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| Mexico City Blues: Intro Chap 1 Chap 2 Chap 3 Chap 4 Conclusion |
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AN EXAMINATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF JAZZ AND BLUES IN JACK
KEROUAC'S MEXICO CITY BLUES.
BY: RODERICK A. WARNER
CHAPTER THREE: IMPROVISATION.
In this chapter, I will try to relate the influence of improvisation in jazz to
Kerouac's poetry, in an attempt to demonstrate how he aspired to emulate both the
immediacy of jazz performance and to develop a poetry that could express the
movements of the mind, without the ''... lyrical interference of the individual as ego,'
(O, 395) as Olson expressed it. This is a poetics that will, in Kerouac's words,
'[s]truggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind.' (BT, 59) But what
are the similarities involved between improvising music and improvising poetry?
Firstly, no improvisation comes ex nihilo. It will always, to some degree, greater or
lesser, be dependant on the influences and techniques and vocabularies (musical and
textual) that the improvisor has assimilated, consciously through working and
learning their craft, and more problematically, unconsciously. Charlie Parker, for
example, had, as is universally noted, an awesome technical command of his
instrument - which enabled him to translate his ideas into sound at a dazzling speed.
Yet, to confound the over-romanticised view of individual creation and
improvisation, he would often fall back on set patterns - as all improvisers do.(1.)
Certain notes fall more easily under the fingers of the individual instrument (as
certain words follow more easily in an associational chain). His genius often lay, in
this area, in the way that he would re-organise the set phrases - often his own patterns
that had rapidly become cliches - into new rhythmic configurations. Or, expand them
by melodic embellishment, adding or subtracting notes in an extension of the same
rhythmic reorganisational impulse. Kerouac had similarly developed his textual
techniques - by writing literally millions of words and being a voracious and learned
reader of his own literary traditions - American, French and beyond. (2.) Thus, when
Parker the musician and Kerouac the poet are improvising, certain fragments and
motifs will emerge to establish an always-ongoing intertextuality of reference. In a
way, one is always 'playing the tradition' in this context. Any originality and freshness
will depend upon the instantaneous organisation and reorganisation of one's acquired
materials, via one's technique, to fit the circumstances of the moment of conception.
Any analysis of Mexico City Blues will soon bear out the weight of tradition that
Kerouac carried into his poetic art, displaying a wide intertextuality of reference,
which the poem wears lightly, or often conceals, due to Kerouac's idiomatic and often
perversely child-like delivery. As Anthony Hecht wrote in his (rather arch) review of
the poem:
'But this image of the surly swain is one of the poet's little impostures; his is a very
"literary" book... The structure of the whole volume is based on Pound's (as he called
it) "fugal" method of interwoven themes... Dr. William's is here, and so is Gertrude
Stein... E.E. Cummings, who has shown him how to use nursery rhymes with wry and
slapstick irony... A straightforward "Imagist" poem (chorus 151)... [and] even (bless
his sophisticated literary soul) James Joyce...' (3.)
Another feature of Parker's style was his penchant for quoting fragments of melody
from a wide variety of sources - often leading to bizarre juxtapositions in his solos
which match Kerouac's ubiquitous 'goofiness:'
'Probably no jazz musician before him was as fond of this device, or as
wide-ranging in his choice of material, as Parker... His improvisations contain
snatches of melody from Wagner, Bizet, and Stravinsky; from popular songs and light
classics; from earlier jazz performances such as Armstrong's West End Blues; and
even quotations from his own jazz compositions. he retained this device throughout
his career, and it is another measure of his authority in jazz that witty quotations
became characteristic of the bop style as a whole.' (GR, 956-7)
Much of the reasoning behind this strategy is obviously ironic - Parker is 'running
the dozens' (4.) on more respectable musical forms (in the same way as Kerouac
challenges the orthodoxies of the poetic establishment of his time?) - and also
providing bravura demonstrations of technique, by making the strangest quotes fit
into the harmonic context of the solo. But quotation, however ironic, further
reinforces a performative 'intertextuality' which relates him both to his own
African-American tradition and to wider musical traditions beyond his own idiom.
Kerouac too - in imitation of Parker? - often directly quotes fragments of popular
song - in Chorus 84, for example:
Kerouac foregrounds the 'vocalised text' by the opening capitalised word:
'SINGING.' He incorporates the old sentimental ditty into his improvisational line by
re-inscribing it into a formal approximation of the verse lines of his poem - the
indentations of 'Of/I/To/I'll/Croon and the further indentation of 'Love's Dream,' for
example. This is a move that seems reminiscent of Parker's bending a disparate
musical quote into his own stylistic logic. And yet again he uses the tripartite
structure of the blues - very clearly notated on the page in this example. He also
humourously foregrounds the 'improvisational' quality of the poem in the sudden
interjection of his own voice: 'O that's the/part I dont remember,' and deconstructs the
song further by stripping it down to just the semantic signposts of 'ho ney moon -
/Croon - /Love - /June - accentuating these 'key' words by further step-by-step
indentations across the page. The last section leads onwards into another
improvisation based on the phrase 'right word.') The 'right word,' presumably, is that
of the poetic establishment's finely wrought poetry - which Kerouac dismisses,
preferring the immediacy and the mistakes of his chosen spontaneous form: 'You can
get it out a book/If the right words are/important.'
By attempting to deconstruct some of the myths about improvisation and
emphasizing the importance of intertextuality in this context, I would suggest that one
can see Kerouac's poem as exposing the process of its making - self-evidently in the
above extract - in much the same way as a jazz soloist such as Parker exposes the
mechanics of his playing. A quotation that is a conscious choice is perhaps shadowed
by quotations that are subconscious assimilations. One can point to many examples
in the poem where he is consciously foregrounding his technique - even when it has
momentarily dried up, as in Chorus 36, which provides an aural example, expressed
visually: 'ripping of paper indicates/helplessness anyway.' (MCB, 36, 22-23) The
'sound of the text' writ large? Or earlier, in the 6th Chorus: 'This Thinking is
Stopped.' (MCB, 6, 1). Further, the poem exposes the unconscious repressions and
anxieties of its author - Kerouac's chosen mode of 'Lingual Spontaneity,' while
seeming to be a paradigm for 50s Beat writing in its assertion of an 'individualistic
expression,' (5.) when read now, with the benefit of hindsight and new theoretical
approaches, can be intepreted as containing and indeed foregrounding many
instabilities in its subject position. Not the least being the contradictions between
Buddhism and Catholicism. Kerouac's desire to faithfully map the forms of the
movement of the mind may well bring to the forefront of poetic and textual
consciousness a host of tangled contradictions and hidden repressed agendas that
demonstrate: 'The unspeakable visions of the individual.' (BT, 59)
I will examine Chorus 37 to demonstrate many of the above- mentioned points:
Emulating jazz techniques, Kerouac uses a popular song as a base or a motif,
Noel Coward's 'Mad About The Boy,' then moves into an improvisation - emphasised
by the word 'Tune', which could be a statement directing the reader to the musical
nature of the Coward reference, or, more likely, an invocation to an instrumentalist to
'Tune Up.' 'Fue' is consonant with 'Tune' - and also the Spanish for 'Go,' the word
that Kerouac and others used to shout at soloists in jazz clubs, to spur on their
improvisations. (6.) Which leads into the next line 'Going along etc.' and a further
re-inforcing of the jazz ambience with a reference to Lester Young. (7.) The chorus
unfolds in one long line that recalls the serpentine movement of vocalese (8.), broken
at certain points for rhythmic emphasis and variety - the dashes in the first lines that
give yet another flavour of Emily Dickinson, 'Wail,' 'Majesty.'
From 'Break their Beatbutton bones,' the chorus takes on a Gaillardian flavour, of
'scat' syllables, or punned and displaced words that remind one of 'Vout:' a direct
Gaillard-sounding 'Ah Patooty, ' for example. Or 'Bank of Broad/England' instead of
'Bank of England;' or the lines 'In rooms of dun ago/In long a lash alarum,' where the
adjective 'long,' which would conventionally be expected in the phrase 'long ago,' is
displaced to the next line. The improvisational quality is further rendered by the
pick-up of the upper-class English reference in the opening line - Noel Coward -
'England... Teaward Time/Of Proust and Bearded/Majesty,' as if he is playing with a
with a fragment of motif, doubling the density further by the mention of Proust and
his famous 'madeleine, dipped in tea, (symbol of the persistence of memory, an
important consideration in all of Kerouac's work) linked to the conventional image of
England and afternoon tea: 'Teaward Time.' Although there is possibly a sly drug
reference here; one notes Kerouac's own words: 'Like Proust be an old teahead of
time. (BT, 59) The 'Bearded/Majesty probably stands as a metonymic reference to
the English Crown - he seems to link the image of English royalty and an upper-class
'tone' via Coward and French urbanity (Proust) to both Gore Vidal (gory/) and the
Southerner, Tennessee Williams (whose geographic first name roots him further in
the South). A hint, perhaps, of Southern race relations, as well? As 'lash' leads into
'alarum speakum/mansions tennessee/of gory william tree,' one detcts a resonance of
the slavedriver's whip, that supported the 'mansions' of the southern plantation
owners, and drew the 'gore' from the backs of the slaves. Gore Vidal is directly
mentioned elsewhere, (in the 74th Chorus, for example: 'This is for Vidal.') (MCB,
74, 8) and again these lines demonstrate the jazz paradigm at work in Kerouac's work:
the linguistic displacements mirror chord inversions and melodic embellishments and
provide a poetic density and resonance that matches the harmonic and melodic
richness of bop.
Bearing in mind my previous remarks about the unconscious and repressed
material, yet another reading gives a strong homosexual resonance to the Chorus.
Coward, Proust, Vidal and Williams were all homosexuals, and Lester Young was
(wrongly) thought to be one. (9.) Given the infamous incident when Kerouac stayed
the night with Vidal, (10.) this chorus could be seen to be the improvisatory process
unleashing a string of possibly repressed references. In this context, such a phrase as
'bearded Majesty' can take on a phallic character. Improvisation is always a risk:
here, one can identify the mirroring of the mind's movements being exposed in a way
that raises certain interesting questions concerning the poet's sexuality, amid the
seemingly innocent jumbled, jazzy onslaught of his word-play. 'Jouissance'
concealing a more serious and problematic game?
As Stephen Fredman states: 'An improvisation ends not when it has attained a
necessary formal or thematic completion but when it has played itself out.' (11.) To a
great extent, I believe that this is true of Mexico City Blues. An increasing note of
melancholy and weariness is sounded towards the end of the poem: 'As the weeks
went on in Mexico City, Jack's energy began to run down. The later poems took him
longer... ' (CH, 202) Yet Kerouac hit on a resolution which was extremely effective;
the poem comes to rest on the figure of Charlie Parker in Chorus 239: 'Charlie
Parker Looked like Buddha.' (MCB, 239, 1, 241)
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