Story XX: Liner Notes
A man who listened.
THE PLAYLIST
Coltrane’s Ascension | 110th and West End, 2012
1. I’m the Sarah from Ohio you’ve heard so much about.
2. For a DJ, you’re not a big talker, Mr. Vinyl Jazz Man.
3. “Ascension.” In Ohio, the better the book, the shorter the title. Bible.
4. It’s incredible you’re writing a book about one song.
5. Genius is my aphrodisiac.
6. You’re either very quiet or the best listener with a penis I’ve ever known.
7. I listened to your show. Now I know where you do all your talking.
8. You’re like jazz catnip.
Catnip | Furnald, 2013
1. I love you, Catnip. Don’t forget I told you first.
2. Not everybody has a “thing.” I’m jealous.
3. Pure love, Laszlo. Pure as vodka.
4. Don’t forget me when you’re a famous jazz writer off somewhere.
5. If I say I’m going to read it, I’m going to read it.
The 12 to 4 | Bushwick, 2014
1. I finished it, Laz. I don’t even know where to start about how brilliant it is.
2. I wish Coltrane could have read it.
3. He might have been the one person who truly understood it.
4. I’m only saying you’re too hard on my music, Laszlo.
The Köln Concert | Montreux Jazz Festival, 2016
1. New rule: I’m allowed to pick up the record needle so you can hear me say, ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’
2. No, Laz. You can get married to Keith Jarrett, or you can get married to me. I’m not telling my parents who flew all the way from Akron to Geneva I’m walking up the aisle to half the Köln Concert.
3. A toast to a brilliant man. To my brilliant man.
4. You know quiet has its jazz, too. You could write so beautifully about this if you wanted to.
5. Even the grass stains on my dress. Especially the grass stains on my dress.
6. Thank you for marrying me, Laszlo Craçek.
7. But why are you making it into Honeymoon Law Number 49? I don’t want to feel guilty when I play my music.
8. “Ascension, Ascension, Ascension.” Jesus, it’s your honeymoon.
9. I’m sorry, but it’s a long flight, Laz. Let me watch my movie for the masses.
Asayake | Jersey City, 2018
1. We’re not naming her Ornette or Ella or Esperanza. You’re going to have to give her a chance to be herself, Laszlo.
2. I can’t believe what we made, Laz. She’s so beautiful. Of course, you can hold her.
3. I apologize for him. You didn’t come over for three hours of Japanese fusion.
4. You weren’t a DJ. You worked the 12 to 4 at a college station nobody listened to.
5. No normal girl wants to play a saxophone.
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy | Jersey City, 2018
1. I don’t want to live in a jazz cathedral. I don’t want a Louis Armstrong handkerchief collection on the console. I need to put my own shitty things somewhere.
2. This is how I grew up. We yelled. So what?
3. But think about it, Laz, isn’t that so you? Half of them are unopened because they are worth so much. Isn’t that what’s happening with our marriage? I’m fucking half-unopened.
4. Eighteen thousand pages of liner notes.
5. You said it yourself! I’m quoting you! Etta and I are “shrieking and chaos.” Oh, but we’re not John Coltrane’s shrieking and chaos.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside | Miscellaneous Home Recordings, 2019-2022
1. If her learning my music is such simple crap, then you play it. Play mommy’s crap melody. Pick it out. Watch daddy pick it out.
2. Laz, please. I’m begging you. Don’t leave. I’m begging you. We’re both begging you.
3. You know what? Sometimes, I think you don’t even love jazz, Laszlo. You love being the jazz man, the big, intellectual genius. It’s all trivia bullshit, and honestly it is trivial. You’re trivial.
4. Take off that silly hat. You’re not John Coltrane.
5. You’re emotionally impotent, and the rest isn’t so hot either.
6. Stay.
Coltrane’s Ascension, Part II | The Bitter End, 2023
1. Yes, Miles Davis, you fucking phony. And fuck your 1967 speakers I paid for. I’ll kick in the other one so we can have some peace, you wimp. You fucking wimp.
2. God knows your daughter hates it. She’s hiding in her room.
3. Coltrane wouldn’t have read your book in a million years.
4. Oh my God, for once just defend yourself, Laszlo.
5. Boo-hoo, nobody read your book. Maybe write one about your family, Laz.
6. Shoo-be-doo-be-doo-be-doo, blah, blah, bitty blah blah. I’m leaving you because even you’re sick of jazz. Hiding in the office.
7. I know you want to leave us. Etta knows, but you don’t even have the courage to tell her.
8. I’m not “turning her against you.”
9. I want half the records. Find yourself a lawyer.
Sarah,
I was short on paper, so I tore the dedication page out of your copy of Ascension. (You left it.) I thought you’d want the one page you read.
I knew Ascension better than John Coltrane did, and that was the point. I wanted to be his closest listener, and I was.
Attention is love. Close attention with all you’ve got. It’s an art, and you practice it. This is indisputable.
I tried to give you attention, but you and Etta never stopped moving. You couldn’t hold still long enough for me to be the husband and father I could have been. You didn’t let me love you. Endless talking and blaming.
I apologize for being quiet, and maybe I did hide from time to time. But I understand love, and I understand what a family is. Because I pay attention to details.
You say I never heard you, but I did. I didn’t just hear you. I listened. You burned your words into me. So, I made you a playlist to prove it. Enjoy. (Share it with Etta when you explain her father to her as I know you will.)
The two minutes of Koln that I wanted to play introduced me to jazz. Two minutes and fourteen seconds was all I wanted from the entire day. One thing. It was all I asked, and I didn’t even get that.
Koln was a gateway to my entire life. That concert opened a world for me, and it was my world. It was a you before you were you. And you turned Keith Jarrett into New Age slop. Vulgar, cultural slop.
You won, Sarah. Now I hate Ascension, too. It’s shrieking and chaos like our marriage was. Maybe it was always shrieking and chaos, and I tried to love it like I tried to love you.
Twelve years I’m only beginning to understand your bottomless need. You’ve finally given me time to think about it.
I wish you nothing but silence.
Laszlo
I admire how you experiment with every possible form to tell a story. The thread that runs through all of them as your ability to make them heartbreaking. So many good lines in this one.
Sarah is going to get her silence no doubt. Laszlo put her every last emotional turn and arc into that playlist. To place the needle on the vinyl of their story and listen, she’ll be stunned silent to hear just how “fucking opened” she actually was. But wait, maybe that’s just it…this is just a playlist. He listened enough to write the titles, but listening is different than opening.