I can imagine Chet Baker blindly tuning his trumpet to the opening notes of Almost Blue, the song he borrowed from Elvis Costello to make a custom suit. I can also imagine Charlie Parker searching for his vein, while in his head the bird of inspiration pecks at a Stravinsky melodic line.
Jazz and its derivatives have been with me for half my life, ever since I was walking around Madrid sharing my solitude with the ghosts of a city that mixes gunshots with saliva and squid with sugar. I remember a rainy night, looking for an open place to buy tobacco, when I met a woman whose name has been erased by time, but not her memory or her voice, as she sang “Sophisticated Lady” whispering into the microphone in the style of Ella Fitzgerald.
It was in a jazz club near Castellana that no longer exists, but which I will always remember as the place where we met. She was singing on stage, while I hung my raincoat to dry on the back of a chair. After the performance, I asked the waiter to please serve her a drink. She quickly thanked me and, with a gesture of her hand, indicated that we should sit in the dark. “We don’t need any more light than the fire of our bodies,” she whispered in my ear.
These things come to mind now when I read that El Molino, the legendary cabaret in Barcelona, is going to reopen its doors and jazz musicians and singers will perform on its stage. I always knew that cities need this kind of venue, live music venues where a saxophone lights the fire that separates the asphalt of the street and the cemetery. There is a shortage of places that provide shelter for hearts lacking affection, bars where you can loosen your tie while a jazz singer stirs up memory and desire.
When it is no longer possible to turn back and your breath smells like lies, the best thing to do is to unravel the notes of a life devoted to the absurdity of living to work. Without a doubt, jazz is the spark that can push you to leave it all behind. It happened to me, as I say, when I met that woman who sang like Ella Fitzgerald and who relieved me of the weight of the rain by teaching me that pleasures are so similar to crimes that, sometimes, they can be confused. I learned this last thing by letting her fill my mouth with smoke.
Until that night I didn’t know that the soul was in the lungs, and that jazz is the best food for people who still dare to dream that one of these nights they will live a beautiful love story where the music of Chet Baker appears enveloping the appropriate darkness; a literary excess between two bodies that will soon say goodbye to each other, as long as it takes for the last train to appear with the dying light of twilight.
Source: www.eldiario.es
