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EIGHTEEN

TAKE MY HANGING BASKET - the Jazz Loft, pt.18, 1967 -  It always amazed me to realize how much of this all was  generational. Things, or rather, groups come through time like  tides. A good number of these  jazz guys, older ones anyway,  were, in '66 and '67, just a clean  20 years from having been mustered  out of their services at the close of WWII. That's not a lot of time at all, especially for something like that, an experience of that depth and presence. It stays within and is always processing and growing  -   I'd figure that was what a lot of these guys were (still) playing to. Music was a way out, some fractional morass, a web of things that grows inside and wants outlets. What better way than a crackling new sort of music  - blow a hole right through the soul. That was all one fist of a  generation punching through. As I said, generational, as even a lot of those 'beatnik' high-flyers were, the dar
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SEVENTEEN

TAKE MY HANGING BASKET -the Jazz Loft, pt. 17, 1967 -  I walked around a lot, with big thoughts. I'd walk up, from 8th, to wherever I was headed  -  each different direction, any old adventure. The districts of the lofts and studios,  west teens and 20's, they held the  most interest  to me  -  as I said previously, a step into a ways back  of time. When things were different. I never got much into the present day, and those that did, who could calmly  swim  in that new ocean, they just sort of most often bugged me. - The main thing, the big word,  was 'vile'. I thought of that and  from that point on the rest of  life became fairly easy. It's a  quiet concept, 'vile.' One that  covers the entire, vile, world.  And that's all it is. I think that's  what the jazz loft guys had realized  too  -   one big, vile world hardly  worth connecting to. And they  took it all out in jazz-m
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SIXTEEN

TAKE MY HANGING BASKET - the Jazz Loft, pt. 16, 1967 - I always figured for something to come along, one way or the other; so I just rolled ahead. Inherent in the deal I'd made with myself was the idea that as long as I applied myself towards a goal of learning and creativity, as long as I could 'back up' whatever it was I was doing, thinking or undergoing, it was  OK. I wanted no falsity, no compromise. Lo, these many years later, it's brought me to this pass  -  which is good. Had I ever tried to explain this or even bring it up  to any of these guys, it would have been a non-starter, not even within their language. So it was always easier just to remain  by myself, silent, sort of, and solitary. - I used to wonder if any of this little microcosm of things that I was being exposed to was, likewise, going on all  over and in other places of the city. If there were loft groups and crazy bunches of musicians and creative typ
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FIFTEEN

TAKE MY HANGING BASKET - the Jazz Loft, pt. 15, 1967 - Another time, at 300 Central Park West, I got mixed up  -  nothing really to do with the jazz stuff, nor delivering anything  - with what passed for the combined ethos of 1967 breakaway family politics; which was really weird to me. Kids and parents were all having trouble, I suppose. Central Park West has a stone wall the entire length, original stuff, from Olmstead and Vaux's original plans and all, and with that wall come benches. It's all still there  -  people walk along, or promenade, it's a really expensive street, more massive and gleaming pre-war apartments and condos. Expensive people, rock stars, theater and entertainment people, the whole gamut. I was sitting there once, just idling away an afternoon, and some girl comes over to me. She was maybe 15 or 16, to my 18, Id guess, and she as all starry eyed about me, filed with  wonderment of certain shades I couldn
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