sweet nancy wilson saved frank ramsay.
The burden is also a refrain. That runs through you. You get no credit
or you get bad credit. Nevertheless, we write ourselves a sound
check. The one we come come to cash is written for us, on our
account. When Fred Wesley asked George Clinton what kind of horn
arrangements he wanted, Clinton replied, “Something bad!!”
Nancy Wilson and Cannonball recorded two versions of “Save Your Love For Me.”
They ride and bear the history
of voice and horn, arrangement and derangement. Derangement is something bad!!
Even our arrangements move in relation
to the troubled pleasures of the first instance,
that can be sung (through the singer,
through words or their turning).
What gives you the right to love black music, this irruption out of and into catastrophe?
How are you justified in claiming these pleasures, in their terribleness, between
the impossibility of redress and the marked-up, marked-down, brutally
inscribed, viciously discounted remains
of the ones who, in spite of every anheroic act of getting over, can’t get over, forming the lost body
of our broken bridge?
Salim asked me what I liked about Cecil and I couldn’t say. So now let me say something about what I want from Cecil’s music or about the way that music tells me what I want. Can I get to that or do I need to get over that or are these motions of getting to and getting over connected, as in the second instance? She was saving something, too. A social desire for sexual desire, often disavowed, indexed now as waiting. The incalculable
combination of extravagance and thrift,
their tuning.
Cannonball’s not there in the first version but
now, since “we don’t never know how we gon’ be acting,”
he moves in the joint’s held arousal, blurred unison, vagrant
shift. She joins and sings over Nat’s fills and he becomes something
like, but on the other hand way more than, a little brother giggling
from upstairs, cutting his displacement, amping up the sociality,
bringing noise.
Speaking of noise, what about the damage that
comes from desire manifest as repeated play? Over and
over again indexes unfulfillment in indulgence. Sometimes
I listen just for the trace of that obsession now that digital
technique keeps faith with the cracks and pops of love.
Between love and saving,
love and waiting, love and
singing what can’t
be sung or said; between
love and salvation—what it is
continually to be saved by the music, continually to ask
this of the music from way back and way up ahead,
where desperation and desire cut each other up to put
something away, the content of what
can’t be said in the scar of singing something, for something other than that.
Will the love that’s held
in these intimations that we love
save itself for us? Will the social life that makes itself
wait for us? Will the future,
recorded live,
hold on for us? I’m sweet
Nancy Wilson way past singing. I’m fabulously Cecil
Taylor of the feel. It’s her part I’m always trying to sing, though she’s not singing.
Move my fingers to the feel, even though he’s not here, alive, angled, remote, accompanied.
They unconceal—pattern
poised in elusion like it’s sposed to be. Variation spends
the theory of saving and can’t be counted.
Bring across the secret that trusts no words.
Saying something beyond saying, in the exile
of voice and horn, whistled
though it can’t be whistled, said in singing
though it can’t be said, said in leaving
singing, said in leaving
it unsung, song of desire, safe from desire, saved in desire,
I been saving my love for a long time.
if the projects become a project from outside
then the projects been a project forever. held in
the projects we the project they stole. we steal
the project back and try to give it back to them.
come on, come get some of this project. we protect
the project with our open hands. the architect is in mining
and we dispossess him. we protect the project by handing.
let’s bust the project up. let’s love the project. can the
projects be loved? we love the projects. let’s move
the projects. we project the projects. I’m just
projecting the project’s mine to give away. I’m not
mine when I dispossess me I’m just a projection.
projection’s just us that’s who we are that’s who
we be. we always be projecting. that’s all we have.
we project the outside that’s inside us. we the
outside that violates our block. we violate the auction
block experiment. we pirates of ourselves and others.
we the friend of all. we the cargo. are you my treasure?
you all I need. are you my wish? come be my sunship. you are
my starship. you meant to fly but don’t be late. I dream
the sails of the project from the eastern shore. plywood sails
the city island past the enclave mirror till the bricks arise.
at the fugitive bar the food be tasting good. kitchenette’s
my cabin and flesh be burning in the hold. I love the way
you smell. your cry enjoys me. let me taste the way you think.
let me do this one more time while the project repeats me. I am
replete with the project. you incompletes me. your difference folds
me in your arms. my oracle with sweets, be my confection engine.
hear
my plea. tell me how to choose. tell me how to choose the project I
have
chosen. are you the projects I have chosen? you are the project I
choose.