Duke Ellington - Hyde Park (1933)

Pasquale Grasso - Solitude (Official Video) ft. Samara Joy

Apples of the Ear

[revised]

[one of the great moments in jazz history]

The apple doesn't fall far

from the tree except in quantum summer

when Newton's head doesn't/does

exist and Atom & Eve

know what they don't know, 

a good first step

into the wormhole of Paul

Gonsalvez's "Diminuendo/

Crescendo'" 27 tenor sax 

chorus solos, 1956, in that

momentary eternity

wherein all the tightly knit

notes of Ellington's orchestra

became/become perfectly tart-sweet

apples in a God's-ear of time.

Of Time and the Chickering

I like to give jazz standards
a good bruising on the old Chickering
parlor grand piano, which long ago
was rescued from the Buckhorn Lodge,
a bar in the High Sierra where whiskey
had been sloshed on some of the hammers.
Good times. I really can count
beats and measures, honest. But

I get distracted. I dawdle or rush,
freeze or trip. My fingers suddenly
turn into bear paws, then shrink
again back to size. Much depends
upon the weather, the atmospheric
pressure, the presence or absence
of crows in the area.  Anything
Ellington can mesmerize me,
and I start thinking about how
in the harlem he ever came up
with that chord or phrase. Sometimes

I just look into the deep brown
varnish of the Chickering, or stare
at the decal, Johnson Piano Company,
Portland, Oregon, and I wonder
what the route was from Boston
to Portland to Sierra City and finally
for a while, Tacoma, where the piano
had earned a restoration, where
it sat beside Cher's white piano,
which had also entered rehab.

I salve the blond
nicks with linseed oil
and always throw away
the rag. A tuner comes in
regularly, praises the tone,
rich and seasoned, whiskey-
tempered, long suffering
with regard to my drifts
into alternate space-time keyboards.


hans ostrom 2018

The Fiddler's Response

The absorption of music operates
individualistically, in spite of
communal structures, hitocracies,
group performance, and ubiquitous
corporate dispensers. Thus

was the violin-player in a four-
person acoustic jazz band induced
by the present music and her
personal compunctions to play
with her hair, twisting it with
one finger, then looking at it

as if it were a clue; this, as
she waited (was she waiting?)
for a guitarist to complete
his wailing interval.


* "wailing interval"--sometimes
used by Duke Ellington to refer to
an instrumental solo


hans ostrom 2016

Duke, Again

With Ellington, never
just one mood, ever
two or more.

State profoundly
something simple
but please

don't decorate.
Slip something
gut-bucket,

not quite profane
but close, into
urbane constructions.

Make smart choices.
Move efficiently
like a chess

assassin. The players
are the source:
so obvious, but

almost always
overlooked: Aristotle
understood. Remain

madly allergic
to cliche. Dodge in
and out of the fray.


hans ostrom 2015

Selfish

Twilight: sky brighter than landscape,
which backs slowly into darkness.
Crows fly home, high for them. They
become wrinkled, animated black lines.

So much is wrong out there--
the city, the nation, the world.
One feels ashamed, obligated, compelled,
and weary. This evening I give in

greedily to privilege, sit outside with
headphones on, listening to Ellington
indigos, "Solitude," "Prelude to a Kiss,"
"Mood Indigo," a cover of "Autumn Leaves."

In my heaven, Duke is musical director.
September air, influenced by Puget Sound,
mixes with dimming light sublimely. Yes,
I said "sublimely." Insufferable.

I want for nothing except more commitment
to change some bad things.
How disgusting to write about oneself
at a time like this.


hans ostrom 2015

Apples of the Ear

The apple doesn't fall far
from the tree except in quantum summer
when Newton's head doesn't/does
exist and Atom & Eve

know what they don't know,
a good first step
into the wormhole of Paul
Gonsalvez's "Diminuendo/

Crescendo" solo at Newport,
1956, in that momentary era
wherein all the tightly knit
notes of Ellington's orchestra

became/become perfectly tart-sweet
apples in a God's-ear of time.


hans ostrom 2015

Emergency Music Medicine

Inspired by desperation
and a certain nausea brought on
by spectacles of hate encased
in blistered, feverish stupidity,

they started injecting
Duke Ellington's chords
directly into people's brains.
It couldn't hurt, they figured.

They brought on board
booster-shots of Bill Monroe,
Aretha, Coltrane, Rubenstein's
Chopin, and vials of other juice.

Hi-dee-high-dee hoping these
inoculations and antidotes
might re-humanize folks,
the worried inculcators

waited, seeking early signs
of logic, empathy, and wit.
I? I await reports. A bottle
of bourbon, which I haven't

touched in centuries, sits
on the battered piano,
which I have touched, pawing
ballads and blues like a badger.


hans ostrom 2015

"After Listening to Music From Duke Ellington's Orchestra"

A few frozen pleasantries to begin--
then some roots cultivated in reverse,
starting with tendrils down deep,
ending where taproot meets trunk-tree.
Posterity. What do you mean? I told you
I might call. I told you in the Fall!

All I had was a pair of deuces. (This is
one of those stories.) Next thing
nobody knows, I'm on top of a brass casino,
which I own, watching hawks glisten as
they glide. Now everyone's showing up,
all black limos and white surfboards;
and robodots and king snakes, the red
and the black. If music isn't from God,
it soon will be. And the filigree.

You just knew we had to get muddy
and moody, and Jesus Muhammad Moses
Mary and the Buddha-man: here come

visions of a visage, Ellington's,
carved in black and tan marble.
Time never stops playing,
so why should he?


hans ostrom 204

Bless Meaninglessness

God bless meaningless noise people
make, such as, "I knew I shouldn't have
trusted February" or "the piece that I'm
not seeing is some kind of evaluative
framework" or "How can people not
get that?" The froth of not-meaning's

whipped up into magnificent meringue
sculptures.  I walk among them all day--
the fantastic shapes! I say little in response
Maybe "interesting" or "wow,
really?" or a well placed, "Good grief,
let's hope it turns out all right."

I can pretend to understand just
enough to escape scrutiny. Then
I must come home and rest, maybe
read a detective novel, in which
the world represented coheres
and meaning means. Out there

online, at work, and in the public
sphere, people say and write a
great many things which neither
swing nor mean a thing. God bless
them and that noise.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

Duke Ellington

Some words remembering Duke Ellington:









Duke Ellington


The headline from the Sacramento Bee
Announced that Ellington had died. I think
The article may have referred to him as one
Of those things he really was. They got
It right, if I recall: they said he was
"A treasure"--treasure lost to us, to me,
Who'd only just begun to understand
What I'd been blessed to witness when I spent
A few buck on a ticket for a concert in
A cafeteria--a break from writing essays for
My English 1-B class. I got to hear
Duke Ellington--in a junior-college cafeteria.
That night I was as privileged as a prince
Who'd seen and heard Mozart conduct.
Mere Rocklin was my Salzburg, Duke's jazz
Demotic classical. Duke Ellington had passed,
The headline said. I thought of him, spotlit
That night, a black tuxedo, and the hair
Brushed back. That's how he must have looked
As he strolled past Archangel Gabriel.
To Gabe he may have said, "We love you madly--
But try it in a minor key this time."
When I saw him, I was 18 and thought
I knew just what Duke Ellington deserved.
"He's royalty," I thought, "does not deserve
This gig on cold linoleum." Time is
No satin doll who puts her arms
Round you, and now I think I' may have learned
What Mr. Ellington believed that he deserved:
To write, to play, and to conduct, as long
As God would let him, and anywhere the bus
Or train or plane might go. The music does
Not know it's in the cafeteria, or in
A segregated Cotton Club. And Mr. Ellington,
The evidence suggests, could take care of himself.
Ah, heaven's black piano's always tuned.
The A-train glides like silk into the night.
In Davis, California, and in Harlem, you
Can see the sky, and hear "Mood Indigo."

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom