call me with fuzzy guitars
and women of uncertain origin
tattoo my heart on your forearm
remember me in the honey-colored morning

secret

to hide my true identity
I travel from restaurant to club
with a series of beautiful women
of wildly varying heights

there was a time — not long ago –
when even this would have seemed impossible
even now I’m surprised by our reflection
in the windows along the street

sometimes, in a Christopher Street bar,
over an improbable cup of tea
you find exactly what you need
or who

I could spend hours watching you laugh

waiting for the bus while the pigeons
look for scraps on the blacktop

also in line for this bus is a woman
with red feathers braided into her black hair

– I swear it’s true –

and another young woman next to me
has spent the better part of an hour
carefully inspecting every inch of her right leg

these New York summers make everyone a little loopy

back home we’d be dancing to reels
played by old men with a little bit of red
left in their beards

but in this city we each carry our own melody
hoping that someone else knows the tune

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

…I told her the last time I was dating, there was no such thing as “online.”

I wrote this tonight while listening to Amy Cervini at The 55 Bar in NYC. I wrote a poem the last time I saw Amy Cervini, too. This one is a combination of autobiography (although less so than in many of my poems) and things seen and overheard.

carbon copy

thunder rolls through the West Village
the bar patrons pull their glasses closer
basement captives of the summer rain

I learned recently that all I need to do
is find a carbon copy of you
somewhere on the streets of New York

the only time anyone calls is when I’m here
bartender hands me the phone
greasy with city dust and sweat

I put it to my ear but nothing’s there
not the ocean
or the harsh sound of your laughter

if Johnny were here he’d know what to do
black is the new black
he’s always in style

but it’s just me
this whistling guitar player
the rain on the street outside

From the Wikipedia page for Stevie Wonder’s song “Sir Duke”

Critical reception

Steve Halvonik, staff writer of The Daily Collegian, called the piece “pompous”, describing it as “the big brassy salute to Duke Ellington” and “the most engaging song on the album.” He praised its “up-beat tempo, punchy horn lines and syncopated rhythm” and pronounced it the “brightest album” of the year.[3]

You tell me: a great paragraph or the greatest paragraph ever? Doesn’t anybody edit these?

I would wait for you even if I had soy sauce
even with the perfectly crafted maki rolls
sitting right there in front of me, seductively

I would wait while you finished telling me
about that time with him, when you knew
the light in the tunnel was a train

I would wait until you said what needed saying
until you’d convinced yourself it was over
that some bridges can be crossed in only one direction

then I would fill your cup with hot green tea
pour the soy sauce into your little clay dish
leave just the right amount of silence to let you know

From July 24, 2011

Jamie Kilstein is a progressive comedian and the co-host, with his wife, journalist Allison Kilkenny, of Citizen Radio, a daily politics & comedy podcast. You should follow Jamie and Allison and the show on Twitter: @jamiekilstein, @allisonkilkenny and @citizenradio.

From July 24, 2011

Last night I went to see Jamie at easily the oddest place I’ve ever been — Paul Booth’s Last Rites tattoo gallery. Jamie’s comedy set was part of a weekend of events to celebrate the launch of Booth’s expanded facilities, which now include an art gallery and performance space in addition to the world’s craziest and most nightmare-inducing tattoo parlor. I had never been in a place even remotely like this, and I was grateful for a chance to hang out there and experience a scene that was totally new to me.

From July 24, 2011

It was a weird gig. The mic had so much extra bass on it that it boomed throughout the set and hit enough low notes to cause involuntarily bowel movements. It was also extremely difficult (sometimes impossible) to make out what Jamie was saying during the show. And given the party nature of the event, there were tons of people milling about the room talking during the performance.

From July 24, 2011

To add to the excitement, Jamie had a long-untreated concussion and should have been in the hospital, not on a stage. (In fact, he’s at the emergency room right now as I’m typing this post. And, in true Kilstein fashion, he’s live-tweeting his experience.)

From July 24, 2011

All that aside, though, Jamie still managed to reach people with his cutting-edge observations on gay rights, the killing of Osama Bin Laden and being a vegan. He pulls no punches and — despite the obvious impact such stances must have on his career — he speaks the truth at every opportunity. Definitely a comic, and a human being, worthy of respect.

From July 24, 2011

All in all, a fun night. If you dig tattoo art, check out Last Rites. I’ve heard there’s a pretty long waiting list to get tattooed there, so book now. And if you appreciate fearless and funny political comedy, please go see Jamie Kilstein and listen to (and support!) Citizen Radio. Our world needs more of these folks.

UPDATE (Greenwald style!): Just to prove I was telling the truth about Jamie’s medical condition, here’s a photo taken of him in the emergency room this morning:

barefoot on the N train

barefoot man polishing a smartphone
talks incessantly on the N train
until the woman across the car
screams “shut up! stop talking!”
everyone who had been pretending to sleep
is looking now, eyes drawn toward the end of the car
where the argument erupts into life
like summer thunder and is gone as quickly
the storm contained in this hot box beneath Brooklyn

/ / /

talk 2 me in 1s & 0s
peer @ me w/ your LED eyes
tell me you love me w/ a stream of ticker tape
reach out & touch me

Exhale

he’s wearing a white Oxford
when his jacket arms pull up
I can see his shirt cuffs are dirty

now I look closer — frayed ends of his pants
shoes with worn soles and scuffed sides
a small cigarette burn on one lapel
hand under his handle-less briefcase

is he going home after yet another interview?
does he have a wife somewhere in Brooklyn
who thinks he’s at work?
or was she washed away, too, in the flash flood
of changing fortunes?

I wait because I know it’s coming
and it does:
the long exhale
the one he can’t control
the air forced out of his body
as if his own lungs are trying to
mercifully asphyxiate him

for a second I wonder whether he’ll breathe in again
he does
the train passes Chambers Street

I’m beginning to suspect New York isn’t real
walking the High Line under a full moon
fireworks booming off the Battery

“people” stop in every shadow
kissing, clinging
breathing each other in

along the way is a hotel with no curtains
where lovers young and old put on a show
for the second-story handholders

I can’t help laughing, struggling
to suspend my disbelief that such a place
(such a night) could exist

in the Hudson are the half-submerged pilings
of long-dead piers, incomplete stories
washed away by the water

we are writing our own story
inscribing it under the full moon
while the fireworks light the Battery sky

I had no plans to go out last night. Then a critical mass of my friends (okay, two) turned up at The Bell House to see The Old 97′s with opening act Robert Ellis. And you know me and peer pressure…

Both bands were phenomenal. I’d never knowingly heard a minute of either group and I was immediately caught up in the music.

From Old 97s at Bell House in Brooklyn – July 14, 2011

Guitarist and singer Robert Ellis from Houston and his alt-country-speed-bluegrass-punk-metal band tore the place up.

From Old 97s at Bell House in Brooklyn – July 14, 2011

I was particularly impressed by the guitar acrobatics of Kelly Doyle, who crashed through one inventive and highly precise riff after another and soloed with joy and fire.

From Old 97s at Bell House in Brooklyn – July 14, 2011

The Old 97′s took the stage in a roomful of adoring fans. The energy in the room was high and extremely positive.

From Old 97s at Bell House in Brooklyn – July 14, 2011

As I mentioned, I’d never heard one of their records, but they write the kind of songs that you immediately feel like you’ve been listening to forever. Catchy melodies, clever lyrics and good playing.

From Old 97s at Bell House in Brooklyn – July 14, 2011

It was hilarious to hear a man as gorgeous as Rhett Miller sing about losing at love to a better-looking man. Who could that have been?

From Old 97s at Bell House in Brooklyn – July 14, 2011

Lead guitarist Ken Bethea was a furnace all night long. And he some showed great Rock Tongue (TM), too.

From Old 97s at Bell House in Brooklyn – July 14, 2011

Bassist and vocalist Murray Hammond typified that Austin-style, punk-influenced country that is so much better than what passes for country on the radio. And watching him sing and play was just as much fun as hearing him.

From Old 97s at Bell House in Brooklyn – July 14, 2011

These guys are playing again tonight (7/14) at The Bell House. Do yourself a favor and go.

Thank you to the LA Times’ Culture Monster column for naming me as one of 25 arts & culture people to follow on Twitter.

• The article
• Follow my personal account (the one mentioned in the article) at twitter.com/jasondcrane and follow the show’s account at twitter.com/JazzSesh
• Follow the other jazz folks mentioned in the article: twitter.com/paynic, twitter.com/nextbop and twitter.com/blogsupreme
• Follow Culture Monster at twitter.com/culturemonster
  

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/12/wow-the-la-times-names-me-one-of-25-to-follow-on-twitter/feed/ 2 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/09/three-things-that-make-me-feel-slightly-patriotic/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/09/three-things-that-make-me-feel-slightly-patriotic/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:40:52 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4340

  
  The US Men’s National Soccer Team. (Nothing against the women’s team at all, it’s just that my family and I have followed the men’s team for years and have built up an emotional connection to the team.)

  
  The Four Freedoms Room at the Normal Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. This might be as close as I get to a sacred space.

  
  Dan Aykroyd’s speech during “Green Onions” from the Blues Brothers’ Made In America: Listen to “Green Onions” (mp3)

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/09/three-things-that-make-me-feel-slightly-patriotic/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/08/poem-soil/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/08/poem-soil/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 06:09:36 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4330

  I went tonight to hear Petr Cancura‘s Lonesome Quartet with Petr on banjo and saxophone, Kirk Knuffke on cornet, Garth Stevenson on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums. I was very impressed by the music. Petr told a story about a trip he made that inspired this poem. I took a few bit of his story, changed the details and imagined the rest.

  
  

  From Petr Cancura's Lonesome Quartet at Cornelia Street Cafe (7/7/11)

  soil

  there’s a farm outside Memphis where a hog is roasting / and the old brass-band leader’s kinfolk will welcome you to the party / even if your accent don’t quite fit

  this is soil country / rooted / each one can trace from the branch all the way into the earth / you can’t play brass band music if your feet don’t touch the ground

  in the old farmhouse is an even older hutch / in a cabinet in the hutch is an ancient Bible / full of blood and memory / the names are a hymn / a holy call into hallowed ground

  out by the roasting pit / they’ve cleared a space for dancing / little girls standing on their fathers’ feet / young boys shoved into the arms of cousins / “come now, child, dance with her – it won’t kill you”

  the old brass-band leader is right where he’s been all these years / waving his mail-order baton / cajoling music from a bunch of coots as old / as the dirt they’re standing on

  later / when the kids are asleep and the band is done / the oldest of the men takes out a banjo / plucks the stars alight

  there’s a farm outside Memphis / where all are welcome / this is soil country / rooted

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/08/poem-soil/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/07/poem-how-the-west-was-lost/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/07/poem-how-the-west-was-lost/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:31:32 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4322

  I saw Stephan Crump‘s Rosetta Trio at Barbes in Brooklyn last month. This poem was inspired by a few phrases Stephan used while introducing the tunes. That’s his bass in the photo below.

  

  how the west was lost

  meanwhile back in the bar…
  two guitar players tell road stories
  sweat gliding down their faces
  hands plucking phantom strings

  their whiskey long drunk
  their beer glasses dry
  eyes unfocused by drink and memory
  as the bar slowly empties

  finally it’s just the bartender
  wiping down the wood
  half listening to the tales
  he’s heard so many times

  a sawdust cowboy
  disappears over a distant hill
  the rumble of hoofbeats
  rolling through this August valley

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/07/poem-how-the-west-was-lost/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/05/straight-people-support-lgbt-rights-too/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/05/straight-people-support-lgbt-rights-too/#comments Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:11:42 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4296

  
  

  From Stonewall Celebrates As Marriage Equality Passes – June 24, 2011

  I support equal rights for all members of the LGBTQ community. And, as it turns out, I’m straight.

  I say that because I’ve already been tagged as gay by many acquaintances and strangers who seem to think that only LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) people can support and advocate for LGBTQ issues. I’m certainly not worried about being mistaken for gay. In fact, emphasizing that I’m straight makes me a bit uncomfortable. But for the purposes of the point I’m about to make, it’s necessary.

  Back in the early 90s, I had a good friend who came out as a lesbian. She was the first openly gay person I knew and, because she was (and still is) very important to me, I became very open about my support for LGBTQ issues. In addition to being vocal, I often wore a triangle necklace and had a bunch of LGBTQ stickers on my car … eventually leading to its windows being smashed in a Tucson parking lot on Christmas Eve in 1995.

  Later on, I was a stay-at-home dad for a year and I took care of my son and also the daughter of a lesbian couple. I normally don’t think of them as a “lesbian couple,” but I’m identifying them that way for the purposes of this essay. In that same town, I befriended another Lesbian Couple (TM) both through our shared anti-war activism and a passion for cycling. All these folks are some of my favorite people in the world and I was thinking of all of them when I was dancing outside Stonewall on the night that the marriage equality bill passed here in New York State.

  
  

  From Stonewall Celebrates As Marriage Equality Passes – June 24, 2011

  Along with everyone else, I was live-tweeting from Stonewall during the big celebration, and several people on Twitter and Facebook congratulated me using language that made it clear they thought I was gay. As things quieted down a bit at Stonewall, I went to the Undead Jazz Festival wearing my “Legalize Gay” shirt. Several people again congratulated me in a way that made their perceptions clear. I didn’t correct anyone, nor did I use it as a moment to say, “I’m straight, but you’re right, it’s a great victory for everyone, straight or gay.”

  

  The other night I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, wearing an “I heart NY” shirt (above, with my cousin Lynne) which I had altered by drawing an equal sign in the heart. During the evening a woman who self-identified as a lesbian saw my shirt and we had a lovely chat about the passage of the law and what it means for the future. At the end, she gave me a high-five and said “Yay for us!” Again, I didn’t say anything about being straight.

  There are two reasons why I don’t mention my sexual orientation in such situations. One reason is just the social awkwardness of sharing a moment like that with someone and then saying something that would seem to make the moment a bit less shared.

  The other reason is that I don’t want to be seen as afraid or ashamed of being identified as gay. I often think that if I said “I’m straight” in those situations it would make it seem like I was trying to distance myself from the LGBTQ community. “Hey, I support the issues, but I’m a heterosexual!”

  A friend recently pointed out that it was sad that some people assume that only LGBTQ people support LGBTQ issues. I agree. These issues have been central to my life for more than two decades, and I’m proud to be a vocal supporter. (And by the way, I’m no hero. Many activists have done far more than me to bring these issues to the public arena.) And while I’m a bit hesitant to say that LGBTQ rights are the civil rights struggle of our era — because I think there are other civil rights struggles that need fighting, too — I certainly think the fight for LGBTQ rights is one of our major civil rights battlegrounds. I want to be able to tell my kids that I stood up to be counted on this issue.

  So yes, I’m straight and I’m a supporter of LGBTQ rights. And I hope you’re a supporter, too.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/07/05/straight-people-support-lgbt-rights-too/feed/ 15 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/06/30/poem-the-buddha-of-new-orleans-for-eli-asher/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/06/30/poem-the-buddha-of-new-orleans-for-eli-asher/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 04:58:07 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4291

  This poem is dedicated to the trumpeter Eli Asher. In addition to being an inspiring musician, he came up with the phrase “Gumbo Sutra,” which inspired the rest of the poem. I started this weeks ago and finally finished it tonight. Thanks, Eli.

  
  

  From Buddha In The Modern World (Ongoing Photo Essay)

  The Buddha of New Orleans
  (for Eli Asher)

  The Buddha of New Orleans
  plays trumpet on the weekends
  with three guys from the Legion hall
  and two oyster house waiters
  who moonlight as dancers.

  Clap hands, here comes Gautama!
  He’s lost weight and looks more like
  the Tibetan image than the Chinese version.
  He swings like a gate, too.
  (gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate)

  He plays with time, shifting the beat.
  No two members of the band
  are ever in exactly the same place.
  The dancers ignore them, whirling
  around the stage in time to the low buzz
  from the PA system.

  After the gig, the band goes back to his house.
  He cooks for them,
  recites the Gumbo Sutra.
  This has been going on for years
  and they still never understand a word he says.

  But something about
  the way he says it
  – so calm, so caring –
  makes them smile over their bowls
  of rice and beans.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/06/30/poem-the-buddha-of-new-orleans-for-eli-asher/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/06/30/some-recent-ish-records-i-like/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/06/30/some-recent-ish-records-i-like/#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 05:20:02 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4284

  

  A friend asked on Facebook for album recommendations by fairly recent bands. Here’s what I suggested, in BAND-ALBUM format:

  • The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
  • Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
  • Alan Hampton – The Moving Sidewalk
  • Tune-Yards – Whokill
  • Black Dub – Black Dub
  • Buke And Gass – Riposte
  • Cee-Lo Green – The Lady Killer
  • Gretchen Parlato – The Lost And Found
  • Laura Marling – I Speak Because I Can
  • Midlake – The Trials Of Van Occupanther
  • Thao with the Get Down Stay Down – Know Better Learn Faster
  • Willem Maker – Agapao

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/06/30/some-recent-ish-records-i-like/feed/ 1 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/06/13/buddhism-atheism-me/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/06/13/buddhism-atheism-me/#comments Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:14:55 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4265

  
  

  From Buddha In The Modern World (Ongoing Photo Essay)

  I’ve been an atheist since I was 15 years old.

  Before that I was a very devout religious kid. So much so that the first and third things I wanted to be when I grew up were a Catholic monk (because I knew and liked one) and a Methodist minister (because I knew and liked two). The second thing was a paleontologist.

  Then one day I realized that I didn’t believe in God. I tried for a while to make a go of the fellowship aspect of church without the God bit, but it didn’t really work and most folks who knew about my change in thinking weren’t all that happy about it. There were some major exceptions, including the person I credit with first opening my eyes to the idea of atheism as a viable alternative to belief — my friend Kevin Baird. To this day that remains one of the best gifts a friend has ever given me.

  I’m now 37, so that means I’ve been an atheist for 22 years, longer than I wasn’t one. In the intervening years, the only times I’ve tried on the trappings of religion have been during a couple flirtations with Buddhism. My first interest in Buddhism came during my second stint in Japan from ’96-’98, then during my first time in Brooklyn in 2000. Then I became more intensely interested later while living in Rochester, home to a large and active Zen center founded by famed Zen popularizer Philip Kapleau.

  [Funny aside: As I'm typing this, I'm listening to Talking Heads sing "Once In A Lifetime," which seems almost comically appropriate to what is fueling this essay.]

  While living in Rochester, I regularly attended the Zen center for a while and practiced meditation at home in a room where I’d set up a small Buddhist altar. I found the practice of meditation extremely beneficial, but it seemed so wrapped up in religious trappings, such as monastic hierarchy and ritual, that my dislike of religion eventually outweighed my appreciation for meditation. I stepped away again and didn’t return for nearly a decade.

  Now I’m back in Brooklyn. As you may have read in earlier posts (1) (2), my life has changed a lot in recent years. As have I, thanks to a combination of maturity and therapy. And once again I find myself very attracted to Buddhism. This time, though, it’s Buddhism with a very different context.

  I was browsing in a bookstore a while back and stumbled across the work of Stephen Batchelor, particularly his books Buddhism Without Beliefs and Confession Of A Buddhist Atheist. You can imagine the appeal of a philosophy that incorporates the best parts of Buddhism and simultaneously strips away the need for a belief in reincarnation or anything else not supported by testing and experience.

  Batchelor’s argument — and I hope he’ll forgive me for this gross simplification — is that the Buddha’s point was about dealing with the cessation of suffering in this world, irrespective of whatever might come after and independent of any need for a belief in an eternal “self.” That’s right up my alley, because the core ideas of Buddhism were extremely helpful to me when I last tried to employ them in my life, but the idea of special or mystical knowledge held only by a priestly caste always seemed exclusionary. And to the inevitable criticism that I’m choosing just the bits of Buddhism I like and ignoring the bits I don’t, I’ll rely on Batchelor’s answer to this same critique: “It has always been thus.”

  So in recent months I’ve gone back to my meditation practice and back to a fairly intense reading of Buddhist literature. A friend commented recently, “Are you becoming a Buddhist? I thought you were an atheist.” I don’t know the answer to the first question, but the answer to the second part hasn’t changed since I was 15. I have no belief in the supernatural, be that God or eternal life or reincarnation or magic or whatever. Buddhism as I am choosing to understand it these days doesn’t require that. And it provides a set of tools — or, more appropriately, a path — that helps me navigate my world in a healthier, more present, more compassionate way.

  I’m certainly at the beginning of this phase of my life, and you may come back here in a few months or a few years and I’ll be posting my “What was I thinking?” essay. But at the moment I feel like I’ve hit on the right combination for where I am and what I need right now. And I’m okay with that.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/06/13/buddhism-atheism-me/feed/ 6 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/05/08/some-thoughts-on-being-a-vegan/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/05/08/some-thoughts-on-being-a-vegan/#comments Mon, 09 May 2011 00:56:09 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4262

  NOTE: I became a vegan seven months ago after being a lifelong omnivore. This post was prompted by a discussion on Facebook and a note I wrote to a relative following that discussion.

  I just wanted to say a bit more (off Facebook) about my intentions with today’s posts. Yes, some members of our family lived into their 90s. And had cancer and heart trouble, too. The incidence of cancer is extremely high in our family, and only some of that (according to doctors) is directly traceable to genetics. Much of it is directly linked to diet.

  Add to that the fact that my kids’ mother, father and grandfather have all struggled with weight issues, and their other grandfather is dead from heart trouble, and I really started to think about how we’re living and how we could live better.

  Plus the plain truth is that eating meat is destroying our planet. According to the UN, the environmental harm caused by factory farming is greater than that caused by all the transportation networks in the world combined.

  And — and this is the argument I always had to ignore for myself all those years I ate meat — animals are sentient beings with feelings and families and a desire to not be in pain. We don’t need to eat them. We are harmed physically by eating them and drinking or otherwise using their byproducts. So we have to say, “I think it’s justifiable to kill and eat these creatures or use them in other ways so that I can have pleasure, regardless of the consequences for myself or the world around me.” What pushed me over to being vegan was that I could no longer keep saying that.

  I’m definitely preaching like a new convert, but that’s not because I just figured this stuff out. I just finally had the courage to do it. And I really care about the people in my life and want them to be healthier, too. And I think if we as progressives are going to keep talking about the environment and corporate control and health care, this is a simple step we can take to walk that walk.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/05/08/some-thoughts-on-being-a-vegan/feed/ 2 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/16/some-thoughts-on-hugging/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/16/some-thoughts-on-hugging/#comments Sat, 16 Apr 2011 17:03:03 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4250

  

  I’ve always been a fan of hugging. I grew up in a demonstrative family and then lucked out in high school, finding a small group of cool friends who weren’t afraid to be physically affectionate. Everybody hugged everybody, regardless of gender or orientation.

  The older I got, the less hugging factored into my interactions. I still hugged people sometimes, but I found that many people were uncomfortable with it – particularly other men – so I did it less and less. I remember having a conversation with a friend in Rochester about how little physical affection people show to one another on a daily basis in the U.S. We had both lived in other countries and experienced very different attitudes toward physical intimacy. Even in Japan, with what most outsiders would consider a very formal culture, it was common to see men, particularly of my generation, with their arms around one another and touching one another without being self-conscious about it.

  Over the past couple years I’ve tried to put more frequent hugging back in my repertoire and have discovered a number of fairly standard reactions.

  1. Good hugs

  Some folks just get it. They put their arms around you and give you a strong – but not crushing – embrace that doesn’t involve back-patting or awkward chuckling. Those hugs make the world seem like a pretty good place, and, for me at least, give me a real sense of well-being, respect and love.

  2. Molecular hugs

  These are the hugs where one person is really giving a hug and the other person is trying to touch as few molecules of the hugger’s body as possible. These hugs seem to be motivated by a belief that hugging is what is socially required (particularly in certain political/activist/liberal/progressive circles, I’ve noticed) juxtaposed against the person’s strong desire to not be hugged. The weird thing about these hugs is that it’s most often the person who doesn’t want to be physically affectionate who initiates the hug. Again, I think as a sort of expected social interaction.

  3. Burping-the-baby hugs

  Apparently some people can only equate hugging with burping a baby. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for those hugs that involve lots of back-patting. Unless I’ve just told you that I’m feeling bloated and I ask for your help, I don’t need to be patted. Like the molecular hug, this always has the feel of obligation attached to it rather than a true desire for connection.

  4. Guy-on-guy hugs

  When these are done right (a la #1 above) they’re a rare and wonderful affirmation of shared humanity. Most of the time, though, they’re either the one-hand-clasped-half-hug or the awkward-chuckle hug. It’s 2011 and there are still many men who are completely shocked by the idea of receiving a hug from another man.

  5. Surprise hugs

  These are a subtle variation of #1 above. For me, receiving a hug from someone when you didn’t expect that level of connection is a wonderful surprise. I find this happens most often in my work as an interviewer. I always shake hands with the artists I interview when I first arrive and that’s usually what happens at the end, too. But every once in a while the guest will give me a hug at the end, which feels great because it means we’ve made a real connection during the interview. These hugs always make my day. Once in a while, I mess them up.

  / / /

  So there’s my list. Not comprehensive, I’m sure. And you may have your own take on why some of these hugs happen. If so, feel free to share them in the comments. Then go hug somebody!

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/16/some-thoughts-on-hugging/feed/ 4 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/13/poem-new-york-basement-blues/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/13/poem-new-york-basement-blues/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 04:28:28 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4243

  I went to Jazz Standard tonight to see Ben Allison’s band with Michael Blake, Steve Cardenas, Jason Lindner and Rudy Royston. I wrote this poem during the show, inspired by things in the club, phrases I heard, song titles and my owned fevered imagination. The first quotation in the poem was said from the stage by Michael Blake.

  

  Photo by jazzmix.org

  new york basement blues

  1.
  grab your jazz hat
  meet me in the bent-note basement
  Jackie’s back of the bar
  sloshing the occasional beer
  on the tongue-colored tile

  the Dutch couple near the stage
  look trapped, unsure
  told, perhaps, that this would be

  something else

  (close your eyes, dear,
  and think of Holland)

  2.
  there was a monk on San Juan Hill
  who could tell your fortune
  in two bars of three

  he could stop on a dime:
  and give you nonsense and change

  “you and me baby” he’d say
  “let’s start our own country
  and nobody will come”

  (he had a sign in his window / it said:
  MY BOSS IS KAREN CARPENTER)

  3.
  later, as the sleepy-eyed theater boys
  slowly regain their senses
  a sidewalk prophet in plaid and denim
  hands us a poem by William Blake

  on which he’s drawn a caricature
  of Barrack Obama
  hugging Margaret Thatcher

  “April is the cruelest month” he says
  “except for February, which I’ve never liked”

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/13/poem-new-york-basement-blues/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/11/poem-fireflies/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/11/poem-fireflies/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:05:21 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/11/poem-fireflies/

  This poem was inspired by seeing vocalist Fay Victor and bassist Dominic Lash perform together tonight at the Evolving Music Series. Here’s an album of photos from the event, which also included Theo Bleckmann & Jay Clayton, Charles Gayle’s Forgiveness and more.

  

  fireflies

  my mouth is full of fireflies
  a spring night jack-o-lantern
  with glowing cheeks
  my honeyed ears hum
  with the soft songs of bees
  and their dancing maps
  there are dogs and bears and tragic lovers
  haunting the April sky
  a night woodsman thunks his axe into a stump
  I hear a grumbling ostinato in the trees
  the song of an unseen singer
  calling me homeward toward my little room
  filled floor to ceiling with jars of fireflies
  damp with saliva

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/11/poem-fireflies/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/07/poem-song-without-words/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/07/poem-song-without-words/#comments Fri, 08 Apr 2011 04:04:44 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4232

  I wrote this tonight at Bar Next Door while listening to James Shipp, Mike LaValle, Rogerio Boccato and Jo Lawry.

  

  song without words

  there is a way you sing
  this song without words
  that reminds me of
  water touching sand

  the bell falls to the ground
  like a baby’s eyes opening

  your fingers tap the chorro
  I taste warm maté

  what if we never get past
  this slowly revolving door?

  never get to the sunshine lands
  where children play big drums
  and dance without fear?

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/07/poem-song-without-words/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/07/poem-a-fundamental-understanding-of-the-nature-of-the-universe/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/07/poem-a-fundamental-understanding-of-the-nature-of-the-universe/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 21:17:56 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4222

  

  a fundamental understanding of the nature of the universe

  you went to hug me
  I shook your hand
  like a key that wouldn’t turn

  there’s a fake sky painted
  on the ceiling of this restaurant
  much bluer than the real one
  held at bay by thick windows
  and sitar music

  everyone in here is eating alone
  as if that’s okay

  one of the waitresses is singing

  beside the door is a box
  filled with slips of paper
  imparting bits of wisdom

  as if life can be changed
  by words on a piece of paper

  (which, of course, it can)

  on the piano in your living room
  you played me a song that your father loved
  I sat on the floor and listened

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/07/poem-a-fundamental-understanding-of-the-nature-of-the-universe/feed/ 4 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/02/poem-it-takes-a-certain-kind-of-person/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/02/poem-it-takes-a-certain-kind-of-person/#comments Sat, 02 Apr 2011 15:31:51 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4217

  I wrote this last night at the Village Vanguard.

  / / /

  it takes a certain kind of person

  to pull off that many non-ironic flowers on the front of her shirt

  to wear his hair in a ponytail in defiance of age stereotypes

  to don red Chuck Taylors more appropriate for a man with fewer responsibilities

  to absorb the needy stares of this late-night basement

  to not believe that the knot in your intestines was tied by her careless fingers

  to assume this verse is free when the truth is I paid for it

  to sit beneath all those photographs but not know your history

  to step over, to walk around, to pretend not to notice, to look away

  to sit and scribble in the dark while the man in front of the curtain spills his blood

  to run the tips of your fingers across the soft skin just below your throat, knowing everyone is looking

  to drink that drink like you never raised your hand to another human being

  to remember what I wore that night but only because you didn’t like it

  to play those particular notes in that particular order

  to not know that the other half of this arrangement is that you are supposed to look over here

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/04/02/poem-it-takes-a-certain-kind-of-person/feed/ 2 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/30/poem-lipstick-is-poison/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/30/poem-lipstick-is-poison/#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:18:29 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4214

  This is a found poem. A man sat across from me on the subway and said these words exactly in this order. I just set them as a poem. I love New York City.

  

  lipstick is poison

  a woman’s pocketbook is a transmitter
  she wants to leave the fucking book at your house

  and then a government missile
  will blow up your house

  women are government agents
  secret agent man

  after 10,000 years, rebel command
  will be able to beat back the government

  proton torpedoes
  the world belongs to us

  whoever possesses proton torpedoes
  will be able to rule the world with an iron first

  women are government agents
  secret agent man

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/30/poem-lipstick-is-poison/feed/ 1 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/24/poem-no-fences-for-amy-cervini/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/24/poem-no-fences-for-amy-cervini/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2011 03:16:27 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4203

  I saw Amy Cervini‘s “Jazz Country” band at 55 Bar tonight. Amy was joined by Steve Cardenas, Anat Cohen and Ike Sturm. The music was gorgeous and this poem was inspired by the first song they played. I won’t name the song so you won’t have the melody and lyrics running through your head when you read the poem. And I shouldn’t have to point out, but I will, that although this is written in the first person, this is not a love poem from me to the happily married Ms. Cervini. Cool? Cool. There have been enough jazz feuds without me starting another! Anyway, enjoy the poem and go see this band.

  
  

  From Amy Cervini's "Jazz Country" & Victor Prieto Trio

  no fences
  (for Amy Cervini)

  if you had a horse
  and I had a horse
  we could ride horses
  through our crooked village
  with our clarinets
  making all the children laugh
  you in your circled dress
  me in whatever a nearsighted fool
  wears on a horse
  no steeplechase for us
  because our village has no fences
  just streets that meet at oblique angles
  and plenty of space for the angels
  of our better nature to sally forth
  with the sun on their wings
  and clear water in their canteens
  there may not be mountains
  but we can see the tall buildings
  and they’ll do

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/24/poem-no-fences-for-amy-cervini/feed/ 3 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/23/smorgasblog-this-dave/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/23/smorgasblog-this-dave/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:00:27 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4197

  This post exists purely so that Dave Bonta will Smorgasblog it and create a loop.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/23/smorgasblog-this-dave/feed/ 1 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/22/poem-the-streets/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/22/poem-the-streets/#comments Wed, 23 Mar 2011 04:34:44 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4183

  I wrote this poem while listening to Ben Allison, Mark Guiliana and Steve Cardenas at Kush. In defense of the trio’s reputation, I was not actually an “audience of one” as it says in the poem.

  
  

  From Ben Allison at Kush – March 22, 2011

  the streets

  are my private space
  where I go to get away
  to be alone with all the others
  who are alone together

  walking the Bowery
  is a moving meditation
  a reminder that ill fortune is
  as fleeting as anything else

  I’m an audience of one
  in a darkened club
  talking to my faraway sons
  on the phone before the band starts

  really, it’s getting a bit ridiculous
  I go from coffee shop to art house
  to sushi bar to jazz club
  no bongos, no beret, no one beside me

  I waited a couple days
  then gave up on this Zen bullshit
  and sent the message anyway
  broke a rule known only to me

  let’s be honest:
  no amount of playing it cool
  matters at all
  and who has the time?

  pull up a pillow
  let’s huddle around this candle
  as the snare drum echoes
  off these fake-middle-eastern walls

  let’s all play guitars
  or take photographs of dogs in sweaters
  or paint ambitious murals
  with no thought of tomorrow

  let’s learn to hula-hoop
  or juggle points of view
  ride unicycles past
  the unworthy gazes of businessmen

  tonight I spoke with the one man
  in all of New York who knows
  how to use “vonce” in a sentence
  and can play Al Green backwards

  I’d like to dance in tiny circles
  like they used to do in San Juan Hill
  before the boxes
  replaced the real people

  I’d like to live in a tiny studio
  eat rice and play records
  with no space for anything
  but room enough for everything

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/22/poem-the-streets/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/21/poem-in-spite-of-clouds/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/21/poem-in-spite-of-clouds/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:06:16 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4177

  

  in spite of clouds

  you can either kiss me
  or give me a consolation prize
  I’m hoping you’ll choose the former
  because my spare room is full
  of trinkets from the could-have-beens

  there may not be sunshine
  but we can dance like we had
  long shadows to join us
  spinning on the street corner
  while the dogwalkers give us space

  do you remember all the times
  I didn’t tell you anything?
  chose not to say what I thought
  and hid my true feelings
  in a cloud of jokes?

  does reading Shakespeare
  in this coffee shop
  make me a hipster?
  does writing this poem
  make it worse?

  my friends don’t believe me
  when I tell them I ride trains
  with famous people
  or ascend in elevators
  with TV comedians

  but I like to think
  I’d make up better lies
  if my goal were to impress
  I know for certain I’d be
  kissing more people in my stories

  that’s what I miss most
  the kisses
  real ones you can feel
  through your whole body
  like the roller coaster dropping

  these clouds can’t last forever
  the sun will be all the more brilliant
  for our missing it
  my shadow and I are waiting
  to dance with you

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/21/poem-in-spite-of-clouds/feed/ 1 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/21/my-new-self-help-book-is-now-available/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/21/my-new-self-help-book-is-now-available/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:43:11 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4174

  

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/21/my-new-self-help-book-is-now-available/feed/ 1 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/20/poem-sycamore/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/20/poem-sycamore/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:15:03 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4163

  I took a crazy series of trains and buses from Manhattan to Brooklyn tonight to see a solo set by bassist John Hébert at Sycamore, a tiny basement music spot at 1118 Cortelyou Road. As it turned out, there was also a solo set by drummer Billy Mintz. I wrote this piece during Hébert’s set.

  
  

  From John Hébert & Billy Mintz at Sycamore

  sycamore

  I am not Bob Dylan
  you are not Bob Dylan’s girlfriend

  here in this Brooklyn basement
  we are all making eye contact
  over the bulging body of the bass
  filling this quaint cave with mumbled rhetoric

  as if on cue all the women
  on the bench close their eyes
  right legs crossing left legs
  as a single bead of sweat
  drops from the bassist’s nose
  to the threadbare rug

  you know who you are
  all the men have sensitive beards
  you know who you are

  I planted a sycamore in the backyard
  so we could sit beneath it and remember

  I planted a willow in the front yard
  so we could sit beneath it and regret

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/20/poem-sycamore/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/20/poem-barrio-music/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/20/poem-barrio-music/#comments Sun, 20 Mar 2011 15:08:19 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4151

  Yesterday I saw Chris Washburne and SYOTOS at El Museo del Barrio. I wrote this during the gig. Some of the poem is based on the performance and things that were played and said during it, and other lines are paraphrased from the brilliant book The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love by Oscar Hijuelos. The last two lines are instructions given to me back when I played latin jazz for a living.

  

  barrio music

  this is sacred ground
  church on Saturday
  we should be dancing
  led down the aisle by El Rey
  like a victory parade
  hips swaying, laughing
  we are praying to the holy trinity
  the mambo, the rumba
  and the cha cha cha
  James Brown, Machito and Schoenberg
  this isn’t music for sitting down
  when you play the clave, play the clave
  and clap like your mama’s making tortillas

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/20/poem-barrio-music/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/20/poem-again-pashal/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/20/poem-again-pashal/#comments Sun, 20 Mar 2011 14:24:32 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4142

  I’m very taken with the concept of “pashal.” Here’s another poem exploring that idea.

  
  Photo source

  again, pashal

  one after another
  they approach the edge
  of the subway platform
  and look down the tunnel
  for signs of a train

  as if the looking
  makes the train come faster

  following the same impulse
  each person in turn
  pushes the elevator button
  even when the arrow is lit

  but the leaf flows downstream
  taken by chance and the current
  and the sidewalk leads everywhere
  if you let it

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/20/poem-again-pashal/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/19/poem-pashal/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/19/poem-pashal/#comments Sat, 19 Mar 2011 13:00:40 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4136

  A friend taught me the Filipino word “pashal,” which, as I understand it, means to stroll or walk around without a particular plan and with the hope of discovering something. I think that’s a beautiful idea.

  

  pashal

  that the chain wouldn’t come unstuck
  was a little gift, forcing us
  to slow down in Grand Army Plaza
  where we otherwise wouldn’t have been

  a breakdancer offered to marry you
  but I don’t think you accepted
  and we were stuck on the one street corner
  in all of New York without a Starbucks

  it’s easy to forget how gorgeous it is here
  then the sunshine repaints the city
  and everyone smiles, remembering childhood
  or their first love or a walk last summer

  another friend tells me to slow down
  but this isn’t a city of leisure
  and everyone knows springtime
  is for falling in love

  even with a broken wheel
  a bicycle is a beautiful thing
  and sometimes what’s implied by the painting
  is even better than the painting itself

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/19/poem-pashal/feed/ 3 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/18/poem-friday-night-at-the-vanguard/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/18/poem-friday-night-at-the-vanguard/#comments Sat, 19 Mar 2011 03:16:06 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4131

  Hard as it is to believe, I went to my first show at the Village Vanguard in New York tonight. The band was Terrell Stafford, Bruce Barth, Tim Warfield, Peter Washington and Dana Hall. I wrote this in the dark during the set. I wanted it to seem a bit noirish, thus “the blond.” I’m not sure if that’s OK.

  

  Friday night at the Vanguard

  there’s something about the way the blond
  is tilting her head, laying it back
  against the cushions like she’s dreaming

  – stop —

  now we’re in church and a “go ‘head”
  comes from stage left
  where the trumpeter sits snapping his fingers
  in what would be a cliche in other circumstances

  the blond leans forward
  she has a cleft in her chin like an action hero
  on her it’s intriguing

  – can I get an “amen”? –

  it’s a ballad again
  she leans over so far you’d think
  she had a stomach ache, but she’s smiling

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/18/poem-friday-night-at-the-vanguard/feed/ 2 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/16/joy/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/16/joy/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:08:22 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4120 I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about joy.

  Today, for example, I was coming back from a jazz interview in Chinatown, listening to a mix of classic Stevie Wonder tunes from the 70s. I was on a subway platform walking from one train to the next with “Please Don’t Go” in my ears. It got to that part where Stevie goes into the chorus for the final time. The backing vocals kick in holding out long “aaahs” and the song modulates up a step. The feeling of happiness — of pure joy — was so intense that I could feel it in my stomach and I got that feeling around the eyes that you get when you’re almost-but-not-quite crying. I was in love with everyone and imagined they were all in love with me. I’m sure I had a huge smile on my face and I was dancing just a little while trying not to look like a nut. Probably trying and failing.

  That feeling — an almost unbearable joy — happens most often for me with music, but it happens at other times, too. These days I’m focused on it because, to the external observer, my life offers few reasons to be joyous. I’m unemployed. I’m sleeping on my parents’ couch. My wife and I separating. Amicably, but it’s still a huge change after 15 years of marriage. My kids live in another state and it’s not clear when we’ll all live near one another again.

  Those circumstances present two problems. One issue is that they’re not conditions that lend themselves to feelings of happiness. By most objective measures of success, my life is a bit of a shambles, in the same way the Titanic was “a bit of a disaster.” In fact, a few months ago my mom likened being my mother to being on a cruise ship during a huge storm. (OK, she actually said “during a tsunami,” but that’s a very charged word right now, particularly given my family ties to Japan.) Finding moments of happiness, or a path toward sustained happiness, is quite a challenge these days. Or at least it ought to be.

  However — and this is the other issue — I’m actually happy a lot of the time. I love being in New York. I love talking with all the musicians I interview. I’m thrilled to be closer to many of my friends (although saddened to be farther from a few of them). I’m doing interesting things every day, in addition to writing a million cover letters and living off the state/parents dole. I’m excited about the personal transformation I’m going through and the possibilities it presents for love and fulfillment and growth. And I often wonder whether it’s OK to be feeling this way at all.

  I don’t know if it’s because of youthful religious conditioning, or the effects of chronic and lifelong depression, or the way many of us in this country are conditioned to think, or some combination of all three, but I have a hard time accepting happiness. Actually being happy. When I’m walking down the subway platform and feeling so much joy that I want to start hugging strangers, there’s always that little voice in the back of my head warning me again these feelings of happiness. How can I be happy when I don’t have a job? When I’m not providing any material assistance to my kids, with whom I’m not even living?

  There’s no easy answer. But I guess what I’ve come up with is that I’d rather find and hold onto these moments of joy than give in to the moments of despair. I’d rather be optimistic about the future. I’d rather work on becoming a happy, healthy, fulfilled and loving person — the kind of person I want my kids to have for a dad. Maybe I’m letting myself off the hook and maybe some of you reading this think I’ve got no right to be happy. But I’ve been keeping myself on a hook for years and years, and I’m ready to try something different.

  So today I danced on a subway platform to Stevie Wonder. And tomorrow I hope to do the same thing.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/16/joy/feed/ 23 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/14/poem-leaves/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/14/poem-leaves/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:23:05 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4112

  I don’t write much rhymed or metered poetry. The critical among you may say that this poem doesn’t change that fact. But the first two lines came to me right before sleep last night so I turned the light back on and wrote the rest.

  

  leaves

  and when we’d finished reading Whitman on that hill
  we should have turned to one another like lovers will
  I should have kissed you there and then or you kissed me
  the way that Whitman wrote of love – effortlessly
  and if I’d know then on that hill what I know now
  I would have silenced all your doubts with my lips’ vow

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/14/poem-leaves/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/12/poem-warm-bodies/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/12/poem-warm-bodies/#comments Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:33:25 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4106

  I recently visited the excellent Museum of Chinese in America in New York. This poem was partly inspired by that experience.

  

  warm bodies

  we are happy to have warm bodies
  to throw at their guns
  Chinese, black, dynasty, diaspora
  anyone but our own sons

  what happened to thirty paces
  the crack of the pistol
  as the mist rose off the dawn ground

  when did we start loading the chambers
  with soft flesh
  gunpowder burning the skin
  as we launch the children of the poor
  at the children of the poor

  praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
  and if he gives you any trouble
  shoot the fucker

  it’s a hard equation
  but that’s how we do math these days
  with mercenary sensibility and a lead-pipe cruelty
  not even John Cusack can make charming

  the baby in the bassinet
  has dynamite in her mouth
  the fuse trails off under a door marked
  RESTRICTED

  in the morning you find a card in your mailbox:
  “Manzanar — Wish You Were Here!”
  the accompanying cartoon
  helps our boys track you down
  by the way you walk and the slant of your eyes

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/12/poem-warm-bodies/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/10/poem-hive-dance/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/10/poem-hive-dance/#comments Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:36:09 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4099

  

  hive dance

  he asks her to dance
  she says no
  so he hovers at the edge
  of the buzzing crowd
  one more bee awaiting
  the location of a flower

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/10/poem-hive-dance/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/09/incomplete-memoir-part-18-final-installment/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/09/incomplete-memoir-part-18-final-installment/#comments Wed, 09 Mar 2011 13:00:02 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=3923

  About five years ago I started writing a memoir. I kept at it for a little while, writing about 1,000 words a day for a few weeks. I hadn’t yet been to therapy and there were many things I didn’t really understand about my life, but I still find the unfinished memoir to be a fascinating look into my own past. I’ve decided to post it in installments here, with only a few redactions. You can find the other sections by clicking the Memoir category.

  / / /

  18.

  Lenox is also the place where my family began its decline and separation. Thinking back on my time there as a small child, I remember big family dinners with aunts and uncles, cousins both near and distant, my grandparents, my mother. We gathered around the big table in my grandparents’ dining room for meals; the adults swapping stories as one or another of my cousins chased me under the table to tickle me.

  While “Lenox” survived, my family thrived. Or at least it did in my young estimation. We were all close – geographically and emotionally. We did things together. I played with my cousins, ate junk food with my grandparents, went to Friendly’s for a Fribble. The town was the like the mass of gravity at the center of our familial galaxy. It held us together, gave us a shared history and sense of belonging. Even as young as I was, I could tell that it was a special place. Our special place.

  And then, in ones and twos and threes and fours, my family began to leave. Aunt Jill married Chuck Sohl and moved to Baltimore. Linda and Dick and Tammy and Todd were in Wareham on Cape Cod. My mother got remarried, and she and I followed my new dad to upstate New York, then Oklahoma, then back to New York State again. Within a few years, Denise and John and Lynne and Mike were in Kentucky. Then my grandparents left, driven out of the Hagyard building by soaring rent, but also pulled into the new orbit of one of their far-flung daughters. Inside of 10 years, everyone was gone but my grandmother’s brother, Great-Uncle Jack. The apartments in the Hagyard Building went to new tenants. And my anchor in Berkshire County came undone, leaving my ship to float directionless in new waters.

  Norman Rockwell’s paintings were my image of family life – the ideal to which I compared my own family. A comparison made all that much easier because he painted people we actually knew in the place we lived. But like so many American families, mine was scattering, following work as it moved to new boomtowns in the South and the West.

  We were never the same again. No more big family dinners. Fewer and fewer visits. Our relationships reduced to the Saturday round of phone calls between the matriarchs of the individual branches, as memories of cousins faded from the minds of the younger members of the families.

  I miss my family.

  / / /

  That’s it. That’s as far as I got five years ago. In the time since, both my grandparents have died, my parents have moved from their home of 25 years and are about to move again, my sister moved, my own little family has moved several times and is now scattered, and more change is on the immediate horizon. In fact, I’ve moved during the run of these memoir installments.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/09/incomplete-memoir-part-18-final-installment/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/08/incomplete-memoir-part-17/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/08/incomplete-memoir-part-17/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:00:37 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=3918

  About five years ago I started writing a memoir. I kept at it for a little while, writing about 1,000 words a day for a few weeks. I hadn’t yet been to therapy and there were many things I didn’t really understand about my life, but I still find the unfinished memoir to be a fascinating look into my own past. I’ve decided to post it in installments here, with only a few redactions. You can find the other sections by clicking the Memoir category.

  / / /

  17.

  My grandparents have always seemed more like enemies than friends. Their tempestuous relationship has been at the center of quite a few arguments in my family over the years. The easy analysis is that my grandmother is a tyrant who beat my grandfather down over the course of 65 years of marriage. She’s been the villain in most disputes, and both of her daughters tend to side with their father.

  Ever since I can remember, my grandmother has had nothing but vitriol and scorn for my grandfather. She corrected everything he ever said and shot down every idea he ever had. Eventually she reduced him to sitting alone in a room at the end of the hall (no matter where they lived, he always ended up in a room at the end of the hall) listening to the radio or watching The Price Is Right while working on a cross-stitch picture or a scrimshaw or a wood carving or a painting. Her shrew nature was certainly good for my grandfather’s artistic side, and for the rest of the families’ desire for free artwork.

  In recent years, we’ve begun to discover another side to my grandfather. Particularly since my grandparents and my Aunt Linda (their daughter) moved in together. My grandmother has been sick quite a bit, and she’s now in a nursing home a few miles from their house. That means my aunt, her partner, and my grandfather share a house, and my Linda says she’s seen a whole different Bernie as a result. She describes him as distant and demanding. Set in his ways and unwilling to change. She talks about him getting angry – something no one has seen in his 93 years of life. And she says that as while my grandmother may have the tyrannical reputation, my grandfather has his own weapon – silence.

  As a kid and a young adult, I was always on my grandfather’s side. I never understood why he didn’t fight back, and I’d sometimes take on my grandmother for him when I just couldn’t take the sniping anymore. But maybe my grandfather was the smarter combatant. Maybe his cold war was ultimately more effective than my hot war could ever have been. Maybe his goal wasn’t victory, but reprieve. His room at the end of the hall, filled with art projects, Bob Barker and big band music.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/08/incomplete-memoir-part-17/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/07/incomplete-memoir-part-16/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/07/incomplete-memoir-part-16/#comments Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:00:26 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=3912

  About five years ago I started writing a memoir. I kept at it for a little while, writing about 1,000 words a day for a few weeks. I hadn’t yet been to therapy and there were many things I didn’t really understand about my life, but I still find the unfinished memoir to be a fascinating look into my own past. I’ve decided to post it in installments here, with only a few redactions. You can find the other sections by clicking the Memoir category.

  / / /

  16.

  “Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.”

  That’s what my grandmother would say every time we pulled into the little driveway on Housatonic Street next to the Hagyard Building. The driveway ended in a squat, yellow-brick garage. The garage is now an upscale-chocolate-and-fine-art store run by a retired National Geographic photographer. Back in the 70’s, though, it was just a garage. I don’t remember ever parking the car in there.

  Next to the driveway, facing Housatonic Street, was a narrow wooden door that led to the steep flight of steps up to my grandparents’ apartment on the second floor. When I talked to my father for the first time in 28 years, he told me that he remembered leaving my Christmas presents at the top of those stairs the year he and my mom split up. He said he sat in his car with an alarm clock to wake him so he could creep up the stairs, drop off the gifts and drive off.

  My grandparents used to get a new car every two years, no matter what. They were fond of convertibles, although I came along after they’d traded in their final convertible. They drove Chevrolets, back when families were Ford Families or Chevy Families.
  

  When I was a kid, my grandmother still drove. That seems almost surreal now, given that she stopped driving about 25 years ago. But I clearly remember her driving me around Lenox and Pittsfield. She worked as the receptionist in the beauty parlor in England Brothers, a department store on the main drag in Pittsfield. My grandmother was a snappy dresser – never a hair out of place, always the right accessory. My cousin’s wife, Karen, used to go with her mother when her mother would get her hair done at England Brothers. Karen said she’d sit in awe of my grandmother, wanting to be like the glamorous lady at the reception desk.

  For most of my life, my grandmother has been sitting in an easy chair watching television. It’s almost hard to create a picture of what she was like years ago. There’s the occasional black-and-white photo of my grandparents dressed to the nines, ready for a night on the town. There are stories of evening spent at the Crystal Ballroom dancing to Benny Goodman or the Dorsey Brothers or Duke Ellington. There were trips to Florida. Cruises in the Caribbean. Dinner with friends.

  Then it all just went away. My grandparents withdrew into themselves, into the TV set, and into the little dramas that are the hallmark of small families. I wish I’d known them better when they were lively and fun and dancing.

  No one in my family is quite sure what happened to them. It’s almost as if one day they had lives, and the next day they didn’t. Maybe retirement caused them both to lose steam. Maybe they were never really that social, and they just forced themselves to conform. As far as I know, once they left Lenox they never looked back. They never contacted their Lenox friends again – not even the Cronins, with whom they’d been extremely close. They just closed the door on that life and drove off to Plymouth, then Rochester, then Tucson, then back to the Rochester area again, part of a procession headed by one or the other of their daughters.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/07/incomplete-memoir-part-16/feed/ 0 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/06/incomplete-memoir-part-15/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/06/incomplete-memoir-part-15/#comments Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:00:48 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=3905

  About five years ago I started writing a memoir. I kept at it for a little while, writing about 1,000 words a day for a few weeks. I hadn’t yet been to therapy and there were many things I didn’t really understand about my life, but I still find the unfinished memoir to be a fascinating look into my own past. I’ve decided to post it in installments here, with only a few redactions. You can find the other sections by clicking the Memoir category.

  / / /

  15.

  About the Kenton record: When I was first listening to it as a kid, it never occurred to me that I might one day talk to members of the band. And I don’t mean that I never thought I could reach those heights. I mean it literally never occurred to me that the band existed in the real world, and that some people had jobs that allowed them to talk to musicians.

  I probably heard that record for the first time when I was four or five, and I got to know it well a decade later in junior high. Fifteen years after that, I interviewed Maynard Ferguson, one of the trumpeters on Kenton In Hi-Fi, and a legend in his own right. I didn’t ask him about that particular record, although we did talk about Kenton. He was a funny, approachable, articulate man, and he was very generous with his time as a guest on my radio show.

  Before I ever thought about interviewing famous musicians, I thought about becoming one. As a young child, I took classical guitar lessons, but I was never very good and I didn’t last long. Right before I went into 7th grade, my cousin-hero Todd sent me his clarinet, which he’d traded in for an electric bass. I started playing clarinet in junior high, switched to saxophone in high school, and decided that being a professional musician was the life for me. As it turned out, though, I got much closer to the top level of performers as an interviewer than I ever did as a performer.

  I’m not really sure when it was that I realized that musicians were actual human beings. Isn’t that strange? When do we cross that line of perception and discover that recorded sound is produced by regular people? How do we do it? I don’t think anyone ever told me that all those records were made by people just like me. I guess one day I just put together all the images I’d seen on TV with the records I’d been listening to and made the connection. All these years later, there’s still an element of magic and awe involved in talking with someone who was on a milestone recording.

  One of the strangest such meetings I ever had was with two legendary musicians – bassist Eddie Gomez, who played for years in the trio of pianist Bill Evans, and drummer Jimmy Cobb, who played with Miles Davis. They played a show in Furukawa, Japan. I lived in Furukawa in 1991 and 1992 as an exchange student, and I went back with my wife in 1996 when we decided to move to Japan.

  Furukawa was home to Hana no Yakata (Castle of Flowers), a jazz club run by a drummer who had long been one of Tokyo’s first-call players until illness forced him to retire to his hometown in northern Japan. The Master, as everyone called him, still had connections, and he’d often get famous jazz musicians to come up to his club when they played elsewhere in Japan.

  When Jen and I moved to Japan in late 1996, we stayed in Furukawa with my former host family while we searched the Tokyo newspapers for jobs. While we were there, Gomez and Cobb played a date at Hana no Yakata along with a pianist whose name I’ve forgotten, and the flute player Jeremy Steig, who also recorded with Bill Evans. I heard about the gig from The Master, and Jen and I made plans to go to the show.

  In the afternoon, we were walking down the street and saw two other foreigners – a rare site in Furukawa. One was an older African-American man wearing a puffy blue winter jacket, and the other was another non-Japanese man with glasses and a dark coat.

  “I think that’s Eddie Gomez and Jimmy Cobb,” I said to myself. And of course it was. But I didn’t go over to talk to them for some reason.

  Later that night, I showed up at the club and had a lovely dinner with Gomez, Cobb, Steig, the pianist, The Master and his wife, and one of my Japanese teachers from the high school I went to in Furukawa years before. So there I was, sitting down to dinner to with the drummer from Kind of Blue and the bassist from Bill Evans’ longest-running trio in a tiny jazz club in a small town in northeastern Japan. As the only other native English speaker, I had the lion’s share of the conversation. I knew less about the music then than I know now, and I asked them almost no questions at all about their history. We just talked about the food, the town, Japanese culture, and the Las Vegas jazz scene (the pianist was from Vegas). It was an experience that I’ll never duplicate, and one of the treasured memories of my time in Japan.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/06/incomplete-memoir-part-15/feed/ 1 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/05/incomplete-memoir-part-14/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/05/incomplete-memoir-part-14/#comments Sat, 05 Mar 2011 13:00:13 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=3898

  About five years ago I started writing a memoir. I kept at it for a little while, writing about 1,000 words a day for a few weeks. I hadn’t yet been to therapy and there were many things I didn’t really understand about my life, but I still find the unfinished memoir to be a fascinating look into my own past. I’ve decided to post it in installments here, with only a few redactions. You can find the other sections by clicking the Memoir category.

  / / /

  14.

  Going back to music for a minute: I had a very strange musical upbringing. I listened to Nat Cole and Stan Kenton at a time when most kids were listening to disco and Kiss. As I got older, I stayed on my own course. I got some hand-me-down 8-track tapes when I was maybe seven years old. I can’t remember all of them, but my two favorites were a Kiss greatest hits collection (which I loved because Kiss was my cousin Todd’s favorite band, and thus my favorite band, too) and a collection of performances by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. I can only recall one song from that collection – and orchestral version of Burt Bacharach’s “Do You Know The Way To San Jose?” What kind of kid listens to big band, cheese rock, and the Boston Pops? Did no one in my family own a radio?

  One explanation for my early musical taste is that I spent so much time in the Hagyard Building with my grandparents, who didn’t listen to the radio all that much. It’s odd that they didn’t, because listening to the radio has been my grandfather’s main passtime for the past 15 years or so. I don’t remember listening to the radio a lot with my parents, which again is odd because they both worked at a radio station. I think I really started listening to the radio after we moved to New York State. Or at least that’s when I remember riding in the car a lot with the radio on, catching up on some of the music I’d missed.

  Not counting the Kiss 8-track, I didn’t own my first rock record until I was in high school. I fell in with a crowd that was into prog rock. The first rock tape I remember owning was a copy of Signals by Rush, a Canadian rock band that my friend Jeff calls the “best all-girl band of the 70’s.” Somewhere around my freshman year, this group of friends turned my on to Yes, Genesis, Rush, King Crimson, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Asia, Jethro Tull – all your prog rock favorites. I still love those bands now, although my tastes have broadened considerably since high school.

  The first record I ever spent my own money on was Chuck Mangione’s 1978 album An Evening Of Magic: Live At The Hollywood Bowl. I got the album on cassette (two cassettes, if I remember right) and wore the thing out. In addition to Chuck on flugelhorn and electric piano, the concert featured Chris Vadala on saxes and flutes, Grant Geissman on guitar, Charles Meeks on the bass, James Bradley, Jr. on the drums, and a full orchestra. Vadala tears it up on every track. This album set the stage for my approach to jazz for years to come.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/05/incomplete-memoir-part-14/feed/ 2 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/04/incomplete-memoir-part-13/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/04/incomplete-memoir-part-13/#comments Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:00:14 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=3892

  About five years ago I started writing a memoir. I kept at it for a little while, writing about 1,000 words a day for a few weeks. I hadn’t yet been to therapy and there were many things I didn’t really understand about my life, but I still find the unfinished memoir to be a fascinating look into my own past. I’ve decided to post it in installments here, with only a few redactions. You can find the other sections by clicking the Memoir category.

  / / /

  13.

  My grandparents have played a big part in my life. My grandfather was a saxophonist and clarinetist when he was younger. He played in a swing band with some guys from the GE plant where he worked. When I was growing up, my grandparents had one of those console stereos that was a piece of furniture. It looked like the bottom part of a hutch when it was closed up. It was painted white, and the speaker section along the front had a curtain covering it. To get to the controls, you opened the top of the console. Inside was a turntable and a receiver. My grandpa had a big collection of swing records – including an entire series of records by Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra. These records were made in the 1950s, when Gray decided to create an archive of classic swing tunes by recreating the arrangements of the famous big bands.

  I learned every note on every one of these records. Unlike most kids in the late 70’s, who were memorizing the lyrics to “Detroit Rock City,” I was learning the horn parts to “Nightmare” and “String of Pearls” and “Take The A Train.” I also developed a real passion for Nat “King” Cole that continues to this day. My grandfather knew most of the soloists from the records – particularly the sax and clarinet players. He and my grandma were also big Lawrence Welk fans, and they both knew the names of every musician and singer and dancer on the show.

  My favorite album, and the one I learned the best, was Kenton In Hi-Fi. Kenton made this fantastic recording in 1956 for Capitol Records, and it features many of Stan’s biggest hits – “Artistry In Rhythm,” “Eager Beaver,” “Unison Riff,” and “Artistry Jumps,” to name a few. It also features the very gutsy tenor saxophonist Vido Musso, a ridiculous trumpet section led by Pete Candoli and Maynard Ferguson, and the drumming of the incomparable Mel Lewis. This record swings its ass off from start to finish, and it’s a huge piece of my musical upbringing.

  I still love big band music, particularly when it gets cold. I’m not sure what the correlation is, but as the winter approaches, I pull out all my Ellington and Basie and drift back into the first half of the 20th century. I listen to swing music throughout the year, but the strong pull of nostalgia is only there in the winter.

  I used my grandparents’ stereo for another important thing – listening to the adventures of folks like Superman and Spider-Man and the Six Million Dollar Man on book-and-record sets. Remember those? Back in the 70s, Marvel and DC put out oversized comic books with LP records. These were dramatized versions of the comics, complete with actors, sound effects and music. You could follow along in the comic book while you listened.

  The Six Million Dollar Man set had two adventures. One was his origin story: Test pilot Steve Austin crashes while testing an advanced aircraft. He’s severly injured, having lost one eye, one arm and both legs. Rather than perform a regular operation to save his life, the government decides to use Colonel Austin as a test subject for their new bionic project. They give him a bionic eye, bionic arm and bionic legs, making him “better, stronger and faster.” Then he becomes an agent for the government. On the flip side of the record, Austin travels to some fictional Eastern European country to take down a dictator.

  I also had a Spider-Man set that included a great story about J. Jonah Jameson’s son, who travels to the moon as an astronaut, returns to earth, and turns into a werewolf due to the effects of a moonrock pendant he wears around his neck. The climax is a confrontation in Jameson’s office at the Daily Bugle. Spider-Man tears the pendant off the werewolf’s neck, and Jameson learns that the creature is really his son. Heady stuff.

  I don’t know why comic book companies don’t still make those sets. I think they’d sell like hotcakes.

  

  ]]> http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/04/incomplete-memoir-part-13/feed/ 2 http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/03/9333-or-a-night-at-smalls/ http://jasoncrane.org/2011/03/03/9333-or-a-night-at-smalls/#comments Fri, 04 Mar 2011 04:20:49 +0000 Jason Crane http://jasoncrane.org/?p=4076

  I went to Small’s in the Village tonight to see Bruce Barth. I ran into several people I knew and some I’d never met in person. The whole experience felt like a poem, so it seemed only fitting to make it one.

  One of my favorite movies is An American In Paris. At the beginning of the film, Gene Kelly does some narration and mentions that he went to Paris because the great artists before him had gone there. I feel that way about New York and poetry, and also New York and jazz. I didn’t change any names in this poem to protect the innocent, either.

  

  9=3+3+3, or, A Night At Small’s

  on the train, this:
  if you don’t change direction,
  you may end up where you’re headed

  huh

  the sage is sleeping soundly
  slumped over against the pole
  if this were Japan, someone
  would wake him at his stop

  or more likely he would awaken
  as if by magic
  some shared ethnic telepathy
  connecting all Japanese to their destination

  but this is New York
  no such enlightenment
  is forthcoming

  Louis Armstrong is smiling
  in argyle socks
  a black Buddha before bebop

  Rebecca has blood-red nails
  that look jet-dark in this dim light
  her double-jointed pinky bent on the bar
  her name is alliterative, as is the artist’s
  who guesses it

  and, for that matter, the piano player’s
  (and his title)

  the Japanese photographer says
  he is ready to go home
  twenty-four years is long enough

  meanwhile the boy from Pasadena gets the seal
  of approval from the boy from Brooklyn
  it’s official: he’s a New Yorker now

  the mirror next to the piano is reflected in another mirror
  looked at from the right angle
  there are an infinite number of piano players
  (writing Hamlet?)
  and an unending row of archers

  people clap when they’re supposed to
  like a ritual prayer that’s lost its meaning
  in the observance

  even the photographers look like musicians
  and the temperamental cat is not a euphemism

  

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