An Evening with Jaco, Nick & Will

this evening was spent in good company, company of such superb quality that i felt it necessary to mark the evening with a posting.

those of you who know me know that i have a fondness for books. a good read is something which delights me very much. as any person who reads often can tell you, a genuinely good read is a hard find. i have been fortunate enough to have not one but three of these in a row, two of which i finished this evening. extremely loud & incredibly close by jonathan safron foer was the one that started it off. however, the two books of this evening, brother to a dragonfly by will d.campbell and the polysyllabic spree by nick hornby, were read with the musical stylings of a certain jaco pastorius. those of you familiar with all three can see that they aren't exactly matched, yet they came together.

jaco's punk jazz provided the right background for me to get into a sort of transcendental reading zone as it were. to enter such a state, it takes the proper setting, the proper level of comfort/discomfort (discomfort because too much comfort will lead to slumber), the proper writing, and the type of music that will not distract, keep you focused, move you along with a steady beat and occasionally provide a nice and entertaining break from the written word. jaco's music fulfilled all of the musical requirements. (note: i will often turn to jazz, blues [of the delta variety, typically acoustic], folk, and rarely things i know the words to, things i can passively listen to, but still enjoy while blocking out distracting things like people or silence, which does distract me much of the time).

campbell's book, a gritty look at this man's life with his brother, was recommended to me by a certain brian coates. i am a bit picky about whose recommendations i'll read and thus far brian is two for two, introducing me to this book and buechner's telling secrets.

this book was also featured in documentary i saw some time ago on pbs, bits of it came back to me as i read it. in fact, a while back i was writing a paper on the main views of the atonement and i stumbled upon a quote from this book: "basically, we're all bastards but God loves us anyway." at the time when i read it i felt much like a bastard, for reasons i either cannot remember or wish not to divulge, thus it endeared itself to me although it was quoted as a someone once said. it was nice to finally read it within its context and to know the man it came from, this guy.

i like his hat too. the book reminded me much of the birmingham civil rights institute. campbell was very much involved in that movement and the bcri is a fantastic place to learn about that time in our history and the people who fought, and fight for that matter, to rid this world of injustice. i have always regretted not knowing more about history. i say that like i'm an old man without the time to learn about it. that being said, i hope not to be as ignorant as i feel about the past in the future.

finishing that book and with jaco still moving along (there are 28 songs on that album and some of those move beyond the ten minute mark with ease and splendor), i decided to start the aforementioned book by nick hornby. he is fantastic. if you've seen about a boy, fever pitch, & high fidelity then you've seen two very good movies and one watachable movie based on two of his novels and one of his memoirs. i enjoy the british witt and hornby's got it as well as a fantastic drawing of himself looking a bit like thomas merton (see book to the right).

recently, i decided that i would like to read all of his books. i had read all of his novels and one of the short story books he edited, so i thought it wouldn't take much of a commitment to knock the other one's out. i've got fever pitch, 31 songs, otherwise pandemonium, & housekeeping vs dirt left to read (i've got h vs d if anyone wants to give me a random gift of the other three).

i digress.

the book i read tonight was a collection of articles he wrote for a literary magazine about the books he bought and the books he read. i found it absolutely fantastic. he is extremely funny (at some point i'll publish some quotes).

as a book reader who is far behind on the owned and read scale, i could easily relate to his musings. rarely, actually never, do i buy a book at full price. i cannot afford to do that. i buy many of my books at thrift stores or buy them used on the world wide web. for a brief time in my life i worked at an independent book store. that experience proved to be expensive. it was like having an alcoholic, non-recovering alcoholic working at liquor store in which he got a substantial discount. luckily it lasted only a summer. but i still have books i've read a 1/3, 1/2 or not a word of which i purchased there.

the book is perfect for people with my disease. i love to read and it is nice to see other people out there with the same sickness. if you are one of those people, i hope that you'll one day read this one.

yes, i did enjoy my evening with these gentlemen and i hope to have another one like it with a different set of folk. i had a professor in college one time tell me, over a cup of coffee, that he was very bulimic in his reading. he would binge and purge, reading tons and then nothing. i am very much the same way. i'm like a bear storing up fat for the winter only my salmon be literature.