Blood Count
Horton, Shelby’s oldest friend and former lover, stood beside Shelby’s hospital bed, bent-over in despair. I can’t be you anymore. I hardly have the strength to be me, said Shelby. It was what Billy Strayhorn said (or wanted to say) to Ellington, when Strayhorn was dying of esophageal cancer. When Horton had left—he’d started going to church, just like Ellington had started writing sacred music at the end of Strayhorn’s life—Shelby played “Blood Count” on his tablet. It was Strayhorn’s final composition, written before he died in this ward at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in East Harlem. Pulling up his gown, popping open his abdominal tap and pouring cognac into it, Shelby let the rhythmic moan of the music enter him. When Horton was at Grace Church, praying for the strength to be both of them, he’d hear the music too.
Sound Seekers
I can’t do this from a physical level anymore, Master Higgins said, letting his gaze linger on the meadow of instruments in the living room. Acoustic guitar, Indian drums, African percussion, trap set; Akhi’s saxophones, piano, Tibetan oboe, tarogato, flutes, more clarinets. You couldn’t walk anymore. I won’t be there, Master Higgins said, but I will always be with you. He looked up. After a while, he smiled and played dut-dut-dut to Akhi’s Spanish tune, swinging, dancing, raising the music.
New Rhumba
She’d reserved this table at the Blue Note so she could see what Ahmad Jamal was doing with the keyboard. He was playing New Rhumba, one of her favorites. Spreading his fingers, he let the universe through; creating spaces, he left the music behind. She’d booked this table for all ten sets but her heartbeat was already with the music. I’m leaving, she said to her friend, aware that her voice couldn’t reach Laura anymore.
My Friend Mindy
If not ending anything is what I have to do to not die—I’ll do it! Mindy had exclaimed when I’d told her that fear of death was why Ellington delayed everything, even naming finished songs. My friend Mindy, who handles the rentals at the Midtown Jeep Service Center, is homebound due to an unidentified virus she thinks she caught on her recent trip to Quito. She now stops in the middle of writing a text and pauses a show before it’s over; she heats up her broth but never lets it boil and looks away while a bird or a plane is still flying past her window; she cuts short her dreams and wills herself out of her sleep a few moments before she would have woken up anyway. I suspect she’s on the verge of figuring out how to not finish her virus infection. Never one to put anything off all my life, I’m afraid I’ve started all this too late, Mindy tells me during my visit and begs me not to leave.
Horton, Shelby’s oldest friend and former lover, stood beside Shelby’s hospital bed, bent-over in despair. I can’t be you anymore. I hardly have the strength to be me, said Shelby. It was what Billy Strayhorn said (or wanted to say) to Ellington, when Strayhorn was dying of esophageal cancer. When Horton had left—he’d started going to church, just like Ellington had started writing sacred music at the end of Strayhorn’s life—Shelby played “Blood Count” on his tablet. It was Strayhorn’s final composition, written before he died in this ward at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in East Harlem. Pulling up his gown, popping open his abdominal tap and pouring cognac into it, Shelby let the rhythmic moan of the music enter him. When Horton was at Grace Church, praying for the strength to be both of them, he’d hear the music too.
Sound Seekers
I can’t do this from a physical level anymore, Master Higgins said, letting his gaze linger on the meadow of instruments in the living room. Acoustic guitar, Indian drums, African percussion, trap set; Akhi’s saxophones, piano, Tibetan oboe, tarogato, flutes, more clarinets. You couldn’t walk anymore. I won’t be there, Master Higgins said, but I will always be with you. He looked up. After a while, he smiled and played dut-dut-dut to Akhi’s Spanish tune, swinging, dancing, raising the music.
New Rhumba
She’d reserved this table at the Blue Note so she could see what Ahmad Jamal was doing with the keyboard. He was playing New Rhumba, one of her favorites. Spreading his fingers, he let the universe through; creating spaces, he left the music behind. She’d booked this table for all ten sets but her heartbeat was already with the music. I’m leaving, she said to her friend, aware that her voice couldn’t reach Laura anymore.
My Friend Mindy
If not ending anything is what I have to do to not die—I’ll do it! Mindy had exclaimed when I’d told her that fear of death was why Ellington delayed everything, even naming finished songs. My friend Mindy, who handles the rentals at the Midtown Jeep Service Center, is homebound due to an unidentified virus she thinks she caught on her recent trip to Quito. She now stops in the middle of writing a text and pauses a show before it’s over; she heats up her broth but never lets it boil and looks away while a bird or a plane is still flying past her window; she cuts short her dreams and wills herself out of her sleep a few moments before she would have woken up anyway. I suspect she’s on the verge of figuring out how to not finish her virus infection. Never one to put anything off all my life, I’m afraid I’ve started all this too late, Mindy tells me during my visit and begs me not to leave.