Blue Jazz Electric
by Jack Ciontos
It’s the quiet tension that fills the room, the silent expectation of something about to unfold; then, the violent rush of peripheral blue; as the lights turn to the stage and the extremities fill with blood – vividly coming to life.
Fingertips pressed on bass strings until they turn red and bruised: white and black keys pressed down on the piano – the golden surface of a saxophone as it is fervently swung around to the rhythmic tapping of the right foot. Tap, tap, tap. A fulmination of music blasting through the compressed space of the backroom in a bar; a curly-haired, young man pushes a lock of hair away from his face before he caresses the hand of his date. The two men sway their shoulders tothe beat of the bass. Left to right, right to left.
The smell of spilled beer on wooden floors perfumes the air; sweat, half-smoked cigarettes, the sickly sweet lingering of a woman's perfume. Faintly, you discern a hint of violet, perhaps sandalwood, too. On the stage, a woman in her late forties puts her lips to the microphone, she exhales softly before our eyes meet. A subtle smirk. She takes on the lyrics of Louie Armstrong as her hands gently wrap around the mic-stand. Her body moved from side to side, like foamy waves crashing solemnly against the shoreline. She sings of evocative melancholy, old heartbreak blues. Somewhere, in a distant memory of hers, her fingers gracefully run along the neck of a man whose voice she has forgotten.
Everything is alive, breathing, kicking, screaming – vigorous – All part of the organic body that inhabits this room; the beating of a tender heart, the soft flesh, the lights, the smell, the rush of blood, you are all interconnected nerves to an intricate nervous system that flares up with the passing of each note. A flurry of voices, a cacophony of the tender night: all part of the performance, merged into the amalgamation of a shared vocal chord.
We are, for a moment,vessels of something larger than ourselves.
Ain’t nothing sweeter than that, baby.