THREE FREE-ASSOCIATIVE PROSE POEMS ON JON HASSELL, PUNCTUATED BY HIS MUSIC DRAGGED FROM THE RIVER
(Note: I am not really trying to be a poet. I am totally trying to be a poet. This is half inspired by TJ Mahr’s recent piece on “Once in a Lifetime,” in which he writes, “The problem for me is that this album is ineffably great and significant; how do I talk about the album in a mere blog post? Liveblog it. Gameplan: Write everything I can during one listen of the album.” Jon Hassell’s new record, Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street, is so haunting and evocative it deserves such treatment, but maybe just for its 11-minute throbbing center. The first poem: Where I was when this album buried me in snow. The second: Hassell’s impossible style. The third: Holistic visions.)
SHAKING BLOOD
. . . As stray insects cool in the fan’s gaze, we either give in or we drink all our mad fits inward, postpone them for split-bodied mornings, for the hard shakes in the sun, where we can feel the veneer cracking, all the edges vibrate, find and lose their shape until we drip borders. There was glass in my head and Jon Hassell refracted light off of it . . .
FOURTH WORLD WAR
Hassell said,
I think I’ve used the phrase before about parachuting into the jazz world and not having hacked my way through the jungle to whatever center there might be.
He still lives in tree teeth, still inhales thin atmospheres . . . still lets them run him through. Leaves: his great collaborators. He molds with them what he calls the Fourth World. This is not jazz. He adheres to his trumpet and lets lakes fall out.
I was trying to transport myself. The exotic is central to me. I don’t understand why the ‘exotic’ doesn’t have the automatic appeal for everyone that it does for me … ‘If something really feels good, then why don’t you do it all the time instead of only doing it on Saturdays?’ Fourth World is an entire week of Saturdays. It’s about heart and head as the same thing. It’s about being transported to some place which is made up of both real and virtual geography. It’s about a beautiful girl and a beautiful situation at the same time.
This Fourth World, this is not world music, no unfortunate clothing associated. This is not new age though it sometimes dons its ruffled shirts. It is outré, all culture and thus new culture and thus no culture. Like satellites looking at the earth from space and describing it only in greens.
TUNNELED THROUGH
JON HASSELL: LAST NIGHT THE MOON CAME
Rumi said:
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing.
Falling up into the bowl of sky.
I wake up and feel the streets and buildings and sun carve their way into me. Fill me with stark visions. The ocean reddens, bruises, swells. I stare at my hands as they tighten into thick fists, as they relax and separate like dying waves. Of all things I’ve forgotten, I’ve forgotten mostly French things. I’ve forgotten how smoke rises from everything. How it seems sometimes that the whole world is breathing. How you aligned with it, to become so like the earth you could melt in and live off its nutrients. Your teeth would be tree teeth, would be man-sized, would tunnel through my own when we kissed. I’d be the gap you fill. I’ve forgotten how numb I’ve grown. I feel for the wall’s perforations. I lift myself up. The ocean reddens, bruises, swells.
Fourth World War! We didn’t even have time for the third one!
You are the worlds greatest self parody!
“Fourth World” is Jon Hassell’s preferred description of his music. I perceive several conflicts in his music, between culture, between sources of sound. Thus, “war.” It is pretty lame, admittedly.
Query, though: how am I self-parodic? Are my past blogs of such value to you that my appropriation of a war yet to be seen but for the presence of a predecessor enters your vision as an inferior imitation of that valued past?
Of course, you could simply mean I am a parody of those whose quality I long to replicate, but that wouldn’t involve “self” in any sense, and I doubt you would misuse such a deftly-aimed critical cliche.