Facebook Messages

Facebook can become more philosophical than you may think. I exclaimed to a friend, "jazz is dead!" recently (I was the salsa band I felt for a year ago), and he (lets call him, at random, Peter, since it seems like a fitting name) sent me this facebook message:

Nice job @ the dance; don't get too put out by the sheeple who can't dig it; you said that Jazz was dead. I nodded at the time, but it's not true. Jazz is alive, but not because of the musicians. Jazz is a sort of rebellion, from the mainstream, to a talented and beautiful music form. It can never die; it's always there. Sometimes it gets covered up, but it comes from an instinct that can't be muted for long. [besides, you got some extra dough, which is bombdigity, you rugcutter, you.]

I was responding too him (not that it required a response, but facebook is designed for unnecessary fake interaction, so much so that it's almost expected). It would have been unfortionate for the boared passer by or crazed stocker to read that there (not for his sake, but mine. Simply employing proper punctuation draws suspician on facebook... coherent thoughts might really break the levies) so I figured this would be a better venue.

Peter, Music relies on other people. That's where the problem is. On the most basic level this musician/people relationship is really a musician/consumer relationship. But that can easily be gotten around, as many starving musicians of far less inteligence than Peter have done. Music is something that seemingly is better than money to many. I'd agree, but then again I'd rather have The Imitation of Christ than a million dollars, or know how to pray the rosary than know how to make a billion dollars. That is to say I might not be in the majority, but lets move on. Musicians commonly rely on the listener just to feel welcomed or needed. I don't know of many musicians who put in their 10,000 hours to continue playing in their own room. Coffee shops are filled with musicians who want to be listened to. But music even rises above the desire for the assurance of others in some individuals. But even these individuals commonly rely on other musicians to play with. It's much more yes (adjectives like fun, awsome, or even exhilirating don't nearly cut it... yes, though it lacks description for the unknowing should be the right word for the knowing) to play with a group than alone. But then when your piano and bass player show up high you realize that it's not all it's cracked up to be.

Some cats (musicians) come to the realization that music can't make them happy. Music in itself can't make anybody happy: they only way there are truely happy musicians are those who are called by God to be a musician. There are happy janitors: how could you not be a happy janitor if you were doing your work to fulfil God's plan! It takes grace to be a happy musician. Musicians who do it against God's will are miserable. That's why music, drugs, sex and all other sorts of false pleasures (sin) are so often related. Shouldn't suprise us: what do you do when your miserable? You either pray to God and put your happiness in him, or you try to do it all yourself by false means of happiness.

Musicians can't be too smart. I hope there aren't too many musicians reading this. There is another kid at our school, we'll call him Jack, since that is also a random yet fitting name for him. Jack wants to be a musician, and could (he'd have to take it all a bit more seriously, but he's one of those kids who naturally desires seriousness in anything he does) but he's too smart. One day he'll realize it's all fleeting and do something else. He's too smart to be a musician. He'll be able to pursue that path as long as it's benifitial to him, then God will make it miserable to him and he'll still push on thinking he has an obligation to music, but the moment he realizes his obligation is to God he will have to drop it all. He's only able to push out the miserableness because God isn't pouring it down on him (he'll learn discipline and other things from music) and all the happiness music gives him is hiding up what miserableness is inherent in the whole buisness. I'd be laughing at this if I was reading it, since I'm in no uncertain terms saying what God's will is. I speak out of experience, but I wanted to give you the example of Jack, whom you could relate the freshness of enamored musicians to much easier than you could dig through my cynical crustiness and find what once was Jack.

That seemingly has nothing to do with jazz being dead, but it really does. You can't be a happy jazz musician anymore. Firstly the drugs that kept Charlie Parker (whom I think would have been an academic genius) going are gone; you end up in jail much quicker now adays and drug life is far less glamorous or easy than it was. Secondly the crowds are gone. It's exhilirating and assuring to play infront of a huge crowd, or even to have people dance while you play, but that doesn't happen anymore, as we both saw, so the musicians are left without that fleeting desire for others aproval (which really stems from self-love). So what can make the jazz musician happy anymore? Only the grace of God makes them happy. They have to be playing jazz to fulfil God's will.

I've long had a fantasy about becoming a Dominican monk and then starting a jazz group with my fellow brothers and bringing it to the local clubs. We'd play in our friar garb and be the hippest, God centered jazz musicians ever. But God wouldn't allow this if it wasn't right. The jazz would distract me from prayer, or self-mortification or somehow hinder the tools that perfect my soul daily, and I would realize it. My soul would yearn for God and if I tried to fulfill it with jazz music, a jazz that isn't in God, I would continue to yearn. Yearning of the soul makes you miserable.

So, in a longwinded roundabout way, that is (at least in my head-up-in-the-clouds way of looking at it) why jazz really is dead, or at least to us thinking members of society it is. Rather than brood we should think of how good God is! That he only lets us fulfill his will. Jazz is dead was the wrong phrase to use, because that implies a universality. Jazz is dead to me because I can't be happy playing it, which was magnified when God cut off that self-satisfaction of other appreciating what I do (all GLORY be to Him!). To the high musicians you saw on Saturday night, jazz might not be dead, but it's only living on the fleeting happiness that comes from rejection of the Good.