Howling at the Moon
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How High The Moon free porn video
"How high..." sings Lynn. "How hi-igh... How high the moo-oo-oon!"
With echoes of Sarah Vaughan, she stretches the final word beyond its normal constraints, modulating the tone, while her fingers follow a little behind on the piano, finally resolving themselves in improvisation when she senses there is little more to be squeezed from one word.
The audience politely applauds as they recognise the change.
She smiles, although she is aware that she no longer resembles the slender Sarah Vaughan who first sang those words in the 1950s, but the older, fuller one of the 1970s who, unlike Lynn, had achieved enough fame that she could afford to 'sell out'.
Selling out isn't an option for Lynn. Neither her muse nor her record company, small though it is, would allow that. And her loyal following, scaled as modestly as Advanced Jazz Records, wouldn't contemplate it either.
Tomasz, her drummer, nods with a smile as he takes Lynn's cue to add his own improvised colour to the steady syncopated rhythm of the black notes on the keyboard. Paul strums the double bass with fingers as black as Lynn's, his eyes closed and the grin on his face revealing the quiet ecstasy that always accompanies his playing. What an international trio they are: reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of Lynn's adopted home of Manhattan. Tomasz from Poland, Paul from Alabama and Lynn from Peckham, a London suburb that seems bizarrely exotic set against the yellow taxis and steaming subways of the insomniac city.
The passage leads naturally to one of Lynn's own compositions, but not one to which she is courageous enough to add lyrics. She knows she is no wordsmith, but she relishes the opportunity to scat over her own scales. The audience nods appreciatively, but not so much as when, a bass and drum solo later, Lynn lets the touch of the orient in her own Cairo Taxi Cab flow into the thundering allure of Duke Ellington's Caravan. The more tutored ears in the Village Vanguard applaud wildly, joined by the rest when she at last sings: "Ni-ight and stars above that shine so bri-ight: the mystery of their fading li-ight that shines upon our caravan..."
The model for her rendition is not the sassy one, but Ella Fitzgerald who surely once sang, as did Sarah Vaughan, in this very historic venue. Much as Lynn loves the American songbook and its great stars, she is a modern artist. Her performances have a character and flavour that is her own, and good enough that she can earn a booking here in Greenwich Village, to which she, in true Ellington style, has taken the A train. But respected as she is, it is a modest audience that shelter in the basement club away from the chill of a New York autumn (or 'fall' as she is learning to call it).
At last, Lynn senses that the variations she can squeeze from Duke Ellington's masterpiece have reached their term and she lets the number end with an ironic piano roll. The audience applauds and, twenty minutes into the set, it is time for Lynn to address the shadowy figures gazing up at her, clutching glasses of wine and beer in their hands. Although Lynn is a smoker, she is grateful for the city policy that means she now plays in a venue that smells more sweetly than her uptown apartment.
She thanks the audience for their appreciation, reminds them that they are listening to the Lynn Wood Trio, and tells them what songs she's just played. Although too much chat is frowned on at a jazz gig, she feels obliged to give a little background to her next number.
"My daughter lives in L.A. now," she says hesitantly. "She's an optometrist, I think. Some kind of eye specialist. But when I wrote this song, she was just a little girl. And I still think of her as one whenever we perform it. Here it is: Kirsten!"
Indeed, it is memories of her dearest and only fruit of her womb that fill her thoughts as she plays her own pianistic tribute to the restraint and beauty of Bill Evans who was such a great influence to Lynn in those early days in Peckham and, later, North London.
Those were hard days and Lynn knows only too well that a single tune, however sincerely meant, can scarcely begin to recompense for the neglect she'd actually shown her daughter. Those were days when a regular supply of smack and a series of relationships, unsatisfactory and ecstatic in equal measure, were far more important to her than a wailing child whose father had left her when Lynn was still a fifth-form pupil. Even those formative days of premature motherhood were just a momentary stumble in a series of boyfriends, drugs and a passion for music that owed nothing at all to the subtleties and rhythm of Bill Evans or Duke Ellington. However, as the fashion for the disco of Sister Sledge and Chic was supplanted by jazz funk and Lynn's growing interest in the origins of those more intriguing rhythms, music was mostly just the backdrop to her carnal and narcotic indulgences.
When she wrote her song, the nearest any of her compositions has ever approached to commercial success, it was more a guilty tribute to the feelings she felt she ought to have towards her daughter than a reflection of the love she actually expressed. 'The Brat', as she'd privately christened the optometrist-to-be, was an awkward child who resented the series of wholly unsuitable boyfriends shooting up in the squalid bedroom she shared with her mother. Long before she was able to enjoy sex herself, she'd seen enough of it on her mother's bed. And frequently with more than one partner.
Perhaps that was why Lynn sees so little of the daughter celebrated in the wistful melodies of her most celebrated opus. And why Kirsten dedicates herself to a life as unlike that of her reprobate mother as it is possible to be. When she and her boring accountant husband have children of their own it is unlikely they'll know anything other than the comforts of West Coast Suburbia.
It is Paul's turn for a prolonged solo and he smiles broadly as he acknowledges Lynn's nod. Dave Holland, look out! Lynn leans back on her stool and lets her eyes wander about the audience she hasn't really had the opportunity to study before. It is the usual Wednesday night crowd at the Village Vanguard: mostly men, mostly middle-aged, a couple of disorientated Japanese tourists and a lot of tapping toes.
She knows her daughter isn't seated there in the second row, by a table all to herself. Although Kirsten has supported her mother's career with more selflessness and love than Lynn ever managed towards her daughter, there are too many miles and too many optically challenged patients between them for her to celebrate her mother's good fortune at earning a short residency at the world's most celebrated jazz venue. It is a woman, though, a white one as well and the same one who sat in the same seat the night before. The same woman who approached Lynn as she made her way to the back room that doubles as both changing room and kitchen.
"I really want to say just how much I enjoyed your set," she told Lynn shyly in her educated Brooklyn accent.
"Why thank you!" said a truly flattered Lynn, who is accustomed to praise from men but rarely receives it from women.
"I love all your songs," continued the woman gushingly, "but especially Kirsten. I can't begin to describe how much it helped me when I was going through a bad patch. I've often meant to see you perform, but you don't play downtown often enough..."
"The tours take me everywhere, but it's my home town I enjoy playing the most," Lynn replied. "The world's a big place, you know."
"Yes, yes," said the woman, clinging desperately to her moments of conversation with the English émigré. "I've seen the itinerary on your website. You play everywhere. San Francisco, Tokyo, Sao Paolo, Trond... Trond..."
"Trondheim. Norway," Lynn corrected. "Great country. I love it..."
"And I love you," said the woman. Then blushing: "I mean I love your music. It means so much to me."
"I'm glad to hear it," said Lynn, who smiled, and eased pass the woman to Paul and Tomasz waiting for her at the back with her long-neglected packet of Marlboros.
It is Tomasz who takes over from Paul with shuffling soft percussion, while Lynn's hands hover over the keyboard. At last, it seems right and she breaks the tempo with a few tinkly notes mostly drowned out by the applause for her sidemen. Then, appropriately for the time of year, it is the yearning sadness of Autumn Leaves that she plays to the delight of the Japanese tourists.
Tomasz and Paul are attractive men, both younger than Lynn, and together they make a coherent trio, communicating with the empathy of all successful improvisers. Each knows intuitively what the others are doing and is happy to give each other the support that has kept the trio going for more than two years now.
However, much as Lynn privately lusts for Paul's lean, muscular body, his arms bare to the shoulder, or the slightly vulnerable, even feminine, Tomasz, she has learnt from earlier mistakes not to mix a professional relationship with sex. In earlier days, in Peckham, later in North London and, then, on the back of one of her more passionate relationships, Stateside, she let the easy rapport she achieved on stage overlap on her bedchamber.
It is undoubtedly true that the skill for improvisation that make her a professional jazz musician are just as well expressed in physical passion, and she has enjoyed sex with the members of her earlier trios, even the quartets and quintets, sometimes together but more often separately. But the more passion, and the more recklessly it is expressed, the briefer the length of time she has managed to hold her ensembles together before jealousy and intrigue threw the whole affair apart, invariably messily and rarely without rancour.
What would it be like to take Paul's cock in her mouth? Or even Tomasz's? Lynn has long ago overcome her fear of unfamiliar white cock, although the first few times were definite disappointments compared to the standards of sexual prowess she had become accustomed to. But even now, she feels more content brushing against black skin. Perhaps not as often as she once did and certainly no longer as often as she'd like, but advancing age hasn't diminished her desire, however much it has affected her ability to prolong her carnal encounters beyond the first hour or so.
It is, in fact, weeks, maybe over a month, since she last enjoyed sex and, like so many of her more recent encounters, it was an unsatisfactory affair that failed to go beyond even the first night. Her last real relationship was well over a year ago, and she was more shocked by its disintegration than she ever thought possible. It is harder to find and even harder to hold onto a good thing. Once she thought her comparative fame and fortune would bring her an unbroken series of affairs, but the history of her amours has followed a different trajectory to that of her critical and exceedingly modest commercial success.
People might think that the rewards of a career like hers would be a life of constant debauchery, but, just as she reluctantly, but heroically, abandoned a life of drug abuse that threatened to get out of control, so too, and for totally different reasons, has a life of easy sexual abandon deserted her.
Avriella
- 16.12.2022
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