Free write.

When we were younger most Friday and Saturday nights had to do with Jazz somehow, either trying to fake it like we were college students at the cat in the cream, or listening to vinyls of the musicians our teachers admired or accompanying each other in what were occasionally some pretty dischordant improvisations. Sometimes we'd go to the Feve and order hot fries and tang and the memory of it always smells like it's just finished raining. And there's all this extra energy hanging around in the air. Once I remember going to The Mandarin just for two bowls of egg drop soup that set us back a dollar each. My memory replays it and we're constantly surrounded by this powerful magic, this smell in the air that assured us we had the entire world in store for us. Josh and Rudy used to play in the Java Zone for food which is a ridiculous idea now. We would stumble upon them and they always thought it was some kind of miracle that we were twins. The universal ice-breaker. And Farnell, I remember him doing a little student teaching in Mr. Arco's class and me being mortified when they discovered I was just a high schooler. The cover blown. The senior recital series of 1996 where Dave played Devotion and I've never again heard brushes on a snare drum like that. I gave a little piece of my insides as an offering to that night so that I'd never forget it. Dave was the best act, and that was a big surprise. And all those professors who sat in the back row on broken down couches who were too cool to even let on how proud they were of their almost graduated students. Then back to the Feve for a coffee or maybe just to a semi-obscure vantage point to smoke. When I remember it the nights lasted for 20 hours each and even that wasn't long enough.

I miss it.