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.