Vermont Cynic

Issue date: 2/28/06 Section: Features

Media Credit: Ike Messmore

It was the part of the night in New York City when all the outsiders jump back on the Path Train to the quiet of the suburbs. City dwellers were making their final rounds and poets were just beginning to write; it was the hour of love and unlove, the loneliest or sweetest part of the evening. In the East Village, on the corners, late-night musicians were blowing their horns, the sounds seeming to coagulate into one long narrative, floating into the moist summer air with the same ease and comfort as the steam leaving the manholes; a real lesson in story telling. Somewhere out there the greatest musician in the world was playing, Coltrane's secret disciple, posing as a human jukebox, acting upon the input of a quarter. Some passerby yelled out standards like "Take the A-Train," and some hollered "shut the fuck up!" while others walked by indifferently, numb and unaware. Poised on a sidewalk near the corner of Houston and Allen a man named Alvin played his tenor, begging his lady to come to him; he made his plea into the night hoping that the lack of walls in the venue might allow for his cry to reach her wherever she may be.

"That's the grace of being able to play out here," Alvin told me, "not a muthafucker to play for 'cept myself." He stood in a black trench coat wearing sun-glasses to protect his eyes from the darkness. Alvin held the image of a Charles Mingus, large and volatile, while simultaneously showing elements of tenderness like a man who would shake your hand after beating your face in. His black skin illuminated itself like fresh paint on a car, significant in any light. Alvin's face looked as though it had been born aged, a victim of gravity that seemed to pull the skin around his eyes and mouth forever downward as if he was destined from inception to play the blues. There was no hair on his head, and his voice was gully like a deep bark. "Angelina," he said shaking his head, "I wish I knew where she was right now." And then he blew a couple of sailing phrases, not so much responding to his own call, but rather acting as a translator, conveying his wish in a language that only the two of them could understand.



***



I discovered Alvin on the way back to my apartment that night, taken aback by his large presence and the idiosyncrasies of his sound, the ways in which he would steadily build to a climax only to cut himself off immediately and abruptly before he got there; it was as if he was constructing the tallest building in the world but always refusing to finish it, never giving it a roof, never cutting off the possibility of going higher. After he would stop playing he would wait a couple of minutes, look around as if to make sure no one was coming, and then pick up where he had previously left off. For Alvin, climax meant writing a final chapter to his never-ending story, a farewell, a letting go, an end to his means. In Alvin's head it was always about leaving the story-that is, the story of his life-open to possibility, closing it would mean giving up-giving up on life, love and most of all Angelina. Every night was another piece to his grand opus, a life's work constantly in progress-instead of writing many pieces, he opted to write one long one.

Continued...

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