Finale of Seem (redux)

It’s all about noise. About the back and forth of improvisational counterpoint — an F flat ostinato call here, an arpeggio of the B scale in response there… like the scale of wildfires and flash flood cycles in call and response in a dozen places across the world… it doesn’t seem to end. Ash, dirt, and water transmogrified into an inexorable mud-wall swallowing all in its path… ten feet tall and half mile wide… There is no hope of escape in his mind. It’ll be his turn eventually… The skronk squalls out of his alto saxophone demand this much… But he can’t go on, even though the drummer beats an exquisite syncopation, and the bassist picks something near the upper bout so yawling and transcendent that he considers not walking away forever. But it’s not enough. The last note he ever blows is a C major. In C, he thinks, I’ve heard that before. He drops the sax as ceremoniously as thee final mic-drop, and bares his teeth — more grimace than smile — to the two dozen assembled in the dark. He beats it for the nearest bridge of fatal height. This is thee finale of seem.

What I’m Reading:

“But art doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t even need to be good. So don’t worry about being smart and let go of being ‘good.’”

— Jerry Saltz / “Jerry Saltz’s 33 Rules for Being an Artist”