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Coda: Learning to Listen (for Faruq)

from From Coltrane to Coal Train: An Eco​-​Jazz Suite by Marc Beaudin

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    From Coltrane to Coal Train: An Eco-Jazz Suite.
    Featuring poetry by Marc Beaudin and music by former members of the bands Morphine and Orchestra Morphine, Dana Colley, Billy Conway and Laurie Sargent.
    Compact disc in full-color 4-panel digipack with 8-page full-color booklet of poems and photography by Marc Beaudin.

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lyrics

Coda: Learning to Listen
(for Faruq)

“Listen to the reed
and how it tells a tale,
complaining of separation”
–from Mathnawi by Rumi
translated by Faruq Z. Bey (1942 – 2012)*

With dusk descending on Marcus Garvey Park
suffused w/ the tones and stones of Harlem
surrounded suddenly from within
by your music

Having heard the news just before boarding a plane
Having heard the news that your sax was in its case
the case closed and latched
Having heard
the news

Shoulders of buildings rise to meet the song
I hear it in the yowls & laughter of playground children
I hear it in the poetry of evening birds
unseen in every tree

We are a million fragmented souls
separated from Source
but the reed calls out for reunion

The truth that I squeeze in my hand
and thrust into a pocket
is that I’ll never again hear you play –
the vibration emanating directly from your breath,
through your horn & the prismatic air,
to my ear, a nest of tongues that imitate each wave

And the question:
Have I yet learned to really listen?


or have I been letting sounds
merely bounce off my surfaces
like an ice-bound lake
like a window shuttered against the light
like a drum head without its resonating tree-body
that’s needed to take the sound deep
to tell the story to itself again & again & again
until, shattering the container of self,
echoes it into the world?

Listen:


_______________________________________________________________
*Ashirai Pattern. Faruq Z. Bey w/ the Northwoods Improvisers. Entropy Stereo Recordings, 2002. (northwoodsimprovisers.com, entropystereo.com.)

credits

from From Coltrane to Coal Train: An Eco​-​Jazz Suite, released May 29, 2022

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Marc Beaudin Livingston, montana

Poetry & spoken word infused with jazz.
“All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.” – John Coltrane

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