Swing=mc2
Einstein
stepped out of the stage door into the alley next to the nightclub. The band
was breaking before the final set of the night.
Einstein put his pipe in his mouth and patted himself down searching for
his lighter.
A match scratched in the still air burst into flame
and Einstein leaned his pipe into it, thanking a young black man for the light.
“You’re welcome, Professor Einstein.” said the young
man, who was standing next to a tenor saxophone case in the alley.
“Ah, I’m found out!” Einstein sighed with good humor.
“I’m sorry, it isn’t every day that I can light the
pipe of a genius.” said the young musician.
“Oh, well.” Einstein said, being sincerely humble. “Genius
is nothing special. I think there are more geniuses among us than people
realize. Most of them are wasted because they are not recognized and nurtured.
Others have bad luck, a few, like me have had good luck…mostly.”
“My name’s John Coltrane.” said the young
musician. “I play tenor saxophone, and I
also smoke a pipe.” Trane pulled out his own pipe and lit it casually. Einstein
took his pipe out of his mouth and sniffed the air.
“Your tobacco smells like hashish!” said Einstein.
“I’m sorry. I’ll put it out.” said Coltrane moving to
dispose of his smoke.
“No!” said Einstein a little too loudly, “I would like
to try it!”
“Uh, sir, it’s marijuana, not hashish.”
“I’ve had reefer. Give me pinch of it. I like hashish
better though.”
Gravity took Coltrane’s pipe out as his jaw dropped.
After an awkward pause, they both laughed.
So, Einstein and John Coltrane smoked out during the
break of the Lionel Hampton show.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” said Coltrane
hesitantly, “where and when did you try reefer?”
Einstein looked as if he was remembering something in
a moment of cannabinoid imagery. Then he snapped out of it and said, “Pardon
me, I was just thinking about the alliteration of “where and when.”
“Spacetime.” Said Coltrane in slow motion. He thought
of something funny and said, “Didn’t you discover that where and when are the
same thing?”
They both laughed more than they would have without
the smoke.
“To answer your question, I had reefer years ago in
Europe. I met Louis Armstrong there.”
“Understood.” said Coltrane and they both laughed
again.
“Are you in the
band?” asked Einstein.
“Yes, briefly. I’m filling in for a sick friend.”
Coltrane looked around and asked, “Are you here by yourself Professor?”
“No, I came with Benny Goodman and Bela Bartok to meet
Peggy Lee.”
Coltrane choked a little as he gulped at the names in
Professor’s entourage.
“Impressive company I know. You know I play a little
fiddle. Bartok and Benny came over to play a piece with me, but I didn’t like
it. Bartok’s music is too difficult and too modern for me, but I do like most
jazz. I find improvisation thrilling.”
Coltrane pinched himself. He realized that he had an
opportunity to talk to one of the greatest minds of the century.
“I’m happy that you know about jazz, sir,” said
Coltrane, “but I want to ask you about Gravity and Light and Time.”
“For that we’ll need to walk. And I’ll need another
pinch of your smoke.”
Einstein and Coltrane walked off during the break at
the Lionel Hampton show. Bartok, Benny Goodman, and Peggy Lee were upset that
they had lost the great man, not seeing where he went.
Now, believe it or not….
this is where it gets interesting.
“Where did you try your first marijuana, if I may ask?”
Said Einstein.
Coltrane thought a moment and said, “I bought it from
Chano Pozo, a Cuban player Dizzy brought here from Cuba. He was later gunned
down. I felt bad that it might have been an angry customer or another dealer.”
“Well, that was not your fault. What was he doing when
he was shot?” Einstein exhaled a piney puff in the cold air.
“Legend has it that he was playing his tune “Manteca”
on a juke box just after the record was released. That’s what Dizzy told me was
the story going around.” Coltrane wanted to change the subject, but he couldn’t
think of how to ask his question about energy and matter being the same thing.
Einstein broke the silence and said, “It must be
thrilling to be able to improvise. You know all the great classical composers
could improvise. “
“I knew Bach and Beethoven were famous for it, and
Mozart too.”
“Exactly. Did you have any formal music training?”
“Not so much, but I was given the chance to play with
musicians better than me and I learned most everything from them. I met some of
them in the Navy band. I listened to Charlie Parker and Lester Young and tried
to figure out what they were doing.” Coltrane stopped himself, thinking that he
was talking too much when he had a chance to listen to Albert fucking Einstein.
“Can I ask you one more question about marijuana?” the
professor said breaking the brief silence.
“What is it?”
“If I have a good idea while intoxicated on marijuana,
am I likely to forget it?” asked Albert fucking Einstein.
Suddenly, the young jazz musician wondered if the pot
he shared with the professor might cause the world’s greatest mind to forget a
vital thought that might change our view of the universe… again!
“I keep this pad on me, to write down ideas I have when
I’m on the road” said Coltrane, “Its’s mostly chord sequences and motifs. I
have my own shorthand that I use, the way you would write down formulas.”
“So, have you discovered your E=mc2 yet?” asked
Einstein, with a twinkle in both eyes.
Coltrane laughed nervously and then said, “You know
more about music than I know about physics, so you might understand this.
Coltrane rifled through his notepad. He showed Einstein
this:
“The outer ring has
a whole tone scale starting from C; the inner one starting
on B. The arrangement of the rings is such that movement from one
"main" pitch to the next results in the cycle of fourths, or fifths,
depending on which direction you go. I wanted to make a set of chord changes in
three keys that are equidistant. divide the octave into 3 equal parts, for
example in the key of C, the other tonic centers would Ab, and E.” Coltrane,
who had begun speaking more rapidly, suddenly remembered who he was talking to
and said, “I’m sorry, this is probably boring you.”
“Not at all. I dislike
set theory though, and that is what you are doing intuitively. You are just
using musical symbols instead of mathematical symbols.” said Einstein after an
exhale. “I have a feeling you will find your E=mc2 soon.”
Coltrane beamed. He
felt anointed, the way he had felt when Dizzy, Miles or Monk had asked him to
join their bands, or when he felt the Holy Spirit move him in church as a
child. After another pause filled with walking, smoking and thinking, Coltrane
asked Einstein the question that had prompted the walk and the smoke.
“ If Time is the
fourth dimension, and space the other three, then spacetime would contain all
of time, as well as all the space in the universe. All of space is present in
the now. Does that mean that all of time exists at once? Is that a really
stupid question.”
Einstein chuckled. “Not
at all. It is one my colleague Gödel asks me. You are still doing set theory, which is also
his area of research. I don’t have an answer, but Gödel says the only way to resolve the
quantum physics with general relativity is if time didn’t exist! “
Coltrane’s mind
reeled. “I don’t know anything about quantum physics,”
Einstein laughed, “No
one does. I must tell you, I don’t like speaking English so much, and since you
are a musician, I would like to hear you speak in that language.”
Coltrane stopped in
his tracks. “Do you want me to play for you?”
Einstein said, “Why
not? This city is noisy, why not drown it out with some music May I sit on your
grip… your instrument case?”
Coltrane hesitated
then moved quickly to open his case and assemble his tenor saxophone. When he
was ready to play, he said, “I am just going to improvise something. Is that
alright or do you have a request?”
Einstein muttered in
German and then said, “I want you to play spacetime.”
“Someday maybe,” said
Coltrane and he blew the most beautiful melody he could, probably something
like "Naima", “Welcome” or “After the Rain.”
Einstein applauded,
stood and said, “That was wonderful. We should get back now.”
Coltrane looked at
his watch. “I’ve blown this gig already. I’ll walk you back though. Hampton will
explode if I come back so late.”
“I’m sorry if I have
lost you a job young man.” Said Einstein with genuine concern in his tone.
“It is not a problem.
I was just subbing for my friend Sonny. Hamp can’t really fire me because
I’m not in his band.”
“Well,” said Einstein
and they walked in silence, back through the alley to the club where the
Hampton band was in the middle of their second set.
“It has been a
pleasure.” Said Einstein.
“Thank you for…this.” Said
Coltrane.
“I should thank you. You
have inspired me. I have a new idea. Taking your advice, I will write
down on a napkin or something.”
Coltrane tore a page
out of his notebook and gave it to Einstein along with a pen. “I wouldn’t want
to be responsible for you forgetting it.”
They both laughed and
said goodbye. Einstein went back to his friends Benny Goodman, Bela Bartok and Peggy Lee,
with the melody Coltrane had improvised in the alley, still playing in his enormous
brain.
Coltrane walked to
the subway thinking about how no one would believe him if he told this story.
CADENZA
After the club had closed, a busboy found a
torn-off sheet of paper, scribbled with mathematical symbols. Just out of
curiosity he kept it. The next night, he showed it to several
of his friends. When he learned that Einstein had been in the club, he realized
he might have something the great man needed, or that would be valuable like an
autograph, although of course, Einstein didn't sign it. The
famous physicist did not return to find it. It hung in a frame backstage
at the club for many years before someone stole it. No one had copied it or
taken a photo of the scrap paper that may have been a key to the Unified Theory
of Everything. Or it could be nothing, Einstein could have left it not
absent-mindedly, but because it wasn't worth remembering. Or, he might have
forgotten it completely and struggled for the rest of his life to remember what
it was, especially on the rare occasion when he smoked a bowl or heard a
saxophonist playing something rhapsodic and powerful.
