This
Journal

November
1999

Having mentioned This Journal today in the freshmen classes, I figure I'd better write something tonight just in case any of the little buggers are peeking in. I also told them that I never use their names here, but I'm about to do just that. (But Danny's name will not appear, because he didn't say anything memorable today.)

Emory asks, "Is that yer jernal?" I shake my head no, but maybe it is. We're writing today.

After my long-winded introduction and all of our pre-writing lists, we're finally just writing - putting it on paper during these last 25 minutes or so of class. I like this moment when we're all buried in our own pages, our own thoughts. The magic of this calm and solitary space doesn't last long, but there's room for a breath and a thought. Ellington, Mingus and Roach on Money Jungle fill in the background.

"Can you please turn it down a bit?" Erin sighs. Sure. So, a bit deflated, I rise to do that. Maybe it was too loud and distracting. But how could it be "too loud"? Could it be so loud that I can't think of what to write? So loud that it drives all thinking out of my brain and fills that space with the tiny black bugs of musical notes?

Some take longer than others to fall into that inner writing space. First there are all the settling things they have to do, arranging the furniture: looking around, whispering something, fiddling, finding a pen with ink or a sharp pencil, shifting in the seat. And then here we are, writing in a group as individuals, listening or not listening to the music, falling towards this hole in ourselves where a story waits, where feelings were once all muddled or shimmery clear and can be known again.

Writing happens when you have something to say but there's nobody around to say it to so you pick up a pencil or a pen or a turkey feather, or you boot up the computer, and scribble, scratch or click away from yourself to the world - all those strangers whose lives and minds you need to touch.

"Is that jazz?" wonders Kevin. Yes, it's all jazz - the whole singing universe: brainjazz, fingerjazz, tonguejazz, hardrockjazz, blackinkjazz, bigoldtruckmotoridlin'jazz, breathing belching rolling smiling coughing jazz. Writing it all down jazz.

We have read to classical music. Julian Bream solo guitar pieces seem to work best - the quieter stuff, not the Vivaldi. It lays down a soft soundcarpet that muffles the utter silence, fills in the gap where distractions hover (the mumbling, shuffling, shifting, sniffling).

But jazz seems to work for writing, at least for me. No vocals. The rhythm provides some forward motion, some energy to keep it going. You don't want to linger too long over this first draft. Get it done; find out where you're going; get there. The soft piano elegance sucks up the dark silence that would say, if we listened, "You don't know anything, you're stupid, you're boring, there's nothing else to say."

Ellington, Mingus, and Roach refine the shadows, invite us in to find our best thoughts and something else, something very strange. A soul.

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
William Shakespeare