Jazz
Don’t get me wrong, I love jazz. I love reading about it in Kerouac, in Larkin, in Sartre: I love the principle of improvisation and all the ideals of the whole wonderful thing, right down to the way you can’t even say it without an exclamation mark; JAZZ!! But can I actually sit and listen to it? Am I able to tell one song from another, or even where one song ends and another begins? Listening to jazz reminds me of conceding a goal back when I too young to lose my temper over it, standing with gloved hands on hips as the celebrating hordes roar by, the camera panning outwards to show everybody in all the world having a fabulous time except me; the crowds, the bands; Satchmo and the fans; the whole of existence cheered and chaired back to the treehouse club I can never climb, the ladder pulled up on the inner life from which I am forever blackballed; and me, striking an insouciant pose, even though I know no-one will ever care enough to look.
Because I don’t get jazz; any of it; EVER. Even musical idiots recognise the overture from William Tell; even complete Philistines like bombastic Wagner. What are the jazz equivalents, the simple standards we can all enjoy regardless of our level of scholarship: Jazz 101? Where, to paraphrase Saul Bellow, is the Chopsticks of the clarinet? Jazz fans in general are an accomodating lot, generous and sincere in their suggestions as to where a beginner should begin; but no real jazz-lover was ever a beginner. For them, the fogs of neophytism were scattered at the first trumpet’s call; to me the wistful mists lie under layers as thick as ever, to me only the muffled anti-Siren of the mournful foghorn.
But I am denied even the pleasure of hating jazz; not just because it has the love of so many people I respect; not just because I am afraid to say anything else I will later regret; but because I can’t help smiling to myself on hearing all that Woman-you-don’t-gone-treat-me-right-buhbuhbuhbuh stuff, even though I know that finding amusement in the recurrent themes of jazz betrays about as much artistic maturity as, say, being faintly charmed by all those quaint little “thy”s and “thou”s in Shakespeare. But see? Why can’t I even talk about my not liking jazz without framing the discussion in ornate and gilded apologia, cringing like a foreign ambassador before someone else’s king? And I suppose this is where I start to sidle off towards self-absolution. When I went to see the utterly execrable remake of The Wicker Man, I shared the cinema with a rabble of teenagers who, too late to see Little Man, howled with the forced laughter of the freshly gypped at the unlikely and highly unterrifying events depicted on screen whilst, two seats to my right, a dowdy old dowager, determined to take the proposterousness of it all at face value, sniffed haughtily at any such display of feigned merriment and loftily enunciated “Well, EH don’t think there’s anything amusing abaht THET. :|” Ironic amusement is a fashionable response nowadays to things one doesn’t like, but I think it’s an open question as to whether or not this is any worse than pretending always to like everything.