The Jazz Cat Homage To Gato Barbieri Poem by Daniel Brick

for Paul, my friend for over fifty years

This afternoon the two of us will perform
a Memory Exercise, and hopefully we won't need
a Memory Miracle to complete it. Miracles are
the perogative of something higher and more
abstract than two friends pooling their resources.
Friendship and Music, for instance, are very
compatible: they both can soar directly into
the sun and reach the empyrean; or they both
can settle into a comfortable routine; or music
can be the background and friendship the fore-
ground, or handy-dandy they can exchange ground.
Our exercise will harmonize Friendship and Music
on common ground for the duration of common time.
It begins with the Jazz Cat you know so well,
the Argentine wonder who surpasses every border,
the master of the searing saxophone - GATO BARBIERI.

You and three friends on a Sunday afternoon
went to Orchestra Hall in a distant early autumn.
Gato and Ensemble were the opening act for
The Modern Jazz Quartet. What? Gato in second place!
Well, what matters is performance, and so the four
of you took your seats before an empty stage
already electric with Jazz Energy and you added
a frenzy of Jazz Talk. But you turned suddenly
silent, turned inward, where the lyricism arises,
where the music reposes before being composed,
where you and Gato are in friendship. This is
always the Soul Realm, and the Latin Soul
was ascendent that day. Gato appeared before his band,
playing a simple traditional melody on an Indian flute.
It was as if a huge mirror descended before you,
invisible to the others, and you saw your Indian Soul
swelling to an impossible size and envelop you
in its solar light. Then it withdrew, and Gato
was simply performing and letting the magic happen
as it is meant to. You were standing above your
sitting self, two of you, one hearing sounds,
the other seeing visions. This is called ecstasy.
You felt the Latin Rhythms unleashed by Gato's
music become the pulse of the Universe. You were
at the center of this swelling energy
in a state of perfect calm. And when Gato slipped
the sax behind his back, grabbed the microphone
with both hands, and began to sing, it was,
you told me later, 'Earth's cry and Heaven's smile'.

In the last moment, you saw him leave the stage,
holding his sax in his right hand, raised high
in the air, as if it were a banner or a talisman, or
perhaps a golden bird perched there, ready to launch
into flight. You turned and saw your three friends
staring at you. In a flash you knew what that meant.
Without a word exchanged, the four of you left
Orchestra Hall. Any other music, however elegant
and polished, would simply get entangled in the sounds
still playing in your heads and mar both musics.
When speech was restored and you all sat at a table
on the Black Forest Inn, you all shared your words
about the music and the sheer experience of being
in Gato's orbit. You agreed it was Music of Rescue.
You agreed it was Music of Necessity. You agreed...
But inside, in the silence of the interior sea
of being, you felt those those currents moving and knew
they arise from even deeper Latin Rhythms of the Universe.