of him. He saw them: when he hurried through the busy Manhattan streets and saw all those anonymous faces pass by, the lights, the garish neon advertisements, the tall glistening towers, the panhandlers, the hustlers, the junkies, a whirlwind of words and images and sounds that made him wistful.
Zaid rolled onto his other side. Made clicking noises with his tongue.
‘Get up, man. She’ll be here soon.’ Umar gave him a shove in the back. ‘Ameja doesn’t want any hassle. And she definitely doesn’t want your filthy feet on her couch.’
Zaid laughed. He hoisted himself off the sofa and retreated to the kitchen.
But Umar knew he was kidding himself. He knew all along he’d start smoking that shit, sooner or later. He had no choice, really. It was just a question of waiting for the right moment.
So he went into the kitchen. The bright light there blinded him for a second.
‘Sit down,’ Zaid said. As though hypnotized, he stared at the flame of his lighter as it melted the crack in the spoon. ‘There’s the pipe.’
Umar picked up the small stone pipe that lay on the table. Zaid drizzled the bubbling mass into its bowl. ‘Quick,’ he said, ‘before it’s gone. You have to hold it in as long as you can.’
Umar inhaled, felt the bittersweet smoke burn in his throat, his lungs.
‘You feel it?’
Zaid’s voice echoed in his head. He closed his eyes. A warmth flowed through his body; he felt it bend him over backward. It was a gentle, liquid warmth. His cheeks flushed. He felt crackly vibrations in his head, as though he’d just woken up after a long, deep sleep. Everything was red. Red velvet. He wanted to lie down. Got up and walked to the sofa. He saw the fish glide through their viscous water. The bluish-yellow light of the aquarium. The light was clear and crisp and real. He lay down. His fingers tingled; his legs felt heavy and sluggish. The warmth embraced him, caressed him, kissed him. It was like falling into a memory.
‘This is only the beginning,’ he heard Zaid say in the distance.
He couldn’t speak. His yearning melted into the velvety storm that raged through his body. He smiled.
‘Everything’ll be fine, brother Umar,’ Zaid whispered. ‘Everything.’
-
‘A.M.’ (1990)
That sound … What is that sound? So clean. So fluid. Emotions so hot in the passing of Summer into Autumn. The magnificence of awakening to something so rare … so new. Images dreaming softly in slow dances that wrap themselves tightly around our doubts.
I touch your face.
You touch mine. He is so tender with our needs.
So strong in our desire to be free. The definitions of his statement colors the skyline. He wa that one last feeling of logic before the needle punctured the vein. He was the music the morning after the resurrection of pain and prayers in the twisted honor and slight applause of demons and folk heroes stabbing us in the back.
He was a love Supreme.
He was a love Supreme.
-
EAST ORANGE, NEW JERSEY, SEPTEMBER 2001
Recollections of Grand Mixer DXT, Greenpoint Studio, Brooklyn, 1991
‘There was an abattoir next door to the studio. Every morning, really early, a truck full of chickens drove up, and when the tailgate opened you heard their screeching and wailing. “I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna go.” Like they knew where they were headed. That high-pitched wail. It always woke me up. And the stench, weekends. On Sunday you smelled the bitter, rancid odor of chicken shit and clotted blood. But we got used to it, right? Once I met the guy who did the slaughtering. Huge guy. He had a sharp knife, and he chopped those chickens’ heads off, one by one, and hung them up on hooks. He was merciless. He didn’t say a prayer or anything. Just wham, head off, that’s it, next. Sometimes I miss the studio—don’t you, Umar? We were family: you, me, Anton the drummer, and Lane—remember Lane? Young guy. Wonder whatever happened to him. I had lost my house in Los Angeles to the earthquake. Bill Laswell said I could come live above his studio. How’d I know you’d be sleeping there too. Remember the Chinese place across the street? That was really good, the restaurant next door to McDonald’s. We didn’t have a kitchen. Only a sink and cold water. A shower on the third floor. And a huge wooden table where we sat talking at night. In the winter you had to let the water run or it’d freeze. Later I found an apartment in Harlem, but actually I’d have preferred to stay in Greenpoint. I rode my mountain bike from 132nd St. all the way back to Brooklyn. That studio had something. You know what I mean? You once said I wasted too much time on a beat. Came downstairs at night, muttering that I’d woken you up. But I was totally absorbed in that beat. The rest happened by itself, the sounds, the colors, the dialogues, the chord progressions. I converted it to music. We all had our own rituals. You too. Sometimes you’d vanish all of a sudden, and show up again three days later. Was Bill pissed! You remember? “Go upstairs, go sleep it off.” And then you’d start writing again … ’
-
AKRON, OHIO, 1958
Geronimo
‘Can you see it?’
Carla Wilson’s shrill voice echoed down Howard Street.
Jerome Huling did not budge. He was invisible. The night made him invisible. He thrust his fists deeper into his jacket pockets and saw how the red-to-yellow flicker of the neon lights reflected off Carla’s bare thighs. She sat on the low wall behind Roxy’s Café. The red turned her thighs gold, yellow turned them silver. With silver you could see her goose bumps. Tiny black dots on the glistening skin.
‘C’mere.’
He still didn’t realize Carla was talking to him. The longer he looked at her, the less himself he felt, his frozen feet in the canvas sneakers.
‘You deaf or what?’ She hopped off the wall where she had been sitting in vain for more than half an hour. It was too cold tonight. She tugged her black dress down over her thighs and pulled her thin leather jacket tighter. Then she blew a white cloud into the night.
‘It’s freezing,’ she said in a monotone.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ The words spontaneously escaped from Jerome’s thoughts.
‘So you do have a voice.’ Carla Wilson laughed. Her high cheekbones went up and her eyes became slits. ‘Come over here already. Or are you scared?’
Someone opened the door to Roxy’s. The gentle, smoky music—until now no more than a muffled background noise—blared down Howard Street. Stridently high saxophone notes, like a scream. An agitated drumbeat. The music descended on them like a warm vapor. Jerome and Carla caught each other’s eyes for a moment, then the door closed again.
‘You seen Charlie?’ Carla asked.
‘No,’ Jerome lied. A couple of hours earlier Charlie Brown had driven off in his white Pontiac, raising a hand to Jerome, winking. Two women, white women, were in the back seat.
‘The
