Foot tapping (beats 2 and 4!).
Head shaking (all beats, heavier on beats 2 and 4).
Hand drumming on every surface—steering wheel, tables, grocery cart.
Get excited when, in the noise of the mall, you hear the perfect high-hat rhythm. Only to find that it’s coming from a coffee machine.
Run from the Smokin’ Hickory BBQ stall, hands over your ears, muttering loudly to drown out the root-fifth bass line and boom-chick boom-chick drums of country music.
Do the same when they pipe Kenny G into your dentist’s waiting room. Hey, Chet Baker managed without teeth.
Feel surprised when you see a photograph of musicians that’s in color.
Start using phrases like “Dig it!” or “Solid, man!”
Use “man” at the end of every sentence, man.
Your T-shirts feature iconic jazz photographs and sayings. Your long-sleeved shirts are black turtlenecks.
The shrine on your headboard is a picture of Charlie Parker with the Mel Trouve All Stars, RCA Studio from 1949, surrounded by a plastic trumpet Christmas decoration, one broken drumstick, and a blackened reed that you picked out of the dumpster behind your favorite jazz club.
Spend all your money on rare bootleg vinyl copies of live recordings.
Start your days with a fifteen-minute saxophone warm-up, swaying and grooving to the muse. Except you use a yellow pool noodle instead because saxophones are too expensive, and you spent your last dime on that bootleg copy of Bird and Diz at Milton’s. You had already heard the digital version, but you can feel the heat and smell the cigarette smoke emanating from the vinyl pressing.
Grow a goatee, like Monk and Mingus.
Flip your lid when Sanjay from accounting says, “Hey, nice soul patch.” Push him against the wall, press your thumb against his throat, and whisper, “It’s a goatee, man!” like Miles after his throat operation. Step away, picturing yourself as Miles: playing a perfect note, turning from the audience, walking off the stage to thunderous applause, the spotlight hot on your neck.
Despite your severe asthma, take up smoking. Your medical plan covers 80 percent of the cost of inhalers anyway.
Wander downtown alleys late at night, banging on doors, searching for underground jam sessions where the best musicians hang out after their gigs. Pick a fight with a 325-pound, heavily tattooed, mustached, and bald-headed bouncer, just because Jaco did it.
Call in every night to the late-night university radio jazz program. Find the guy on Facebook and friend him. Track him down on Instagram and LinkedIn. He doesn’t seem to be on TikTok. Track him down on Tinder. Pretend to be your sister so you can make a profile as a woman. It’s okay, though, because she’s married, so she doesn’t need it.
Cut the webbing between your fingers so you can reach further. It hurts like hell, and you don’t even play piano.
Tell the radio host how much it hurts, but you think you may be able to spread your fingers wider. When he tells you that Art Tatum never did that, hang up, furious. When you look it up and find that it was just a rumor, throw your phone against the wall. Take two Vicodin, wash them down with vodka to kill the pain in your hands.
A young barista with a nose ring notices your T-shirt with Satchmo’s picture—trumpet to his lips, eyes wide. When she smiles and says, “I love jazz. I saw Michael Bublé in concert,” you scream, “Bublé is not a jazz musician—he’s a lounge singer!” For the next eight minutes, you yell at the top of your lungs, trying to teach her the difference while she blubbers, then tries to hide behind her tall, skinny coworker, who might be trying to grow a mustache. You never do get your coffee because mall security hustles you out the door.
While standing in front of your bathroom mirror, inject yourself with Naloxone and pass out. You think that the experience has brought you closer to Art Pepper, when it was just coffee, alcohol, and Xanax, mixed with a lack of food and sleep.
Your mother asks you to come by to help her with her Spotify list, but it turns out to be an intervention. Your sister says that her husband left her after someone showed him the Tinder profile you made. After listening to them for longer than it takes to listen to the entire A Love Supreme suite, you light a cigarette. Adjusting your sunglasses, you say, “Lee Morgan was shot by his wife. On stage. He finished the set. Now that’s love, man.” Drop your cigarette into your mother’s tea, use your puffer, and leave.
Your favorite jazz club refuses to let you inside. Instead, you dance outside playing on your pool noodle, scatting the solos you are hearing in your head. A crew of square-jawed toughs stroll past, and one says, “Shut up, asshole.” You say, “That’s what they told Mingus.” When he turns and snarls, “What?” you smile and reply, “Exactly.” They shake their heads and walk away. You go back. Feel the groove. Beats 2 and 4. Scatting to “Softly as in a Morning Sunrise.” You almost hear Trane whisper, “Solid, man.”
