First off, why blog? I like to write. I like to make people laugh. I like to share unique perspectives when I think I might be able to provide one. I like feeling connected.
What drove me to write today was a sense of being alone with an understanding and appreciation of something. Let me start with what happened today. I'm at work and I'm listening some Jazz by the Warne Marsh Quartet on my iPhone. I'm enjoying the incredible mental stimulation I get from this music. The joy of being surprised by beautiful phrases and technically amazing, awe inspiring & rhythmically complex music.
Then a co-worker walked by. I looked at them as they passed by and realized how isolated I am in this experience of this music. I've played it for people before but more often than not, unless they grew up with it, are musicians themselves or self-made die-hard fans of classical and/or be-bop jazz, I can tell they don't hear it the way I do. It sounds noisy to them. "Intense" is another word I hear. That's not what I'm hearing. This makes me a little melancholy sometimes.
I have an advantage over the average listener of course. Warne Marsh was my father. I grew up listening to this music. I distinctly remember feeling confused by his music at a young age. Unable to "hold on" to anything within the music. Unable to relate. I started with the drums. That I could kind of follow, even if they were playing what I thought was insanely fast I could find a beat. Part of that is inherited musical ability, but the rest was training. I learned to listen. It became a taste that I would acquire after many, many jam sessions in the living room, concerts around New York and Los Angeles, gigs in friend's studios and the many records played many times.
Earlier I said I felt alone in this understanding/appreciation. That statement is, in fact, completely erroneous. There are at least thousands of people around the world who think this music is as amazing and awe-inspiring as I do. My reality however is that I hang out with very few of them. Most of my friends are not members of this group. It's hard sometimes and it creates a weird sense of isolation. A lot of that is self-inflicted because along with my keen ear, if you will, is a boat load of emotional baggage that has kept me at arms length with my father's musical legacy for years. Slowly, ever so very slowly, this emotional barge is sinking. I feel the grip of this less and less over the years and it's days like this I want to run up to my friends and shout, "Hey, listen to this, isn't it cool?!? It's my dad!" But, then I decide I'd rather not face the usual let down when I see that first frown cross their brow and I realize that there just not that into it or don't get it.
I think that's why the invite I got recently was so meaningful to me. I got invited to attend a Jazz Thesis performance at USC. The student would be playing one of my dad's solos. I can't tell you how much this touched me. I look forward to this gathering. I look forward to meeting this student of music, shaking his hand and knowing that in that moment I am not alone with the music.
