Barry Harris Teaches You To Feel The "And"

It’s easy to start to believe that the point of being alive is being correct. Our religions are about it, our politics on all sides are about it, our social networks and networking events are about it. Even our relationships and romances are about it. And because of that it takes a great deal of work to get down into the caverns and deep oil of what we might call life itself. And I don’t say that flippantly. The protective layers are deservedly in place given the incredible degree to which we’ve harmed each other as a species along the way, and I generally think the idea that people just need to get over it move on is a bad and dismissive take. It’s easy to abstract generations of deep suffering and develop a doctrine for how and when people should move on from it. It’s much harder to admit the reality of the grief and the destruction and afterwards keep our mouths shut.

But while getting over it might not function well as a cultural metaphysic, getting under it might. I don’t know if life has a purpose in a classical sense. I think life might be an infinite game, and the point of infinite games is just to keep the game going. And as such, I think the only way each of us can keep it going in our own tiny way is to give ourselves to it completely as we actually are. And I don’t mean the hustle porn stuff filled with min maxing your sex life and acting like the chief end of man is to build an online wine empire. I’m talking about the real shit. Like Jazz, or gardening, or making sure the homeless cat on your street has some food to eat. Like giving yourself so completely to something you love that you give up a bunch of other stuff you also loved. I mean the stuff that snatches you by the hair and drags you away from your untrue life.

Like this video of Barry Harris teaching Jazz to some students at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in the 80s or 90s. I was watching it this morning and there’s a moment in here (I won’t tell you when because you’ll just jump to it and it’ll ruin it or at least that’s what I would do) when the students start playing something for him again after he finishes a bit of his lecture and he looks back over his shoulder directly into the camera. The mixture of hard joy and awareness in his stare is profound and is, I think, at least closer to what being alive might be about. And the moment right after that, when he tells the drummer that if the drummer keeps hitting the snare on the 2 and 4 beat he’s going to kill himself.

You already know why Jazz is probably the most human thing that’s ever been expressed or conceived, and I’m not gonna subject you to me dweebing out about it. But if you have some time today or this weekend I suggest watching at least a piece of this Barry Harris lecture because I think much of the pleasure of appreciating the passage of time is found in finding your thing (or things) and then finding your way into this room, even if you’re just the person smoking the cigarettes at the back and listening.