IN PRETTY MUCH THE MOST AMAZING MONOLOGUE I EVER HEARD

271. IN PRETTY MUCH THE MOST AMAZING MONOLOGUE I EVER HEARD - (a jazz story, Jimmy Goodenough, Aug. 1969):

"Well that's an improvement" the old timer said while sitting on a concrete and stone half-wall separating the lawn from the shaded people - it wasn't just the tone of this voice that caught my ear but it was also the accent and his demeanor - both very interesting - so I decided the stop right there and spend a few moments with him as I had the time (I'd been working the last 6 hours or so with Cheng Dao Lee known as Charley an artist who had a huge apartment on W86th where he did his work and this day some of his large pieces needed crating and readying for transportation - which was simple enough work if one could be careful - and it involved building protective transport-frames of 1x2's lumber wood protective covering and nails all the simple stuff to construct around each 8 or 10 foot painting so it wouldn't get hurt during transport) and this guy on the wall looked over to me and said "sit down - what are you doing around here?" and I proceeded to do so as we started talking - this entire area by the 72nd street entrance to the park was always a favorite spot of mine - the geography right there is pretty active - little hills and vistas the wide front of the Natural History Museum and the Historical Society across the street and all those walls and benches and things along the walkway affording interesting views into the park or along the roadway - whichever one's preference - with which to wile away the time or just sit back on a nice day and take it all in : the old guy was just as interested in any detail I could tell him as I'd be in anything he told me - which meant like a half-interest just to help make a human-contact and pass some time - so I told him my current story - the art-school downtown the various little jobs here or there anywahere I'd undertake to get a few dollars and the varied ways and means of my wandering existence (of course I'd leave out the usual jibs and jabs of what went wrong and who did what) but no matter : he said his name was Jimmy Goodenough pronounced 'Goo-den-ow' which pronunciation he said was 'good enough for me' which I thought maybe was a joke but never found out really and he was some old jazz dude from the hep-cat days of 15 or 20 years back and he had for sure a certain attitude of his own to which I listened and was raptly startled and fascinated all together at once and although I'd never heard of him I just let him talk - "...now you've got the opportunity now you're young and should be open to everything you can let's say 'absorb' you dig ? like right so you got to always take a moment and look around - take those moments to boy because they're precious and by God then they just become scarce and just as important it is to listen JUST listen ! no other thing no other sound - just a note like any person would hear if they would if they COULD you see but they never do because the monstrous crossword puzzle of their dull mind won't LET them wherein the wailing and the good sense of all that is and remains hidden by the four-letter word I am thinking of 'MIND' or maybe even 'JAZZ' because they is BOTH you see the very same thing" - I liked the way he talked and it was old and intriguing I thought and hip too I figured probably -strong and enunciated and boisterous and exclamated too all at the same time but sensitive and observantly wise too but I figured not to step in what did I know and instead just let this old jazz guy go on (it did seem back then there were plenty enough of them about - in the waning days of old 60's jazz that I'd somehow bump into them now and again pretty often and it was just like an inner 'urge' or something to come forth and be personified in one of these guys) "and I am thinking of JAZZ maybe again or that be-bop hazing sound of evolution something like what went right past say Louis Armstrong from Fats Waller without anyone really noticing (what am I saying - oh shit they noticed!) until POOF right there was Louie with Lucy Baba Louie ruining the entire sell-out raggedy-muffin scene selling it all out for money and fame CHEAP fame mind you and some backstreet-curb-assed excuse for nigger or hipster of jive or cool whatever right here in black AND in white and the most destructive thing we ever did was the worse move we ever made was to co-opt the voice of the white-man's toady that nigger Armstrong vain ego-bleeding sycophant circus-tent juggler and them ain't MY words neither - they are exact words the words of Mongo Park his'self or someone very much like him - and then we let the whole ship o'shit pass on until now the scene shifts right under us to the ultra-cool hip of cigarette smoke cocaine-induced heroin-rambling spook-faced dead-man sit-up tunes in any smoky New York or Chicago blues parlor jazz club speakeasy big-hit hip tunes and supposed black nigger-tunes and white-man's stupid poetics tripping with the downtown jazz-girls soothing voices talking back ever so lightly to the sex-tinged super-cool waiters working for change or tip or pussy or lip or smack or whatever you want and it was right then as the whole entire major fag scene too erupted on New York's darkest backwaters that everyone finally smiled like even me and down at the Village and the old Cooper Union porch and the Five Spot Corner with suddenly fifteen new kinds of hippie kids a day selling everything and anything they could and it was all laid out on the sidewalk each day just piles of shit : boots records clothes tools artifacts paintings junk coats and you see don't you that the point was to turn one or two dollars a day at least in any way you could so to survive and all that 'angel-headed hipster' stuff made no sense anyway because the only people buying were either themselves back and forth to each other or unwholesome freak-faces from Long Island and New Jersey strolling through this trinket-touristy life like it all already OWED them something and no one made a move and no one knew a thing except that all of a sudden the hinterlands had come home to roost and the best we could do was stay in place and survive while it all wilted : the beats died the Jazz died the real color died and the only thing left was the co-opted motion of small time Jew merchants and beady eyed Italian neighborhood wranglers trying to make a buck off the blood and the spirit of dead kids already dying and struggling - they labeled it this or they labeled it that and tried to make it work : hippy-carnival-fantasy-land : but it couldn't and it didn't and at the same time these very kids were wasting themselves others of them were dying and frying in nowhere's land of fantasy - vision-power-HELL Vietnam" and so it seemed he wouldn't stop and didn't and it was really weird as usually I did hate old people and all their pontificating and bullshit about life's lessons and all that crap they never did and had failed to realize and blah blah they just go on but this guy was different he had an edge he had some freaked out wildman point-of-view about everything and it really did seem he had done everything and been all around - which got rid right away of the fakery and the doubt and made me want to listen at least just for the hell of listening and if I only knew then what I know now I'd have started listening a lot closer right off the bat there and then and how (and it really was the start of something big).