Today's sermon: A CREATION STORY

I will make Sundays my day to update the Jazz Blog. Next week I will be writing about Jazz and Religion.   To set that up, here is my first solo, improvised orally when I was about 19 and eventually written down and recorded with a swift walking 12 bar bass line underneath in the Landing Signals anthology. ( http://www.amazon.com/Landing-Signals-Anthology-Sacramento-Poets/dp/B000UB8KG0. )
It is a Creation story. I hope the poem still works, and beckons you back for future Sunday jam sessions.

Jazz at the Universe

Once you know what it is

you know that it has always been.

They might not have called it jazz, but the skies of music

by any other name would still be just as blue.

Funk is the grease in the grooves the stars slide in,

the pulse that pumps years and sets tempos of atoms,

Perpetual motion that moves because because it makes you move it.

Clearly the creation was the ultimate solo performance.

What scales did God run

to get the technique

for a riff like an aardvark or a moose?

His legato on waterfalls?

The crescendi and diminuendi at the beach?

Each snowflake,

a variation on a theme

which he lays down by the ton like the Bach of chemisty,

with a pianissimo you’ve never heard.

And so he wailed for five days,

defining heavy with the groove of gravity,

creating light with flashy runs

played at velocities impossible for the instrument,

spacing so far out that he outspaced the space

that he spaced out in the first place,

and still there was no applause.

The new club was a hot spot,

but it was still empty.

So God got down,

unlaced his robe,

shook a sandal off,

let a foot stomp and improvised a few funky choruses of

People.

Now luckily for us he liked the head enough

to write down the changes on a monster molecule.

D……N……..A!

Then the cosmic breakfast cook said,

“Here’s the toast babies, jam on it.”

(bass solo)

Awe, to experience life is to taste the toast.

But to live life is to toast to the toast,

spreading thick the jelly of inspiration

and feeding it to each other,

and that is all Art and all Love and all Jazz is.

Your life is a one-nighter with standing room only,

so blow up a breeze while you still got the gig.

Once you know what it is

you know that it has always been.

FOUR BAR INTRO
      What I want to leave to the world is something that pays back the honor of getting to play, hear, imagine and love jazz. This blog isn’t a novel or a serious academic study or a memoir or biography. Most of the writing in this blog will be improvisational, or as close as I can get to that habitual spontaneity that sometimes lets brilliance come through and sometimes doesn't. If I hit a “wrong” note when improvising on the piano, I can’t go back and fix it; instead, I justify it by being quick enough and creative enough to quickly slide into a chord tone, or if that doesn't work, keep the groove going on a chromatic or parallel run until I regain my balance and momentum. That’s what I will do here in this blog, too, so while I may be coloring outside the lines at times, I know where the lines are and will risk riding the unicycle across the tight-wire in real time. You don’t have to know a lot about jazz to read this blog, but hopefully you will want to know more because of it. There will be stories; some are oral tradition, some are my own jazz- inspired extensions of the mythology, some are true, some are partly true or inspired by something true. All are hopefully truthful. When I hear a jazz musician, more important to me than technical skill are sincere attempts at having good ideas. This blog will represent attempts at improvising on the presence of jazz in my life. These writings are my collected solos, verbal equivalents of harmonic, rhythmic and melodic pilgrimages like crossing the bridge of “Cherokee” with Charlie Parker, or digging for deep gold in the blues. In addition to stories there are poems and dialogues and journalism and criticism and jazz humor. If there is a place for such a variegated collection in the canon of jazz literature, it should probably be in the Apocrypha, a mixture of psalms, prophecies, lamentations, and shaggy god stories. I will not heed any restrictions of typography or genre, nor dilute the strain of thought to make it more or less accessible---- but as I wander toward and away from the melody, I will mean every breath, every click, every honk, every tap, every flight and every crash.

C.B. Davis, Ph.D.

C.B. Davis, PHD

http://drcbdavis.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/introduction-to-cultural-evolution/?preview=true&preview_id=6&preview_nonce=9898fdf308&post_format=standard