THE PREFABRICATED MAZE
THE PREFABRICATED MAZE
In this maze of seeming wonders:
Unique combinations of colors
Constant variations of images
Soulful love invantations,
The mean leans
in limousines;
The news flashes over the air
On the Git-Down Folk
Using the maze
To create a craze
While corrupting the minds
Of even the divine.
Televised taste of honey
Most for the sake of money
Gives to gullible souls
False and fantasized goals.
What then without the maze is real?
Why even seek such momemtary thrill?
When life to each
Is a wishing well
To make of happiness
True stories to tell.
To find the light
That shines within
To belive in oneself
And to follow no trend!
I
There was once a small community about 3000 years past where people actually lived in perfect harmony. What we call a discord in music today was somehow one of their catalyst for very beautiful melodies in order to capture a completeness void of the why factor. It is nice that sound is not a solid to be more abused than it already is. How pitiful a state of affairs when it has taken 3000 years to realise the meaning of we, yet theories are used as a substitute for functional reality.
II
We love each other and this day of realisation is fine. What a pity we let a perfect stranger, created by thought, force Love to flee:
Jealousy is a stupid excuse created to justify possession Love itself never knew. I, one so small, will forever leave this stranger outside my door, for it always comes with this companion called "reason-for-crime":
I don`t want to understand why one should accept a destructive conditioning that is so unnatural to life!!
III
One speaks in one`s language for communication. Too often, because of thinking in words, new ideas, images and meanings are lost.
Names are formed for distinctions. We should not forget that "the name is not the thing itself". There is much more in life that could possibly be named!
FOR US
We are as a whole!
It is and will be.
Can we look and simply see?
What is is not what we want it to ...
Will we simply see?
QUESTIONS
We may check inside ourselves for answers
Whenever questioning actions of others.
Please do not forget our coming together
Was when we knew little of each other:
Each day is new.
Why not live life in this true reality
Rather than by theories, norms, expectations
and trodded patterns?
ROSE BLOSSOM
Love never told why.
It simply is
And lives only at the moment of its happening.
To think why
Takes space away from its moment of reality
So much so
Causing false accusations
As reasons for its existence.
Why blemish a blossoming of a rose
As dew drops caress an unfolding
In communion with the morning sun?
LOVE`S WHISPER
There is no justification of being
For doing is the fact.
Mistakes are natural
But not to be used as the reason to accuse.
Argument is used in debate
But love transcends such pettiness
In her moments of existence
Seemingly fleeting
Rather always motionful!:
Speaking only in the now.
RESPONSE
To transcend is simply a step
Beyond programmed response:
A key usable as life speaks.
Our sensitivity may show ways of inter-reactions:
Creative forces in its own motion:
Perception, Intuition, Compassion,
Wisdom, Love !!!
OLD FASHION TRICK
Nationalism can always satisfy
A lack of self-evaluation
As a means to justify ignorance of wholeness,
Another trick of control
By ones who refuse
To look and see what actually is.
Love of one`s home or land
Is as a child loves a loving mother.
No theory, concept, religion or violence
Has a place in this instance!
OLD FRIEND
Mother-Earth teaches us
With gentleness, care, pains,
Storms, gales, winds and rains.
She tests every instant of existences being
And by natures`s voice alone.
With the drone of catastrophic arrogance,
We humans choose dominance instead of wisdom:
Her old old friend
When I first came here in 1979 there seemed to be a strange freshness that excited something within me. It was that man of vision, Robert Urmann, who brought Steve Coleman, Muneer Abdul Fataah and I as band leader to Linz. We lodged at the Goldener Anker on the Hofgasse and played up the street from there. It was a most pleasing concert with a surprisingly enthusiastic audience. It was somewhat of a shock to us because the hotel had a more rustic and layed-back feeling. The noticable thing was that the rooms were small but comfortable and the food was good. As always in Europe, once the concert is finished there is enough time to go to the dressing room, wipe the sweat from your face and walk back to the stage to find an empty concert hall.
The second time in Linz was the Jazz-festival at the BrucknerHouse. Also a Robert Urmann vision. This was by far one of the best festivals I attended that year. I performed with the FAMILY OF PERCUSSION; Leroy Jinkens played solo violin, Albert Mangelsdorf-Adelhard Roidinger-Peter Giger played in trio and a host of other great artists where playing. There again a most enthusiastic and excellent audience: A momentous occasion to say the least. My thoughts at that time, "such a small town with so great a Jazz loving audience." First impressions are lasting.
The third time in Linz came eight to nine years later with no memory of having been here because of the time span. As time passed places jarred my memory to realize having been here. For all my years of training professionals and hoping to one day teach on a regular basis, who would think that opportunity would bring me to a place on a river that somehow had this strange freshness and attraction of inexplicable means. Well, here I was with the enthusiasm of a new love and the excitement of unbinding possibilities. So I thought! Things got off to a rough start to say the least. My life was turned upside down in a few short months. For one who had basically lived on the road for 32 years with only stationary living as a touchdown or landing on occasions, sometime short or sometime long, it was more than a shock. To be in a situation as stationary was one of my hardest tasks in life. It took five years. Now it seems to work after taking so long to find a comfortable place to live as an artist.
The first three years brought a blossoming by my large ensemble of the school, to an exciting and innovative input that began to create somewhat of a special institution by which creative-professional artists would seek to employ. Then came those "green eyed monsters" I had heard about all my life but never really understood: jelousy and envy. Two strange things that, to me, have no natural parents. These two evils are the destruction of the very soul of life! Truly, I´ve never participated in such stupidity. And although I´m aware it exists because of my suffering by it, it still has no way of being a natural or meaningful state except for casting forth evil by small hearted misguided beings.
Linz is a town that has the potential of becoming one of the main centers of twentieth century culture in the whole of Europe. Its location is remote and yet accessible. The night offers the hours. The river gives a mystique. A small city with a big city ambience. There are many, many reasons why this city has such potential. Now the real surprise is why not! Why such a place struggle so hard to be and fails so horribly? It is both complicated and simple. There is probably the best Jazz department in Europe at Bruckner-Konservatorium and yet the city is basically a rock&roll town, something of the past. There is not one Jazz night spot in the entire city. The best thus far is Jazz Am Berg and Jazz Point and of course the workings of Robert Urmann. Absolutely no nightly spot where one can hear Jazz. Some would dispute this because they might think "Jazz-Fusion, Jazz-Rock" or such forms are the new way of Jazz. Actually those forms were the "Pop" and surface forms that industry exploited for money for a while. Now industry have dropped them as they do for all fads. Not to say there were no developments by artists in these forms. Just that they were fads. The real Jazz audience never went for the hype and is still left without quality acoustic music because one or two people think they have the right to decide that the hype is the new thing. Ignorance abounds, most of the real jazz and blues audience find no reason to support a place that allows the waiter and waitresses to choose what they must listen to while trying to enjoy a night out on the town. Most places are too cheap to hire a real Jazz&Blues disk jockey because music is used mostly as a cheap run-down prostitute merely to sell drinks, another reason that most places play the same cheap pap with the hope of attracting most or all the people. Where there is no uniqueness it becomes a bland situation and to top it off, loudness is the order of the day. I remember a nice expression from my English teacher, Mrs. Clark, "An empty wagon makes a lot of noise". So a night out requires a set of ear plugs and an insensitivity to music so as to talk loud and get drunk. So much for an adventure into culture in the normal night life of Linz.
There is a great Jazz & Blues audience in Upper-Austria but they have been brutalized by arrogant and insensitive beings of greed...
I remember a nice story by a 1960s rock fan of Linz. He said that "him and his crowd loved the wild rock&roll music and the Beatles but felt lucky to have come in contact with Robert Urmann because he gave them Jazz." He said, "they had their loud rock&roll for its purpose and then jazz for listening and being into a more calming and thinking romantic atmosphere for a balanced life of music."
So why is it not strange to eat food that is all mixed-up with beef, pork, fish, apples, oranges, carrots, rice, noodles, potatos, onions, cherries, grass for cows and potato solid all cooked in beer, wine and motor oil? WHY? Because the body would be in deep trouble even if the mind is stupid enough to think otherwise. So why do some think people want music that is all mixed up just because such persons are mixed, mixed and mixed up.
RECOMMENDED PLACES FOR JAZZ & BLUES
JAZZ AM BERG / ST.Magdalena Bildungszentrum
JAZZ POINT
CORRETTO: At noon when FRANZ or HASSAN are there (by request)
Where Doug Hammond performs:
Jazz am Berg, Nov. 26, 1995, 20 Uhr
Doug Hammond / Sonny Simmons
special Concert!!!
