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And All That Jazz

By Kevin Funnell

CHET BAKER'S FACE

By, Fred Moramarco

Chet Baker's face is a montage of slides in my mind, a kaleidoscope of his life and our shared time on earth. It's the same face you see on the "Let's Get Lost" album, that you see in Carole Reiff's famous 1955 photo of a young man with a horn blowing it into the smoky air of a jazz club, but the first has the deep etchings of a worn-out life, one lived lurching beyond limits, getting lost and loving it, finding in the barrel of the gun pointed at him nothing but the fascination of a world unexplored and beckoning. Then there's another photo of a young man in a cap and overcoat against a backdrop of Times Square, face smooth as a bubble, eyes dazzled by the New York lights - - all those etched lines yet to come, only the hopes of boyhood behind him, and everything, absolutely everything, waiting to be done.

Spend a week in Las Vegas. It will enough time to drive home to just about anyone not already lost the rancidness of the end game of a life lived primarily in pursuit of sensual pleasures. Nobody loves a sanctimonious SOB. Yet, it doesn't take a saint to realize that while physical sensations can be powerful, they can be a drug that obscures rather than enlightens.

I may not be the brightest bulb in the lamp store, but I'd rather not end up looking like the Picture of Dorian Gray. There's got to be a better way to live your life than that chosen by the voluptuously beautiful and staggeringly drunken call girl I ran into on one memorable recent trip as both of us were leaving the Bellagio early one morning, me starting my day and she finishing her night. Life's a mystery, but simple lessons are still simple. God love you, honey. I hope you found your way home.

Now, I'll just kind of try to be quiet, because it's that kind of tune, you know.

Full post as published by Counseling Kevin on May 05, 2010 (boomark / email).