Something slightly legitimate that I wrote for a class.

Living Jazz

My mother is a painter. As a young girl, I frequently crept down the stairs to my basement where she had her studio, and I would perch on the stairs watching her work. I remember watching her hands, the smell of the wood she carved, and the heat from the tiny iron stove. Most of all however, I remember the smooth sounds of jazz music hanging lazily about, lingering in the air. My mother always painted to music, and it was almost always jazz. I remember the sense of calm I felt listening to it, and the feeling of depth it carried. My mother loved Miles Davis. His melancholy, heartfelt jazz was the perfect backdrop for the scene before me. In recent years, I have found jazz to be the perfect soundtrack for many other scenarios in my life. When I think of jazz I picture wine bars with dim lighting and deep conversation in clouds of swirling cigar smoke; I picture leather chairs and mahogany floors. I think of maturation, and heartache, and Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz” on NPR. Jazz is a type of music so versatile that it can unobtrusively provide the background music for dinner parties while simultaneously elevating the level of the party to what some might consider “intellectual”. Jazz is that strange guest at the party who no one really knows, but everyone wants to get to know. He leans on the fireplace looking deep in thought, and though he only speaks when spoken to, he has the most interesting things to say.
Jazz arrived on the scene in the early nineteen hundreds. One can hear its influences in the folk songs of England, Scotland, France and Germany. However, it was born under the sign of race, and it is deeply entwined with the history of the African-American people. It is directly linked to the sad beat of the slave ships brought to America from West Africa, to the rhythmic accompaniments of field workers, the spiritual blues of Southern church choirs and chain gangs, and the “gandy-dancers” laying down railroad lines. Obviously these bleak origins help one understand the blues, that heart-wrenching form of jazz where oppression and lost dreams seep out of saxophones and hold pianos in the minor keys. This is the music of rainy days and bad moods and isolation. Blues-jazz is a shoulder to cry on. Knowing its origins helps explain why I get the feeling while listening to the blues that it is actually listening to me. I once had an interaction with a friend where, upon entering my apartment, she remarked “why are you listening to this depressing music?” She was referring to a song off of the John Coltrane Quartet CD I was playing. I explained to her that I was having a bad day. I was feeling lonely and misunderstood. She asked why that would make me want to listen to sad music. “Won’t that just make you feel worse?” She asked. No, it did not. Blues has a remarkably sympathetic quality. It knows your troubles. Blues doesn’t over-power its listener with its own sadness. It accompanies them perfectly. Blues-jazz understands.
There is also the other side of jazz which developed out of the same sad circumstances as the blues, but which was meant to lift people’s spirits instead of sympathize with them. In the late nineteenth century, rag-like rhythms and melodies could be heard in banjo tunes, quadrilles, minstrel songs and marches- dance music with “ragged rhythm”. This style was popularized and made mainstream by musicians like Scott Joplin with his “Maple Leaf Rag”, written in 1899. Ragtime jazz morphed into forms known as stride, be-bop, Dixieland, and perhaps the best known form, swing. This is the jazz I think of when I hear the phrase “The Roaring Twenties”. This era is characterized by musicians like Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong (the man known as “Satchmo”) and “The King”, Duke Ellington. The vocalists of this period had voices like saxophones- women like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. During the twenties, jazz fully emerged in the form of swing and big-band jazz, and it took the country by storm. The music also had a profound influence on radio, movies, literature, and the way people lived their lives. The term “The Jazz Age” implies not just a revolution in music, but also a revolution in the way people acted and thought. By listening to jazz, America started to live jazz; it is a way of life more free from conventions, more upbeat and invigorating.
All of the jazz concerts I have been to have been more like a musical conversation than a show. The band becomes an extension of the singer. The instruments emit human emotions. Together, the musical components create not just a sound but a force to be reckoned with. Jazz performers are more laid back, or so it seems to me. If they sense that the crowd is more into a particular song, they lengthen it out, improvise more, deciding the direction the song will take beat by beat. By playing on the crowd’s emotions, the crowd grows much more invested in what they are witnessing; they are no longer just an audience, they are part of the music. Even if the band is playing a song that the listeners know and like, there is improvising going on, so the crowd can’t really know what to expect. It is in this way that jazz fans throw caution to the wind and just go along with the flow of the music, wherever it might run to. This is the spirit of jazz that I believe caught America by storm during “The Roaring Twenties,” which caused women to hike up their skirts, and made the whole country dance like beings possessed.
When describing jazz, one must speak to the effect jazz has on those around it, which includes not just the audience, but also the performers. My first “jam session” happened several years ago. A musician friend of mine owned a not-so-chic loft in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. The loft was on the top floor of a very old building right next to the EL tracks. His roommates were musicians as well, and due to the overpowering noise generated by the trains passing by day and night, they had to create a room in their apartment insulated from the chaos. They called it “The Womb”. For dramatic effect, the light in this room was generated by a single red bulb. Somehow, in this tiny, closet-sized space, they fit an old upright piano, a full drum set, several electric and acoustic guitars, a few amplifiers, and two standing microphones. As musicians tend to do, we all migrated towards the instruments after dinner. I took my seat at the piano, and we had among us a skilled drummer, a guitarist and a bassist. We all started messing around on our respective instruments, creating a cacophony of sound. I suggested that we try and play a song together, but coming from all different musical backgrounds, we couldn’t come up with any one tune that we all knew how to play, so we decided to just “jam” in the key of G.
I was not as comfortable with the concept of “jamming” as my friends. My training in piano had been almost entirely classical. My musical training involved sitting up straight, playing exactly the right note at the exact second it was supposed to be played. It was very hard for me to wrap my brain around the concepts which are the heart and soul of jamming, like syncopation and improvisation. I knew the notes within each scale by heart, but I had never played them in any form dissimilar to Bach’s “Variations”, as warm-ups before practicing my pieces. Jamming was like teaching my fingers how to move for the first time. I had to take my hands back to the beginning, say good-bye to convention and tradition, and figure out how to play with my instincts instead of my mind. The sounds that I created in the womb were spontaneous and free. This was the first time I had ever just gone nuts on a keyboard. My brain shut off and all that existed were my ears and my hands. The music came pouring out of my finger tips, flying up and down the keyboard, mixing trills and chords and rhythms, and playing off of the other musicians. My notes danced with the notes from the other instruments, and somehow they all came together, and the music was jazz. We switched out of G and into C, F and D, in messy transitions that somehow sounded just fine. I discovered a side of me I didn’t even know existed. When the guitarist suggested we take a break, I looked up to find that three hours had passed, it was one in the morning, and I was covered with sweat and out of breath.
When I left the loft shortly after, ears still buzzing, I stepped out into a changed world. The night was alive around me; the street lights were brighter, and the city was warmly inviting me out into the evening. It was then that I realized for the first time what “The Jazz Age” really meant. It was a revolution in sound that couldn’t help but forge a revolution in thought. Jazz is the most human form of music. It is music anthropomorphized. Jazz musicians give their songs life by playing them and this human life force is so strong that people cannot help but be shaken by it. Jazz shakes us to dance and it shakes us to think, but mostly, it shakes us to feel alive.

I've always been a writer.

This following is a story I wrote when I was six, word for word. Note my insightful comment about "the Country."

"Moonlight"

one day there was a girl named Jessy.She was very lonley she had no freinds because she lived in the Country. Her birtday was in a few day and she would have no friends.On her b-day her parents got her a puppy. She named it Moonlight.She loved Moonlight a lot but she grew up. One day Jessy came down for breakfest and everyone loked sad. "Moonlight is very sick" they said. Whats wrong with her Jessy asked? She ate something she was not saposed to.What? we dont now.We took her to the vet at eight o-clock. Jessy got very sad.
The next day Moonlight came home and was all better! Jessy was very happy and so was everyone.
Moral: Surprised is the best.

Late night thoughts

A few things I would like to share:

1. Ladies,
Do NOT wear makeup to the gym. Not only will it clog your pores and make you breakout if you break a sweat (which you should hope to do...)but it makes you look- to say the least- non-legit. Any girl who is coming to the gym with the actual purpose of the place in mind (to get a workout) would not show up with makeup on. If you are coming with the hopes that your cute, hot pink Nike running shorts and your fully made-up face will score you a mate, well, think again. Really, the gym is probably the ONLY place where a guy will find you more attractive while looking "natural." It strikes the same primitive chord that rings within his breast and makes him add whey protein to his cereal and "pump iron."
Finally, if you MUST wear makeup to the gym, can you at least fore-go the bright red lipstick? It's just irritating.

2. There is something immensely satisfying about new toothpaste. Is it just me or do my teeth feel cleaner?!

3. So the way the SLU class schedule is set up, certain classes run Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while others run just Tuesdays and Thursdays. In college, teachers don't assign seats, but students usually end up sitting in the same place every class. Such is the case in my "Age of Romanticism" class. The same guy sits behind me every Tues and Thurs. This last Tuesday, after class, he says to me "hey, just wanted to let you know you left the tag on you sweater." As I had never worn this particular sweater before, the price tag was still attached and I forgot to cut it out so it was sticking out near my neck. I said "oh thanks!" and made a mental note to cut it when I got home.
Today, Thursday, I got home from a full day of classes, one of which was the same Romanticism class and realized I had worn my sweater inside out ALL DAY. And this particular sweater had a big honkin label which must have been blatantly staring that same poor boy in the face since I wore my hair pulled back. That fact that he didn't say anything this time makes it worse...He must think I'm very, very odd.

How Sweet It Was

I hope all the hype about antioxidants is true, because my diet is chock full of em; My days begin with lots of coffee and end with lots of wine.

Much to my delight, the bulk of last night's vino came out of juice glasses served at La Dolce Via, my favorite restaurant in St. Louis. Usually, drinking wine out of anything other than a traditional wine glass would bother me to the point of not drinking at all. At La Dolce Via however, this little irregularity just added to the charm.
In celebration of a friend's birthday, there were several diners at our table. There were six, to be exact, which is two more than the number of entree options offered. The hand written menu changes daily, and usually is composed of just five or six small plates and four main courses. The chef goes to market on Friday mornings and the menu is built around whatever in-season, fresh ingredients strike his fancy.
We started by splitting two beet salads, one with and one without chicken confit. I was in the non-meat camp but I wished I wasn't as the chicken was cooked perfectly. The salad was simple and delicious; spring greens, red and golden beets, cherry tomatoes, black olives, Parmesan shavings and a touch of balsamic vinaigrette.
We also split the goat cheese plate. Beet and tomato goat cheese is something I've never tried before, and I was pleasantly surprised at how simple and delicate the flavor combination was. It was served with toasted bread, brushed with olive oil.

My party made sure to order at least one of each main course option, which included: Roasted Pork Loin with zucchini, mashed potatoes and green tomato preserves,
Roasted Amish chicken with spinach, mashed potatoes and a garlic cream sauce,
Seared Grouper with mashed potatoes and beets, and
Tortellini with prosciutto and pees in a cheesy cream sauce.

I had the pork loin, which was cooked perfectly. The green tomato preserves was another item which I had never tried before but one that I hope to come across again. The taste was refreshing, not too sweet, and paired wonderfully with the pork. I love roasted vegetables in any shape and form, so naturally I was delighted with the zucchini. Usually I am not a big fan of mashed potatoes. This may seem sinful to hoards of butter lovin Americans, but I'm just not. There are many great ways to prepare a potato, but mashing it is not one of them, in my opinion. Regardless, La Dolce Via has perfected this side dish. The potatoes were light and fluffy, white (I hate buttery yellow undertones), and spiced up with an herb sprinkling that made them taste, well, healthier.
My distaste for mashed potatoes goes hand in hand with a dislike of cream sauces, but again, I was in no way put off by LDV's tortellini. It had a bold, hearty taste when I first put it in my mouth but it finished light upon swallowing. The combo of cheese flavors and cream gave the sauce the impression of being a cream sauce without the heavy, thick, swallow that usually comes along with it.
The grouper was also delightful. I had only a bite of a friends, but it confirmed my opinion, established last year upon having trout at LDV (the best I've ever had, in fact), that this place knows how to cook a fish. Grouper especially is a toughie in the kitchen, but this was so tasty that I wondered why it's not offered more regularly in restaurants.
I did not taste the Amish Chicken but it's eater said, surprise, that it was delicious. In fact every one at the table was very impressed with their meals and basically licked their plates clean.
The only sore point of the experience was the bread. It was homemade, no doubt, but as La Dolce Via is a bakery by day, I expected it to be on par with the rest of the food served there, but the bread was just ok.

This wonderfully kept secret, nestled on the corner of Arco and Taylor, is decidedly my favorite restaurant in St. Louis. The atmosphere is terribly casual (the mismatched chairs and tables make it look more like somebody's apartment than a restaurant) but I feel a need to dress up when I go there, to honor the food you see. The prices are very reasonable for what you get, and the wine list is actually pretty extensive for such a little place. As my friend Gagan said last night, gesturing towards the kitchen, "I feel like someone's mom is back there, making my dinner." I agreed with the sentiment, but I've never met a mom who can cook like this.

La Dolce Via, "The Sweet Way," how sweet indeed.

How I wish it would never end

A few hilarious things that I love about my friends:

The way Ellyse says "expresso," owns a flying squirrel, and is always "mouthy" to the bouncers at Mandarin.

The fact that Kristian no longer attends SLU because he drove his "victory red" Hummer around the clock tower and will arbitrarily plow into traffic cones. Also he owns a shirt that says "Maids Are For Everyone."

The way that Gagan says "Oooh," opens her eyes real wide, and looks down when she disapproves of something, and the particular way she articulates her disapproval. She also secretly loves her Shine (as do I) and is a bonafide crazy cat lady.

Marty honestly did not know that Sketchers are not cool, bought a pair, and introduced them as "adult shoes." Also when dining out he will, in a very high-brow type of voice, ask the waiter questions like "now, this cheese platter, what is that like?"

I still laugh every time John says "Hey Lil Momma! How you doin??" And also, on command, he will perform ebonic poetry.

Stephen, who is gay, openly refers to himself as "homo," "fag," and "queer," and says "hello daaaaahling" to me when we meet.

Last but not least, Nick Marco's existence itself is delightfully funny enough.

I also love the fact that we are all blossoming alcoholics and we support one another in this pursuit.

I am not looking forward to the impending disbandment of this wonderful group of people (sadly Nick has already left us). I do not think I will be able to find others who make me laugh as much or as hard as they do on a regular basis, or with whom I have as much fun. I can honestly say, without any cliche, that I do not know what I will do without them.

Rants

I hate my apartment. Honestly and truthfully, my resentment flows beyond the realm of exaggeration; I cannot exaggerate enough, I simply HATE this place. I would like to challenge the person who designed the building and the individual apartments to spend just one week here and see if he doesn't lose his mind. This place is a testament to the fact that college kids are not sufficient enough to live on their own. I would say that it's an unfair accusation of the building designers who thought that, as the building would more than likely be inhabited entirely by college students, there would be no need for life-sized stoves or sinks. Who cooks in college? I imagine them saying "Why would they need a big sink? It's not like they wash any dishes, just give em a dishwasher!" As I said before, this may seem like an unfair assumption on their part, but the sad fact is, no one else in my building seems to care at all! They think this place is "cool." I'm sure they tell others "I live in 'The Lofts'" with pride, while I almost always add, "unfortunately" to my statement.
You see, I cook. Daily! And I use things like pots and pans which cannot be put in the dishwasher so I have to struggle to wash them in my mini sink, as, to my dismay, water flows over the sides and over the counters and then down into that impossible to reach crack between my refrigerator and stove, where I cringe to imagine it pools and festers.
I think of last year in my lovely White House apartment where I held many dinner parties and get togethers and had a bedroom. As I rented this place sight unseen, I guess I didn't understand that by "one-bedroom apartment," what the leasing agent really meant was two small rooms connected by a "kitchen." And as far as natural light goes, the front room is not so bad, but I have to keep a light on constantly in my "bedroom" in order to function in there.
The only redeeming quality of my little dungeon is the windows. In my "living room," I have two huge windows that open out onto Laclede. In keeping with the quality of the building, the panes of glass are so thin that I am plagued nightly by the sounds of sirens blaring by and any and all traffic on the street, but when I'm not sleeping I actually enjoy the sounds of the city.
I am a nature loving individual, but I actually prefer the sounds of the cars passing by to the sounds of the waves. There's something about the nitty gritty city life, in contrast with the quiet simplicity of a home in the country or on the beach, that to me is just so much more real. Maybe I've been reading too much Hawthorne lately, but when I think of places like Door County, and simple summer towns, I can't help but think "this is not real life." At least I think life shouldn't be so simple. You shouldn't be able to leave your keys in the car with the engine running as you run into the neighborhood store for a pop. You shouldn't know everybody you see walking down the street. These are all very nice and sweet for a while, but if you live like that forever you cannot develop an important part of your individuality. You won't have a thick skin. If, God forbid, your car does one day get stolen you won't know what to do.
What it comes down to, really, is ignorance. And thats what disturbs me most about this building- that the tenants down the hall are ignorant to the fact that this place sucks. They've never needed to learn how to cook so they don't know their stoves are just one step above an easy-bake oven. They think that since gas and electric are all included in the monthly rent they are getting a great deal! When really, the ridiculously inflated rental rates reflect that what we're actually getting is screwed over.
So until May I will grin and bear it, cursing all the mini-disasters that got me stuck here in the first place. I'll sit next to my wonderfully large windows and listen to the cars going by and dream of the day I'll live in a real apartment, on a real street, in a real city, with real things to complain about.

Nostalgia Bites

On this very day last year I was running around, psychotically dazzled in Venice. Ironically, I made it to a bar called "Venice Cafe" Friday night, but unfortunately Venice the city trumps the gritty, St. Louisian cafe. I remember thinking that it was the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and it still is. I don't care that some might call it cliche to think Venice is beautiful; if they do then they've either never seen it for themselves or they've traveled too much in a desperate attempt to look 'worldly.'
One of the days I was there, I woke up early in the morning to the sound of a lone gondolier rowing down the little channel that was right below the window of my hostel room- disgustingly picturesque, I know. I was too excited to go back to sleep so I decided to go for a run. I had no destination in mind, just trotted blindly down the narrow, windy streets. I ran over the Rialto Bridge where some peddlers were setting up their carts but all the stores were still closed. I ran through the market to where the morning's catch was being hauled and cleaned. Shouts, in Italian of course, echoed through the air purposefully.
Seemingly by accident the narrow street I was on suddenly opened up to St. Mark's Square. I had been there the day before but it's hard to admire a sight when it's crawling with people and vendors. This early in the morning however, before the grey haze of night had even fully cleared, there were no tourists and there were no carts selling souvenirs. I honestly had to stop and catch my breath in order to take in the sight before me. The Doge's palace, St. Mark's Basilica, these buildings I had studied and stared at in travel books, were suddenly right before me and seemed to be waiting there for me.

When I think about times like this while I was living in Italy, it's hard not to wish to be back there. It also just makes me really sad because while I was there, even though I did thoroughly appreciated the moments, there was always a part of me that wanted to be home in America. I call it "long distance relationship syndrome," and I get so mad at myself that I let it affect my time there. Obviously part of my frustration comes from the fact that the "relationship" crumbled horribly after I actually did return, but also it's frustrating that I couldn't just rise above at the time. I look back on all that I did, and it was wonderful and invigorating and more fun that I can even comprehend, but still it could have been more.
I've always tried to live my life so that I never have to worry about actual outcomes- I try so hard so that I can honestly say, if it all falls to shit (and it frequently does) , "well at least I did the best I could." But I look back on my time abroad and I didn't do the best I could. I didn't fully give myself to my time there, I held back what is maybe the most sacred part of myself. Conveniently I can say I did this because I missed my boyfriend, but I don't think that's the real answer, or at least not all of it. So why then did I hold back, and am I still doing so? I fear that I am, and with no boyfriend to blame I hide behind the shadow of our demise.
I am fickled as shit.