I'm sitting here waiting listening to one of my favorite jazz tunes, My Favorites Things by John Coltrane and wondering what happened to that autiobio essay I started on the paper table cloth at that fancy restaurant in Carmel in 2000. Carmel used to be an artisit colony and the restaurants put paper table clothes on the tables so the artists could sketch or write as they ate. So I obliged and started writing a piece called "A Life Lived Through Jazz", which was about having the most important moments of my life magically explained while I was listening some jazz record.

There is something so wicked, so cityish, so sinful, so delightful about listening to jazz for me. I think of streets I walked at night in Manhattan, DC and San Francisco where I heard some guy on a street corner wailing away on his saxaphone, the sound eerily echoing through the scrscraper caverns. Or the time we cleared out a college party by playing John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Or sitting in countless bubble baths with glass of wine or champagne in hand and listening to jazz music on the radio. Or that senior I slept with occassionally in college, when I was a freshman, with the huge jazz record collection. He would ply me with ouzo, carefully select a jazz record to play, and then we would have sex. Afterwards, I would watch him meticulously clean the record in his birthday suit. He would then carefully choose another one and come back to bed, not to make love, but just to hold me. I would lay my head on his chest and listen to his heart beat in tune to whatever record he was playing. An interesting way to get a jazz education, I suppose. I think I was attracted more to his record collection than to him. He lived right down the hall, drove a Mercedes, supplied free drink and demanded nothing of me until I showed up at his door in the wee hours of the morning; he was the perfectly convenient college lover. And when I did show up at his door in my sleep attire, which I seem remember was just a tshirt, all I had to do was smile and listen to him talk about jazz music and his beloved collection. But what man wouldn't want a willing 18 year old to show up at his door wearing nothing but a tshirt and panties? And always so agreeable and pleasant too!

There used to be a radio station devoted completely to jazz, called KJAZ (what else), when I first moved to San Francisco. That station has long since gone and now I listen to classical music while I bathe.

I've trying to slog my way through John Henry Days. It's a good book but the reading is slow. I wanted to finish it in West Virginia since we were actually going to go John Henry Days, but I got sidelined by Confederated in the Attic. I love that book. It was so much more easier to read than this John Henry book. I don't know if Confederates is so good because it was written by a former war correspondent who is used to writing for the media and well versed in the art of keeping the reader with a limited attention span interested or if it's good because it's a non fiction book and sometimes, true life is better reading than fiction.

I want to finish John Henry Days only because I hate starting a book and not finishing it. There's something very bad for me about starting a book and not finishing it. It's kind of rude, since the author spent time on his creation and it's a dishonour for the reader not to finish it. I'm the same way with movies, even bad ones. I have to watch it to the end, just in case the film gets it together and redeems itself.

So I'm playing my favorite jazz tunes to get me through, but even that's not working. I sat in a different chair to take a break and I fell asleep and woke up to Take the A Train. And now I'm getting de ja vu, like I've written a whole thing abuot jazz on my blog before. Oh well, I guess it doesn't matter. It just shows that jazz music does permeate my thoughts alot or just that I play jazz music from time to time. What's the difference?