Happy Free Write Friday! Wishing you a joyous holiday season filled Joy, fun, inspiration, freedom and peace…
This is an excerpt from: The Sounds I Felt: Improvisations on Freedom This is a Literary Companion to my father’s CD and the selection that sums up my Season of Improvisation in 1965 is “The Shadow of Your Smile” (Love Theme from the Sandpiper) I hope you enjoy it
Grace Notes
Dear Dad,
Thank you for giving me life.
Mom and God gave me all the rest.
Here’s what I have learned from my greatest teachers….
My journey began from the 1st sound of you humming the song you wrote for me.
Releasing my heart to search for the life that is waiting for me.
You were the one who taught me to dance atop your feet when you were called
To be the Conductor for the 1965 Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra
The summer of 1965 would be my master class in the art of jazz improvisation.
It was a master class filled with civil, women’s rights and a cultural revolution that changed the face of American Life
August set things off.
Bringing forth a Tsunamic red tide attacking, redefining Life with discordant notes of ignorance, illiteracy, desolation, fear and destruction.
And so my song took flight.
Timing is critical in jazz as in life,
Knowing when to stop, start, step it up, slow it down
And more so, and
oh so important is to learn how to wait thru the strife.
Jazz harmony is the theory and practice of changing chords,
where major and minor scales share the same space in a timeless bond…
progressions depart in thirds and stacked fourths
favoring harmonic progressions where tensions in intervals of 9th , 11th, or 13th abound.
Learned about the search for meaning, intentions and having the blues
Finding your truth and appreciating a life of humility
‘cause the universe is misting the air with valuable clues
now you have the essence of a universal tranquility.
Notes are just window dressing a façade you create
listen to the spoken word filled with meaning
of the path and choices you debate
Play it slant is the message best heard in the evening.
Learned that being different is the integral part of the plan
pressing forward seeing how far you can reach
harmonies in real-time, flowing and ebbing broadening the span
of improvisational context is what matters in all you teach .
Learned that playing jazz has four elements
broadening your words and expressing every letter
in a charismatic way to enhance
finding your intentions and mixing all together
where freedom and coordination can really dance.
Jazz has the power to go deep within,
having a relationship with you as next of kin
surpassing arrogance into a love of sound and words
sharing that experience like the legends you’ve heard.
Now three years after your death,
I discovered in your music room the Gibson Guitar in case you gave to me
Nestled beneath the pristine guitar
A hand written note to me,
like in a bottle,
Uncorked my heart you wrote,
July 30, 1979
Jan,
Jazz is my language.
Notes are all I know to tell you how much I love you,
And I know that that is not what you wanted,
I wanted to spare you the struggles I faced to be
Your dad and to express the love for my family through
Jazz without words.
So now I am going to tell you that I know you
Were secretly writing in your room.
I want you to know what I couldn’t express it in notes…
If you truly want to be a writer,
you will have to sacrifice your life.
that words are the loves of your life.
It is a choice that you cannot shake.
It brings happiness, patience, love and peace.
You are miserable and tortured if you don’t write.
Self-expression is overrated when it comes to
the ‘hour of the wolf’
when it seems that the words are discordant and fretful.
The trick is they are your children
be humble and allow them the love and respect that you claim for yourself.
I was very fortunate to have met your mother, she gave me you and your brother.
So I did not have to make that choice alone.
So your family is words and jazz replete with lessons on life,
discernment and discovering who you are,
who you’ve been and most of all be grateful
to God for the talent to write.
Write your heart out, share your soul.
That is what happens to me when I am writing a song.
The notes are my children too. I know you think that I made your life difficult,
but you will realize some day that when you look back
it is the fuel you’ll need to be who you are.
That’s your story.
Love Dad
In 2000, I was saved by jazz
healing my soul and my body from
breast cancer’s trials and tribulations
Finding peace on earth filled with
joyous jubilation!
I am waiting and discovering a life filled with wonder and love…
I am definitely on the right wake…
portions of hard times, mean and hurtful folks, mistakes, failures
creating a wisdom that it is
It is not the number of years in a life that matters…it is the life in the years that counts.
To this end, for all of my life coaches,
I have,
Fallen in love with sounds and words,
They are truly the grace notes that have transfromed
and healed my life.
Thank you so much,
Your loving daughter,
Jannat
Copyright © 2016 by JM Fuller/Jannat Marie/Jazzybeatchick/. All rights Reserved.
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