An Open Letter To Your Next Lover
“My music is alive and it’s about the living and the dead, about good and evil.
It’s angry yet it’s real because it knows it’s angry”
-from An Open Letter To Miles Davis
By Charles Mingus November 30, 1955
Here’s a gift I give to you: he is standing over there
wrapped in a towel from the waist down, there by his stereo,
eyes half-closed, looking into the song as if he might fall into that empty
space in between rifts
that slow space where the drum roll suddenly bursts open into all that’s possible in life.
I give you him.
That man is now yours, the one moving his hands wildly around
in tune with the music, that man who loves Charles Mingus
and will tell you all about how this album was recorded four years later
than that album as you lie on his bed and watch his face change
into something soft and malleable as a rhythm.
How sometimes things choose us,
how Mingus chose me as I lay
on this bed where I used to sleep, where I used to make love,
where I used to hide under the blue blanket so I wouldn’t disturb him
as he meditated in the corner by the window-
near to where he is standing now, this man I am giving to you-
the one who is full of passion as he explicates jazz theories
in preparation for a night of waiting tables.
None of this matters as he relates himself to this music.
The four years in between these two albums
and so much growth-
This man I am giving to you
who stares out his window at the two Mexican men working in tandem
clipping the hedges, muscular forearms the most prominent feature of their future
knows that in four years so much growth is possible-
(he can hear it in the music),
Mingus has proven what is mathematically unsound
and the two men climb down from the ladder and laugh.
This is all they’ve got
words as unforgiving as a sandstorm in our eyes,
This is all we’ve got has chosen us, but that man over there,
the one I am giving to you, can’t see the sand right now,
his eyes are closed: he’s listening to the space in between sound.
The man I am giving to you understands Mingus’ duplicity.
Like a genius of jazz he sways when he says
This song just reminds me
of being in New York City, two o’clock in the morning-
and looking out the window-
taxi cabs driving down the street. That’s what I see when I hear this song.
This is all sees and now I can see it too.
I want to get up off this bed that has chosen me
and put my arms around him to remember what this moment feels like
When he’s standing in all that’s possible: he’s standing on the edge of a song
listening to his life.
But I can’t.
I would be breaking some unspoken code,
So I give him to you: a gift from me.
Perfect like this.
He is the most him at this moment and I give him to you,
just like this
in his underwear with that grin on his face explicating jazz theories-
oblivious to the time for once, oblivious to the banality of all we do,
I give him to you with that pained expression on his face
which I know to be a fit of love,
like the one he gets when he goes in for his cat,
a buffer on the table between us,
as he reaches for his, a handful of fur
Isn’t it funny how sometimes things choose us?
I give him to you: this lover of words and music
and Mingus-
I give you his passion
I give you him saying listen to this, and this… and this.
Do you hear that?
I give him to you right at this moment when he sees his life opening up in a song
that has chosen him.
Jennifer pastiloff
