so im standing smiling on the platform at some railway station or another with my tascam and basketful of fresh tapes when this large-snout cigar chomper pre-’47-style Brit bruiser in safari-suit
complete with mustache n’ monocle come over n’ blow a smoke-ring straight up in my face almost gives me an aneurysm plus conjunctivitis right there n' then and just as i’m about to ask what the hell’s the
matter with you and shouldn’t you be headed home by now he peers through his monocle jabs an accusing index at me and my records n' splutters apoplectic- “just what business do you think you have, making such a ruckus polluting the air of these lands we’ve toiled so furiously to Civilize? No schooling no papers no decency what right to even say the word Jazz?!”

Ya’d think I’d single-handedly taken an AK to the Yeoman Warders and shipped the ravens to IRA headquarters as a goodwill token. “Where do you GET OFF? Christ, the bloody nerve!!”the bloody nerve indeed, so i call the stationmaster over n' they strap Bungalow Bill tight to the
cowcatcher on the locomotive of the next train down to Land’s End... heard they have fine sunsets there, plus someone told me they extended the tracks all the way down to the first set of tidal buoys at
Kanniyakumari for just such occasions.

so now i board the next train heading north to the City Lights and the record companies so ‘course im just dyin’ to find some fellow passengers to slap these headphones on ‘em, see what they think of my tapes... But everyone comes on suspicious n’ asking for my papers.

“since when you been playing jazz?” “where’d you study?” “who’d your parents vote for?” “whose bands you play for?” “where’s your degree?” “opinion on Israel?” (trick question, wrong either way; face flash a satisfied smile- Englishman in ebb tide); “References???”- is what it boils down to. I can’t even catch my breath to say that it might not even be their idea of Real Jazz, since I am still alive and “All Of Me” is not even a hidden track.

finally I am just ‘bout brimful n’ right as the whole coach sweating icicles shudders of indignation coming going no clear origin or destination n’ some Gandhi-Kissinger-hybrid Professor of International Relations is explaining to me in long-suffering tones that if I couldn’t make it with the bona fide B&W style of Doing Things, then at the very least some sounds of street riots or emotional speeches over cinematic piano chords- to keep it current- Must Be Current (but not too current; we must Draw The Line Somewhere)- i answer “you’re right; this was a mistake” n' i jump out the train. luckily we ain’t going more than 30 km/h, so i ain’t too cut up but it seems I’ve lost my muzak tapes.

now what’s a poet to do?
whistling through evening crashing all round, leg it n’ find a village nearby with some musicians and a generator run by a modified bicycle. so we all get loaded on hashish n' i show them some tunes which they seem to dig, this wizened old drummer gives his grandson a ripe mango every 15 minutes to pedal for us, press record on the tascam n' it’s go-time, the horn player is a teleporting dutchman with a wooden snake-charmer thing where you can hear the valves opening n' closing, wizened drummer close his eyes n' wriggles around the rusty kit like an octopus in one of them cartoon animal jazz bands from the fifties, mr. bassman serious, stares at his fingers like he’s memorizing each note, pianoman might be blind or maybe just likes wearin’ shades, n’ the upright out of tune with 26 out of 88 keys missing but he takes the top off n' strums it like a mandolin from Hell n' the whole room shakes with the sheer crazy vein-popping sound of it all. im over the moon of course, and in a few hours we have the record in the bag, ready to ship off to the museums and bordellos of the world.

i’ll be back, says i, and i never do lie.

(deep breath)
its awful tiring/to be constantly interrogated/as to why you’re doing something the way you’re doing it./so i’ll try and be brief./whitman couldn’t rhyme and georgia o’keefe couldn’t do it like titian/and all the sad people who wanted them to are deader than dead and no juan remembers why./i dont wanna be dead, infact i dont think anything has interested me less/there’s nothing eternal in anything/art only lives when it’s looked at listened to read and stepped in/so no i am not interested in personal perfection or music of the spheres or quantum physics, nor am i voting for a president who’s never been to the vanguard cuz he’s scared of Africans, nor do i accept that your wrong note is my wrong note, nor am i going to explain myself/who wants to be able to play anything and everything? whats the point? may as well stay home and play video games.

I like Monk walking on his piano, Mingus screaming while snapping off his bass strings like brassiere straps, Ornette watering the earth with tears from a plastic horn and sprouting baby giraffes / in real-time / i like Matisse because he managed to swim back to childhood before he bit it./i was born a foreigner with shaky hands / and i will stay as such / with staff paper as my kodak and my guitar as my darkroom / my songs are about nakedness and blue jungles and popes and crystal radios and high mountain switchbacks with roadside graves like confetti / I am tired of order and furious dogfights of external logic / I am only interested in things that carry their own logic inside them / I am done with the bureaucracy of art / the interminable rising chain of consultations to figure out if something is good or not./if it makes you feel some type o’ way, shiiittt that’s enough for me.

- Dhani Muniz