I have discovered a new integral quality a good musician, and an artist for that matter, needs to have -- knowing when to stop! I just came back from a jazz performance at the hip London Dalston borough, at a hip London jazz club, as part of the hip London Jazz Festival. Well, dare a I say it, this perversion of a music was one "hip" to many for old humble me. The words "fucking weird" spring to mind. Immediately. Admittedly less rough methaphors were at the forefront at mine, and my friend Othman's who came with me, mind during the performance. Call it inspiration. "A swan just died in Hyde Park," Othman pointed observantly. " It feels like watching Becket's Waiting for Godot in Swedish, I replied. I suppose reading existentialist literature to the soundtracks of a duck being gang raped would be an appropriate midgroung between our sentiments for the musical event.
I tried to look for the thorn in my own eye, I really did. I thought that my genuine amusement might be similar to how the Spanish Infanta might have felt if, after just having been painted by Velazquez, she had seen a late Picasso or Dali. Artist with established reputation today, I reasoned, would have startled the masses back in the day, much in the same way I was started when the pianist started to pluck the strings of her grand piano with a drumming stick. Except the void between my painful craving for melody at this performance and the musicians resolute decision to not give me four notes in a row that made sense was on the scale of the Paleolithic era and the year 3000. And I wouldn't go as far as calling myself a musical caveman.
In case you are wondering what "knowing when to stop" means, this is when:
