The Unfinished Score: Collected Works of Charles Mingus
By Raul da Gama
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- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Does not contain any scores as the title might let you think... :-(
Book preview
The Unfinished Score - Raul da Gama
Navas.
THE ‘UNFINISHED’ INTRODUCTION
The life of an artist is an eternal conflict between the intellect and the spirit. Ideas flow despite this battle. And because the artist knows that he or she is merely a crucible for the soul, there can be little control over the art. Ah! But there is meaning, relevance and a longevity that comes – not just from conflict, but also from a hidden ‘voice’. This is the spirit that lives in the soul, which gives voice to the spirit and which is guided by the Counselor.
No matter what the premise of his art (the artist always starts with one), it is – at best – a hypothesis, because its message and true meaning will not necessarily be proved according to his (temporal) will.
The act of writing is also, then, the act of unconscious creation. Its inspiration is radically divine – no matter how much we may like to believe that it comes from our meager intellect. Only when we recognize this does the art come alive with meaning. For this to happen, we must acknowledge the assault of the radically divine (on the intellect). The conflict goes on. But as the art is shaped the soul triumphs because it is a crucible that is never empty. It will be in a state of perpetual motion, picking up the artist and throwing him (or her) to the ground. If only it were always possible to hit the ground running… ever forward!
Raul da Gama
WALNUT TREES
Paler than the color of his skin the trees – some taller than others – line the street. The surface is becoming an obstacle course, he thinks. Negotiating the litter of leaves, a million scraps of paper, empty bottles of coke and even some condoms.
A brittle wind hustles the debris it can move and wraps the grimy evening about the old man’s feet. He walks erect and people notice him (which is not what he wants). But this is what makes him attractive and enduring as one of the trees. His strong, supple body bends ever so slightly to let the wind roll off his back. He looks up at the puff of reddening cloud and remembers the rumor: that the army may have promoted because of his body and not really his mind. The thought stops him but only for a fleeting moment. Then he moves along.
Who cares! He is Staff Sergeant of the Quartermaster Corps now. But he really does not like it here. At least not since the boy was born.
He is struggling with another thought that is threatening to tear his life apart. His frail wispy wife who never did recover from the pregnancy now has a weaker heart. But, of course, the Sergeant knows that it has nothing to do with the boy being born a big baby… He sometimes used to smell it on her breath.
Lately the fire of whiskey smells stronger than the fire of her honey-colored skin. Darker honey that he would like to admit. ‘Must have seen her under a gaslight when I first met her,’ he murmurs to himself furiously. ‘And had a blocked nose too!’
His thoughts are like tiny worms of words. They seem to be consuming his brain too. How tiresome… He almost forgot he was walking on this red, dusty evening.
Then it came to him. Another worm. A doctor for Harriett… She is dying and he knows it. Suddenly he is sorry for himself and tired of it all. Tired of his work at the army base and tired of Harriett’s secret drinking. ‘I find empty glasses in the darndest places!’ And now he is tired of Harriett’s all too demanding – and rapidly failing heart.
Most of all he is tired of looking at all these walnut trees, then at his wrists and realizing that he is darker-skinned than he thought. ‘Damn!’ he thinks much too loud. Wasn’t Mama a Swede? With blue eyes and light hair? Didn’t that make her white? So what if daddy was black? ‘So what! Huh?’
Of course he tells no one about this. The thought winds itself up into a tight little knot – like so many that wind up at the end of fat ropes and hang from the swaying branches of trees in the South. ‘People who did what daddy did also wind up at the end of those knots till their Negro souls ascend into heaven.
Sergeant Mingus shivers at his thoughts. He looks around the street lined with walnut trees to make sure that no one has heard him think. He knows a lonely fear now.
But then he draws himself up to his full height, breathes deeply and resolves to leave Nogales, Arizona forever. Better for Harriett. And better for the newly born Charles Mingus Jr. too. The thought in his head is getting louder.
A Certain Hell
1
APRIL 22 1922, NOGALES, ARIZONA
This is the night
And in its silence
A child in pain
2
WATTS…
Whose arms will hold you now?
In France, Spain or Germany
Nigger in America, born here
Born to a certain hell?
You were always meant to be
Loved. It’s why mama felt no pain
But she took you away to Watts
And when it was your time
3
…AND AFTER
You reappeared, asking, asking
With that hurting look
You put down your bass then asked
Whose arms will hold me now?
In France, Spain and Germany
My loving I give to you and you and you
In India, Arabia… In God’s big world
Of silence and of sound
But here, nigger in America,
Born into a certain hell
PHOTOGRAPH
A man-child standing awkwardly. He is round and his legs are bent – in parenthesis. His timid brow is furrowed, troubled, really troubled. He never wanted to be here. Oh! No, not at all!
He remembers that his discomfort began at the African Methodist Episcopal Chapel not far from here. He misses Mamie. He knows, of course, that she is at the Holy Rolling church and that’s where he wants to be. ‘But why?’ He asks himself. ‘Why? WHY ISN’T SHE HERE!’
Charles Mingus Jr. is five and about to cry. But tears refuse to roll out of his eyes and down his cheeks. He is starting to sweat. And he is afraid. ‘Where’s Mamie!’ He screams quietly inside his large head. She is not his real mama – and he knows that – but daddy says that she is his only mama and he hates it when she is not around. And ‘it was cold in church without you mama’, he remembers. But the studio is cold and damp as a kitchen sponge.
So here he is at midday, staring at the man with a square box for a face and a large round glass for an eye. His head – his real head – is buried under a black cloth and this scares the hell out of young Charles.
Suddenly he becomes aware that his clothes are too tight. Worse, his bladder is full. Now he just wants to run somewhere…anywhere!
‘What is it, boy?’ The man’s voice booms out from the darkness beyond where Charles can see. So loud! It threatens to dry up whatever is in his bladder.
‘Where’s Mamie? I want Mamie!’ Want? All he really wants to do is scream. Scream so loud that he will not hear daddy shout. And that everything will go away. But daddy does not shout at him again. Not yet, thankfully. Maybe he will not get belted after they go home.
He is frozen like stone. He dare not move, or he will tear his pants and wet them too. The photographer, whose head is still a square box, with a glass for an eye, also transfixes him.
From where he is looking at the boy, the photographer thinks, ‘He looks like a young double bass!’
‘What’s up, boy?’ Daddy’s voice is like thunder.
Charles wants Mamie. He is sure that he will wet himself. If she was here, he thinks, everything would be okay. ‘Hush, now daddy,’ she would say, ‘Give the boy a chance… ‘sides we wouldn’t want to ruin the picture, would we?’
But instead… Sergeant Mingus’ voice booms out once more and echoes in the damp studio, until… PUFF!
A cloud of white powder goes up above the glass eye and the square head of the photographer. Thank God! It’s all over… until the belt bites into his skin at home. For now, Charles Mingus Jr. is framed in a perfectly good black and white photograph.
And thank God for black and white. ‘Now no one will ever know that I’m not black, or white… just yellow!’
MAPS
Streets shoot out straight as arrows. Some curve round grass banks and solitary trees. Green patches for trees