La Mollie and the king of tears Book

In a Lonely Tenement

He awoke at 6am, and slid out of the bed in the 20’s studio apartment he’d leased for six months.

It was still dark outside, but he could see a sliver of golden glow in a crack in the curtains.

He went over to it, and drew the curtains slightly apart.

Across the gap in the horseshoe-shaped apartment building, but down one level, he could see the source of the glow.

A woman, in her pyjamas, was prancing around her bedroom, well, between the wardrobe and her bed.

She was trying to make a decision about which of two costumes to wear that day.

The wind changed direction, and he heard her radio. It was playing John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”.

He left the window, flicked on the lights in his studio and tuned the radio onto WBGO.

When he returned to the window, he drew the curtains open and noticed that the woman was now wearing her choice of day clothes.

It was then that she saw him.

“Hey, what the fuck are you looking at, man?” she called out.

“I didn’t see anything, honest, Maria,” he replied with a laugh.

“You can see anything you wanna, if you come on down here for breakfast,” she said, “I’m gonna make some pancakes, maple syrup, Canadian, too.”

“Sorry, Maria, I’ve got to finish my book. I’m on the last chapter. Today might be the big day.”

“Good...tonight, you and I…you and I...we’re going dancing.”

“It’s a date. I promise.”

He left the window with a fleeting smile, turned on the laptop that sat on his writer’s bureau, then opened the fridge door to see what was in store for him.

It was empty.

Today, as he had expected, he would write on an empty stomach, he would know what it felt like to be a jazz musician, like one of his heroes, only he knew that, tonight, there would be a happy ending.

And tomorrow, well, tomorrow, there would be pancakes.



A Jazz Curator’s Egg

For all but the last 30 pages of this book, I was prepared to say that it was the best book I had ever read about music of any description.

My reluctance reflects the way the book is divided into two parts.

The second part is a formal essay on Tradition, Innovation and Influence in Jazz Music.

The first and most impressive part is a collection of semi-fictionalized vignettes about incidents in the lives of eight jazz greats.

If Geoff Dyer had omitted the essay, I would have given the book five stars.

Ironically, perhaps, because he saw fit to include it, I will only give it four stars.

However, I will still say that the first part is the best writing I have ever read about music of any description.

Figures of Eight

The seven (out of eight) greats who get fully-fledged vignettes are Lester Young (tenor sax), Thelonious Monk (piano), Bud Powell (piano), Ben Webster (tenor sax), Charles Mingus (bass, composer), Chet Baker (trumpet) and Art Pepper (alto sax).

In between these sections are short passages describing a road trip between gigs, a long day’s journey into night, in which Duke Ellington (piano, composer) and his friend and band member of 45 years, Harry Carney (baritone sax) drive, converse and compose.

I originally included only Duke in my list of eight, but that is a product of ignorance on my part. I am less familiar with Duke Ellington’s music than the others and did not appreciate how crucial Harry was to his achievements.

So it should be nine.

Also, while the essay is more wide-ranging (which is part of its problem), John Coltrane (tenor sax) and, to a lesser extent, Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Miles Davis (trumpet) and Keith Jarrett (piano) are singled out for more extensive critical analysis.

So in a broader sense there could have been 13.

There is no real explanation of why these and not others (such as Art Tatum, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon or Louis Armstrong).

Dancing about Architecture

This relative absence of analytical detail is the essence of the appeal of the first part of the book.

There’s a well-known expression that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” (even though it’s difficult to know who to attribute it to):



Geoff Dyer’s writing forces us to reconsider just how much writing can add value to the experience of music.

Ultimately, in communicating with each other about music, most of us only have words to use, and words can be such a blunt and imprecise instrument.

In trying to do justice to the music he loves, Dyer has created a unique way of writing that is impressionistic and lyrical and inspiring.

Just as John Berger opened our eyes to ways of seeing, Dyer opens our minds to ways of writing and, therefore, of reading and listening to and appreciating music.

Improvising about Jazz

Faced with the desire to write a book about jazz, Dyer had to abandon the techniques of conventional criticism (including metaphors and similes that he had previously used to evoke what he thought was happening) and embrace improvisation.

What he came up with is just as much “imaginative criticism as fiction”.

His raw materials weren’t just recordings of the music, they included other biographies, criticism, journalism and personal interviews with musicians, family and friends.

Most importantly, as he was playing the music, he was scrutinizing photos of the musicians.

His genius is embodied in the way he utilised these photos.

We tend to look at a photo as a static image. It captures something at a unique point of time, as if we don’t know what happened before or after that moment.

However, equipped with all of this context, Dyer starts to see more in these photos, in particular a Milt Hinton photo published in the book.

He speculates that the “felt duration” of the photo extends to what has just happened or is about to happen.

He also argues that a good jazz photo is not silent, that it is there to be listened to as well as looked at, that the best jazz photos are saturated with the sound of their subjects.

What he aspires to do and succeeds in doing is to bring these photos to life.

It’s almost as if the process of exposure of the film caught not just one moment in time, but many, not just vision, but sound as well.

He turns photos into fully-fledged audiovisual works.

Of jazz photography, he says:

“A photograph of a jazz musician in full flight can bring us as close to the act – or vicarious essence – of artistic creation as a photograph of an athlete can to the act – or vicarious essence – of running.”

Just Add Some Animation

Dyer enhances the experience of listening to the music as well.

Most of the music was recorded a long time ago, and most of the artists are long dead.

He animates the musicians as well as their music.

The music matters more to us, because the musicians matter to us.

Dyer creates a sense of music as constant movement.

Of Mingus, he says:

“His thought was the exact opposite of concentration: that implies stillness, silence, long periods of intense absorption; he preferred moving very quickly, covering a lot of ground.”

He quotes Charlie Parker:

”Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom…if you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”

The Importance of Improvisation

Much music is recorded soon after it is first composed, so that what is captured by the recording is a snapshot of the work early in its chronological development.

Sometimes, studio recordings sound tentative compared with live versions that reflect a history of playing, improvising and improvement.

Improvisation is one of the key distinguishing features of jazz.

Much jazz is instrumental rather than vocal, so it isn’t hamstrung by lyrics and expectations of the vocal performance.

In his essay, Dyer writes equally beautifully about the role of improvisation in jazz:

”From time to time in his solos a saxophonist may quote from other musicians, but every time he picks up his horn he cannot avoid commenting, automatically and implicitly, even if only through his own inadequacy, on the tradition that has been laid at his feet. At its worst this involves simple repetition...sometimes it involves exploring possibilities that were previously only touched upon. At its best it expands the possibilities of the form.”

Standards such as Monk’s “’Round Midnight” become “springboards for improvisation” and innovation:

”Successive versions add up to what [George] Steiner calls a ‘syllabus of enacted criticism’…this labile relation between composition and improvisation is one of the sources of jazz’ ability to constantly replenish itself.”

The Importance of Tradition

Just as Dyer emphasises innovation, he values tradition:

”The positive side of this relation to the past is that moving deeper into the tradition can be as much a voyage of discovery as moving forward through it: instead of following the river to its mouth we trace it to its source. As you move further back, so you are able to recognise the special traits of the predecessors; it is like seeing a photo of your great-grandfather and recognizing the origins of your grandchildren’s features in his face.”

Note how Dyer reverts to photography for his analogy.

Similarly, in his last sentence, he reverts to his image of what comes before and after:

”Ideas of forward and backward, the sense of past and present, of old and new dreams, begin to dissolve into each other in the twilight of perpetual noon.”

Straight, No Chaser

While I’m not sure I get what “the twilight of perpetual noon” means, there is some fine writing in the essay.

The material about Coltrane deserved to be fictionalized, he is so important to both the dangerous and the spiritual facets of jazz.

However, what remains is an essay that tries to pack too much into the last 30 pages. It resorts to lists and name-checking, some of it is both exhaustive and exhausting.

It leaves us feeling the after-effects of a downer after the extreme high of the first 180 pages, which are unsurpassed.

It left me wondering whether Dyer hoped that his impressionistic writings would enhance his more seriously critical material by association.

Instead, all that five stars required was “Straight, No Chaser”.