October 11, 2020
The hills north of Rome are green. There is a farmer in a field of sheep squatting over an animal, apart from the herd, lying in the grass. The Tiber river, or Tevere as they call it, snaking slow and low under an ancient stone bridge. The sky that is the blue of Michelangelo. Plowed fields. A house on a hill. The colors of brick and stone and marble. Well-tended vineyard. Old man with dog. Rain. Tiredness. Contentment.
The rush of memories of the last two days, the way they crowd in when the fun stops, and mix together: the world’s best spaghetti carbonara, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a trumpet player jamming in a houseboat on the Tiber river, pointing his trumpet right at Norma, then all the trumpet players pointing their trumpets at her like medicine; the portly pianist with the backwards baseball cap attacking the piano like it was deaf and dumb, resisting, and he had to beat the music into it; his jaw like Mussolini’s, his elbow on the keys, then standing, triumphant, grinning, back into the crowd as the musicians trade places; the young long-haired insolent rock drummer sits down for “Take Five” and blasts the tom, the snare, the kick drum, hilariously attacking the mode of jazz drumming with a rocker’s glee, so loud that the guitarist, who was preparing to play “Take Five,” looks around in amused astonishment and mutes his strings; the bass player who sits in on bass and then after three tunes says to the owner of the bass, the house musician, “I’m sorry, man, I bled on your bass,” and the bass player says “That’s OK, that’s OK,” and he gets a rag and cleans the blood off the neck and body of the bass.
The crisp amazingly deft young man on drums; the polar opposite of the young brash rocker who has exploded his sound all over the tidy restrained world of jazz standards, just for fun, just because he can. The guitarist, who finally gets his chance. The two silver trumpet players who seem to be a pair but keep doubling on the same part; one of them impossibly skinny, impossibly long-haired, wearing impossible glasses, with an impossibly peach-fuzz beard, impossibly sagging jeans, the two of them a mystery like they’re on a first date, or like, we’ve played this tune a thousand times, why does it come out weird this time?
The moonlight on the Tiber at midnight, seen through the window of the houseboat. The ancient barometer on the wall. The house pianist who spends half an hour tuning the piano before the set and it still goes out of tune halfway through; the beating it takes from all the jammers who sit, adjust the seat, crush the pedals or ignore them. The thought that the moisture, the temperature changes, the “marine environment,” the rocking and shaking of the boat, not the ideal environment for a fine piano.
Later, eating the spaghetti carbonara at Luciano, watching a driver stuck behind the garbage truck: Don’t beep at the trashman, he’ll just walk slower to the dumpster, he’ll just throw the bags in slower, he’ll just run the smasher longer, crushing it all; he’ll just stand there daring you to beep your horn again. Don’t beep at the trashman, darling, don’t snarl at the falling rain. What song is that?
Coltrane and Monk at the Five-Spot. I was only four years old. Wish I could have been there!
Homebound: Seen from the train: World War II vintage graffiti on the side of a building near the Castiglion del Lago station: “Rome/Berlin Axis.”
A reminder.
