Jazz

As a busy New Yorker, I know the value of keeping on the move.  And as a life-long devotee to the art of anti-socialism, I know the value of not talking to anyone who can possibly be avoided.  So of course I spend a good deal of my walking around time wearing headphones so as to give casual observers the impression that my mind is in places far too lofty and complex to be bothered with such petty, mundane tasks as eye contact.  It’s no secret that if anyone ever willingly speaks to you in the streets of New York, they’ll either want a dollar or a monthly contribution.  Or at very least they’ll want directions that you’ll be embarrassed by your inability to provide despite having walked past their destination every day for the last three years.

Thanks to a rather interesting definition of the words “intellectual property,” I’ve recently come into a sizable jazz collection, which is currently providing the majority of my life’s soundtrack.  As I work my way through it, I’m finding that the city really does look different when you have a constant stream jazz pumping into your brain.  It’s like putting on Woody Allen goggles.  Suddenly, the architecture seems majestically industrial rather than cold and indifferent.  The garbage-filled streets somehow magically transform into streets lined with garbage.  And instead of an endless parade of self-centered elitists who think they’re too good to give you the time of day, you see an endless parade of self-centered elitists who are too good to give you the time of day.  The city just becomes so alive and vibrant, I’d swear I even saw a homeless man delivering an improvised soliloquy about the beauty of the sun setting over the distant horizon and the tender breeze left in its wake.

But I couldn’t really hear him over the music, so he might have just wanted a dollar.

-TC