2.20 Brighter Day

In the months following that first spliff at Bayside Place, Jean and I became fast friends.

What the man ever saw in me I can’t really say.

I was an unremarkable person in so many ways. I ran a small, but moderately profitable business out my apartment, teaching English and occasionally French, writing, and translating, that was, as they say in French, comme ci, comme ça, neither very good nor very bad. It defied growth the way a young boy resisted maturity. My love life, if you could call it one, was little better: I was four years into an unhappy marriage that I felt locked into and wanted out; and had an unhappy lover, I was locked out of, but wanted in. At thirty-four years of age, I had painted myself hopelessly into a corner.

However little I could have possibly offered Jean, he still found it worth his while to phone me and ask if I was doing anything.

“At the moment, not much,” I replied. The sad truth was I hadn’t been doing much of anything for ten years.

And so we would meet, and every time I would be exposed to things and introduced to people and places that would have taken years of bumbling around on my own to discover.

Take music, for instance. Until Jean and I had become friends I was under the impression that I enjoyed an eclectic choice of musical styles. It was woefully narrow. At the time, I had been listening to minimalistic composers such as Harold Budd in whose music I could zone out, let my mind go blank. Jean would pull up in his Mercedes with music like I’d never quite heard before coming out the speaker, an orgy of sound.

"What is this?"

"Acid jazz, man."

So this is what acid jazz is.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of acid jazz?” Jean said, shooting me a look of incredulity.

I mumbled something about coming across the term in NME and offered apologetically that it wasn’t bad.

"’Not bad,’ he says! I ought a make you walk!” Taking a CD out of the glove box and popping it into the tray he said, “Listen to this.”

"Ronny Jordan," I read. "A Brighter Day."

The first warm notes of the double bass expanded in the confined space of Jean’s car. The percussions kicked in, cymbals, brushes scraping against a snare drum, rim shots. A bell tolled, like a distant church bell striking seven in a foggy English hamlet. And through the drizzle of the hi-hat a bluesy rift on Jordan’s Gibson rose up through the percussions like the sun breaking through the clouds.

“Wow.” I sat back and let the music take me.

Jean stepped on the gas and we cruised down the narrow road, a cocoon of cool sounds, neon lights and red lanterns blurring outside the windows.

Jean said I could borrow the CD if I liked.

"Really?"

"Of course."

"Just be sure to give it back, okay?"

"Tell you what: I'm going to buy this myself," I said making a note.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No. 6 is now available on Kindle.