Sunday, October 12, 2014

Correspondence (3)

Summary :   Love,  the most natural painkiller there is, love.  Monk quotes Burroughs to Nica , his extravagant confident,  and Nelly, his wife, in identical choked up letters toward the start of his so-called ending, trying to explain what premature retirement meant to him, that the public eye was a threat to the survival of love.  As suggested  earlier, the correspondence is vast.   The shadows take shape and we see the pianist taking notes on the shaping     

"Mind Rain 

Mind Rain 

Mind Rain 

Mind drain 

Mined drained

Mine. d   reign        ( too   easy      )    to easily   deranged   by  the mind     some hearts can be   ,

I believe  in  ( midlife  )    resurrection.  "      He   writes.       To the jazz industry in crisis


"I'm not as strange and mystical  as I seem   but  the  parody   pays  well       I like to sit around at home   and nurse   my dazes   until   they break    into   music while my son plays values on the drums Art Blakey gave him    


Don't wanna go out like those   beat  writers, getting  famous for things you're supposed to hide      futures we have yet to achieve   and untrue   love.  Wild motherfuckers  but temporary."     We find Theolonious was a lucid and most discerning   salesman     collapsing  aloof  into candor   and melody   into rumor,   using silence   the way a hype man uses  an  announcement        to  thrill   and bide.       


Highlights:   There are telegrams from Duke Ellington to Monk begging him to stop stealing his stuff. Jokingly, admiringly.    There's a collection of photos of hats from fashion magazines   with notes  for new compositions slashing through the photos, appearing as tempos appear. There are letters to his mother   thanking her for being so patient with him, recipes for lamb and chicken liver written  on club napkins, copyright forms for compositions that he never had the chance to transcribe, juice recipes Nelly suggested he try written in the margins of his dream diary  wherein he recounts  a recurring dream about being on stage mid concert and turning into a tiger in a cage made of tacky satin ribbons that he is meant to pave   with iron and will  until   he disappears    and wakes  up in the phrase   we sell the shadow to protect  the substance.