The Book of Music and Nature: An Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts

From Coming through Slaughter

From Coming through Slaughter Poet Michael Ondaatje wrote the novel Coming through Slaughter in aphorisms and detached fragments about the near-legendary “founder” of jazz, Buddy Bolden, who is said to have lost his mind playing a single long note. Here is the moment where the music consumes him and his nature changes: March is slowing to a stop and as it floats down slow to a thump I take oV and wail long notes jerking the squawk into the end of them to form a new beat, have to trust them all as I close my eyes, know the others are silent, throw the notes oV the walls of people, the iron lines, so pure and sure bringing the howl down to the floor and letting in the light and the girl is alone now mirroring my throat in her lonely tired dance, the street silent but for us her tired breath I can hear for she’s near me as I go round and round in the center of the LibertyIberville connect. Then silent. For something’s fallen in my body and I can’t hear the music as I play it. The notes more often now. She hitting each note with her body before it is even out so I know what I do through her. God this is what I wanted to play for, if no one else I always guessed there would be this, this mirror somewhere, she closer to me now and her eyes over mine tough and young and come from god knows where. Never seen her before but testing me taunting me to make it past her, old hero, old ego tested against one as cold and pure as himself, this tall bitch breasts jumping loose under the light shirt she wears that’s wet from energy and me fixing them with the aimed horn tracing up to the throat. Half dead, can’t take more, hardly hit the squawks anymore but when I do my body flicks at them as if I’m the dancer till the music is out there. Roar. It comes back now, so I can hear only in waves now and then, god the heat in the air, she is sliding round and round her thin hands snake up through her hair and do their own dance and she is seven foot tall with them and I aim at them to bring them down to my body and the music gets caught in her hair, this is what I wanted, always, loss of privacy in the playing , leaving the stage, the rectangle of band on the street, this hearer who can throw me in the direction and the speed she wishes like an angry shadow. FluV and groan in my throat, roll of a bad throat as we begin to slow. Tired. She still [ 116 ] michael ondaatje ⢇ covers my eyes with hers and sees it slow and allows the slowness for me her breasts black under the wet light shirt, sound and pain in my heart sure as death. All my body moves to my throat and I speed again and she speeds tired again, a river of sweat to her waist her head and hair back bending back to me, all the desire in me is cramp and hard, cocaine on my cock, eternal, for my heart is at my throat hitting slow pure notes into the shimmy dance of victory, hair toss victory, a local strut, eyes meeting sweat down her chin arms out in final exercise pain, take on the last long squawk and letting it cough and climb to spear her all those watching like a javelin through the brain and down into the stomach, feel the blood that is real move up bringing fresh energy in its suitcase, it comes up flooding past my heart in a mad parade, it is coming through my teeth, it is into the cornet, god can’t stop god can’t stop it can’t stop the air the red force coming up can’t remove it from my mouth, no intake gasp, so deep blooming it up god I can’t choke it the music still pouring in a roughness I’ve never hit, watch it listen it listen it, can’t see I CAN’T SEE. Air floating through the blood to the girl red hitting the blind spot I can feel others turning, the silence of the crowd, can’t see Willy Cornish...