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.

Point of Indulgence

Ok sportsfans, this is not strictly a post about the project; in fact it will have pretty much nothing to do with it.

well maybe not totally nothing, perhaps it will obliquely touch on what i've been doing with this chetbaker project thing.

I only say this out front to help those of you who don't have time.

Go ahead and skip over it. head on out to something more fitting...say, fly-fishing or extreme fighting.

But those of you who feel that little twine of connection between kindred souls (and that's everyone), read on.

It's just that i feel a little off kilter. Scared maybe.

The obvious question: Scared of what?

Well let's see now.

I've been away.

Went out west for a little over a week. Drove. It was wonderful. K and I drove in her red convertible; a pretty snazzy little number. The weather was fine the entire two days it took us to get from Austin to Denver.

Warm weather, bright sun, audacious storms, impressive sights. I could do that forever i think.
No i couldn't. not really. cuz you know why?
At some point necessity would collide with adventure. and then...

the vortex would open up and....

The vortex? huh...

Maybe i mean that feeling i can get when my thoughts run over the speedbumps.

Speedbumps...wtf?

Uh, yeah. those little considerations of the rational mind that, when considered seriously, derail whatever else is going on.

I know you know what i'm talking about. it's a universal experience. albeit unique to each of us...which is why i won't go into it right now; not sure it would resonate with anyone else.

i'm compassionate that way.

But back to why i'm feeling so...strange.

i'm home...that is, i'm in my new home. another one. Yet another one.

After fifty years, i find myself bouncing around like one of those crazy super balls i used to get down at Crayton's Drugstore, on Fall St.

It started about five years ago.

Right after i blew my family up.

Apparently thirty years was long enough. long enough to be married, to live a householder's life, to raise two children, to play in the same bands with different rotations of musicians, going to the same workplace, talking to the same people about the same things in the same place at the same time.

It put into motion this thing...this different thing..this new, different thing.

Predictability morphed. Maybe 'morphed' is too gentle a term; perhaps a word that better fits the violence that this next phase in my life took on would be more appropriate.

Jarred, shook, jostled, spasmatically exploded? I don't know...suffice it to say that since my life took an abrupt left turn, i've found myself...well, that's the thing...i've NOT found myself.

No, this is not just a middle-aged guy crying in his beer, although i've been known to do that too. This is more like a guy trying to make sense out of something that seems resistant to the process. It resists being found out.

And if this sounds like just more sour grapes, well I can't help that. I really don't feel a victim. How could i really? I mean, it was my decision to light the fuse.

I watched as it burned evenly and then not so, steadily and then fitfully, until it sparked and sputtered toward the motherlode...and blew everything to hell.

it was all me. nobody held a gun to my head. it was me...pure and simple.

so why is it that i feel scared?

well shit, if i knew that, i wouldn't be pulling on your coat, now would i?

Course by 'you' i don't think i really know what or who i mean. No one is reading this blog, cept me. and i happen to be writing it, so what's the point?

Right. What's the point.

The smile dissolves, the compassion bounces back from the surface of the self-reflected mind. i recede within. again.

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But wait. I'm not gone. turns out i can't go. turns out i have to stay now.
Till i let myself know. Till i know where i am and where i'm headed.

And this project, this Chet project is part of that process. in some less-than-explicit way, it's part of remembering who i am.

And to this i say:

Ladies and gentlemen
Here's my advice.

Pull down your pants

And slide on the ice.