Words from the Third Eye

I never listened to it except for what I heard when flicking threw random radio stations trying to get to a particular one, or when it was in some movie sequence.

It was old people’s music and it put me to sleep as child so why bother.

It was not till I got a night job, downtown San Francisco, did the subtle tones of a muted trumpet or saxophone, or even the voice that was more like a dulcet whisper start to infect me.

Some how, all of it, the tunes, they got in my blood. I began to felt them where as before I only heard A, C, or E I now heard my soul speak.

When I got into deep passionate fights with my ex only to make up with even more passionate sex I understood why Billie Holiday moaned her notes instead of belting them out.

At night, when it began to drizzle and then lightly come down I started hearing Charlie’s piano as the rain drops captured the glow from the many headlights of the many cars and for the briefest of moments come to life, become visible. For the briefest of moments on was truly surrounded by falling stars.

Walking around the city on a cold winter night watching the steam rise from the sewer caps; listening to the people on the corner and even down in the BART station play what ever instrument they had in the way of the siren called jazz;

I was swayed and I was rocked till my being crashed into the shores.

My soul opened and the notes that Miles’ and John’s horns played turned to words. These words that I now could hear, but could not see like other words poured out of me and into me at the same time. These words only made sense to my third eye. These words only made sense to the depths of my heart.

One must experience love to know how it sounds.

One had to experience loss, death, even birth to know what key they are in.

This feeling that is jazz is a soundtrack to a life lived in touch with emotion, in tune with pain; a life that had joy, high and low.

This thing called Jazz carries spirits of lives lived and yet to be lived.

This thing called Jazz must be the sound of life in its entirety.

Jazz must be the sound of love.

Jazz must be the sound of time.

Jazz must be the sound of life in the process of living it.

©Christopher F. Brown 2009