78

Going for the Jazz

musicians confirmation. And I was right. I could hear it. I could

hear a bit of that language being well spoken, could recognize
that Id done a saying in that language, in fact for the very first
time, a saying particularly said in all of its detail: its pitches,
intensities, pacing, durations, accentingsa saying said just so.
The particularly said jazz saying would get done, and then Id
lapse into the usual lungeful, unsinging path-following ways.
My practical theorizing, searching for instructions that would
work, now made up a course of several months of almost continuous playing, getting close and not wanting to let the changes
recede, trying to nail matters down firmly so I could always do
it again. At first, many days of regular playing might not produce a single instance, and many months went by before I could
play anything like an entire song-length chorus of this jazz on
the records. My protracted struggle kept alive various problematic aspects of the task, making possible their study and description here, a payoff that, I assure you, came only after the fact.
I clearly knew when the right appearances were displayed,
knew it in the deeply familiar sounds on the records, and in the
looks of the hands. I saw my hands as a jazz piano players
hands, a bit at a time, and would oddly recall the looks of other
players hands. My hands looks looked like theirs had looked.
Things passingly seen in the others hands were now clarified in
hindsighthaving been seen but not watchedthrough looks
mine now passingly revealed to me.
And this remembrance itself gradually proved most helpful.
The puzzling interweavingness of my teachers fingers, whose
order I couldnt formerly see, looking beyond their conduct for
rules about their destinationsthis, for example, I now spotted
in mine. I recognized modalities of movement previously witnessed in others hands, with noticeably variegated detail, so
that regularly emulating such non-note-specific memories generated many new possibilities for my own hands.