Jazz isn’t about jazz at all…

March 3, 2008 at 6:01 pm (Uncategorized)

 “But I have seen the City do an unbelievable sky. Redcaps and dining-car attendants who wouldn’t think of moving out of the City sometimes go on at great lengths about country skies they have seen from the windows of trains. But there is nothing to beat what the City can make of a nightsky. It can empty itself of surface, and more like the ocean than the ocean itself, go deep, starless. Close up on the tops of buildings, near, nearer than the cap you are wearing, such a citysky presses and retreats, presses and retreats, making me think of the free but illegal love of sweethearts before they are discovered.” (35)

The sky is already a vast and endless force above us. The fact that the city turns it into an orange ocean, deep and starless, makes it that much more awe-inspiring and all-encompassing. This passage speaks to the universality of the city, or City, and the way it can sweep you up in its rhythm. Comparing the sky to an ocean is particularly poignant, because while country skies are considered skies, a city sky is something large and mysterious—oceans are beautiful and intriguing, made of water which sustains us, and yet deadly if not treated with care and respect. The city itself is the same way. The fact that the city’s sky—the entity that surrounds and encases it—is something so enormous and captivating suggests the colossal nature of the city itself. Everything below that sky is equally majestic and demanding of care.

“Nobody says it’s pretty here; nobody says it’s easy either. What it is is decisive, and if you pay attention to the street plans, all laid out, the City can’t hurt you.” (8)