The Touch of Your Lips

The Touch of Your Lips.mp3

Today I sat down amidst a flurry of activity next door. 

A quick peek through the living room blinds delivered the bad news: another work crew was settling in for the day. 

Unusual?

Sadly no. That is, if it weren't for the jackhammers.  jesus...jackhammers.  wtf.

But, this sonic intrusion, brutal and hardcore as it was, served to harden my resolve; screw you guys.  i gotta do what i gotta do. The chet baker project continues.

Hence, this rendition of one of the most tender pieces of music i've ever heard...chet's version of course, not necessarily my own.  but as we all know, the purpose of this project is not to recreate chet's music.  no one can do that.

Someone or something in this someone decided to tackle another emotionally charged tune of chet's.
In the inimitable words of Firesign Theatre:  "another one....just like the other one."

This time it was a ballad by Rodgers and Hart called 'The Touch of Your Lips."

The touch of your lips
Upon
my brow
Your lips that are cool
and sweet
Such tenderness
Lies in their soft caress

My Heart
Forgets
To beat

Yeah, they're killer lyrics.
How about these guys, Rodgers and Hart.  So many beautiful songs, so squandered, laid as they were on the banal breast of that most ridiculous of musical genres, the Broadway Show.

This tune has a story to it.

About ten years ago when i was living and working in ithaca, , dancing as fast i could, raising a family, snatching a gig here and there, i started listening to chet intensively.  i had heard of him before of course, being a trumpet player myself and having grown up listening to all kinds of jazz.

This was courtesy of my father's interest in music and to his weekly sunday morning hi-fi concerts ranging from Victory at Sea to Barbara Streisand (before her head got bigger than her voice) to Stan Kenton to Puccini to Maynard Ferguson.  It was wonderful.  Looking back on it i think without a doubt that this was one, if not the most salient childhood experience that helped determine my musical destiny (for better or worse--for the pleasure and exultation of musical performance or for worse, the extreme frustration of trying to make a living through its pursuit).  All the same i owe him big time.

Anyway i was listening to chet A LOT back then.  This tune 'The Touch of Your Lips' was the first of his tunes over which i would obsess.

I would put this tune on the stereo (back in the day we all used to listen to music through these big rectangular boxes so everyone could hear it; they're called speakers.  you may have heard of them) and hit 'replay.'  Then i would sit back on the sofa, toke up maybe and just listen over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to chet breathe life into this tune one soft phrase after another.

I was so moved by this tune 'The Touch of Your Lips' that one night after putting the kids to bed, i put it on and listened to it.  The emotion of the song and the way it was orchestrated (just piano, upright bass and brushes) and the way chet exhaled the sentiment of the tune into the microphone overwhelmed me to the point that i called my best friend over to the house to share it.

it was late.  after 10 on a school night.  but i called him anyway.

"listen you gotta come over here right away."

"why?  what's up?"

"you gotta hear this tune."

All he said into the phone before showing up at my door  was " really?"  He was like that.  He'd honor anything anyone said just as long as there was some sort of authentically felt ideation behind it.

He came over and i put it on.  We listened together.  And after the last note died back into silence, we sat there quietly.

"That is the most beautiful tune i've ever heard in my life," i sighed.
And all he could say was "really?"

Again with the ' really.'

Oh well.  it was ok that it meant more to me than to him.  It was important to me then and it is still.
That's why i picked it yesterday i guess.  I wanted to experience its heavy sentimentality again.  i suppose i thought i needed it in order to draw out from my own heart/mind a sister state of emotion with which to resonate.

Turns out i did find a matching state within me sufficient to react to enough of the original feeling that chet's rendition stirred in me years before to make the effort worthwhile.

Considering the Connection between Emotion and Melody

I took a bike ride.

I was forced to on account of there was so much noise and disruption outside.

Utility crews are fixing some broken dirt. They must be using really dull tools. Either that or they're just plain having fun; little big boys playing together, with big ass equipment. Fun for the entire family. Loud fun.

Anyway i wrote the following while sitting on my favorite pedestrian bridge in Austin. It's one of several bridges spanning the Colorado River as it meanders thru the Capitol City. the bridge does a little meandering itself as its not straight; it undulates, wiggles its way across the green fast-moving water.

Trouble is, the city insists on calling it a lake. Which is puzzling because it's not. Not really.

When i first visited Austin i remember wondering why they named it Town Lake. It's clearly not a lake; it's clearly a river. Lakes are big and somewhat entire--monolithic like a pond or something, not straight and narrow like a...a river. Lakes are supposed to have an inlet and an outlet, at least that's what my Earth Science book claims.

Anyway they changed the name. It's not Town Lake anymore (although why they went with something as prosaic as Town Lake i've no idea). Now it's Lady Bird Lake (which you might find head-scratcher as well, that is,if you didn't happen to know that Lady Bird, silly sounding name as it is, happens to be the dead wife of one of our dead presidents: a Texan by the name of Lyndon Johnson. .

Yeah, so i sat down in the sunshine on this serpentine bridge that connects North with South and i wrote this: It concerns the mystery of Music.

After slugging my way through 'It Could Happen to You' this afternoon it occurs to me that perhaps the thing that eludes me--the element that remains missing--that has been missing all these years--is not so much an element at all but an attitude.

Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl Rast tells a story. He says that we have sometimes a grasping, clutching attitude towards life.

Says that we're all born with this 'monkey brain'-sort-0f-deal. I can totally see what he means. I mean it seems most of us are walking around with a fair amount of caution., some would say uncertainty, maybe even dread. And our response to this tenuous planetary life we got going here can sometimes be to hold on to what we DO have lest it too slips from our grasp.

Think about it:

What is the first thing a doctor does when we are born? He or she shakes the table or slaps the bottom of our feet, or cuffs our butt, to see if we are alive and well. And what is our response? we reach out for something to hold. like a monkey trying desperately to hold on to its mother as she swings from branch to branch.

This response to life extends past diapers, touching even the most basic of human needs: the quest of the human heart for meaning.

Br. David talks about the dilemma we so often face in life: whether to play it safe, take no risks, keep everything on an even keel so as to avoid the oftentimes troublesome unknown or do we venture past our comfort zones, test the boundaries set by inertia, and run the risk of tribulation?

until we discover that the truth is something that HOLDS US, that we give ourselves to it and then it holds US.

Not something that we hold onto, that we grasp and clutch to our breasts like the monkey clinging to its mother.

This becomes an attitude held in us, by us.

And this is what i am wondering about as i sit here on this breezy sun-drenched wavy gravy bridge.

This 'element', this 'attitude' about what it means to create music, to play 'good,' is it something i can give myself to and then let it hold me

or is it something that i must struggle to acquire then maintain and rigidly hold, wielding it like some Medieval knight crashing into battle?

Is this idle curiosity? NO.

This project, this all-inclusive resort for the high-minded that i've begun, has put me touch with all the elements of music that have baffled me since i first remembered that i wanted to play something 'good.'

Part of the project is me acting like i know how to do this shit. i know how to come up with changes, i know how to comp, i know how to engineer, i know how to improvise, i know how to operate instruments and on and on. Really?

So as i struggle to play what i hear, to sing the notes i hear in my head, to sound like a musician that has something meaningful to say, this one thought remains: what's it take to translate emotion into music?

I know this question yet its answer continues to elude me. But maybe this concept of attitude, once thoroughly adopted, is the same kind of deal: Brother David's deal.

Maybe this attitude about playing a melody--any melody--be it my own, the head of a tune, a solo line--maybe the element that is missing in me is not something that is studied and acquired and held on to and hauled out when the time is right.

Maybe it's an attitude that simply needs to be accepted and manifested.

Doubts come immediately of course.

But maybe that's part of it too. Maybe doubts are just indications of an immature attitude; one not yet fully formed and adopted. So does this mean that we can simply sidestep these doubts and continue to strive for this all-inclusive attitude?

An attitude that has at its core an unshakeable belief (trust) that there are notes to be played and i can find them.

It's a mystery.

But could it be, that i have yet to spend the requisite time in discovering the connections between these elements? Do i just need to keep going?

By sitting, by contemplating, by paying attention, is it possible to discover and make my own, this connection between an attitude about life and music that sustains me instead of drains me?

If i stumble upon one will it bend to the other?

If i'm able to discover the truth that holds me with respect to the essential life-giving elements, i.e., love, trust, courage, will the musical elements of melody, harmony and emotion follow suit?

Or vice versa. If through this project, i am able to discover precisely the connection between emotion and melody, emotion and harmony, will the truth that holds me up in times of uncertainty and despair come as well?