Saturday, November 5, 2011

which came first...jazz music or feelin' jazzy?

i'm just wondering who invented the word jazz?  was it a bunch of musicians who were just scattin' along and thought it sounded just like it sounded...an onomatopoeia for the muzic, so they called it jazz? or did the word exist as a feeling and the music couldn't help but add it's much more than two cent's worth?
it's just that i'm sitting in this completely wonderful, totally packed and kinda grungy coffee house on a saturday afternoon and a wonderful jazz combo of old folks is just going to town.  the room is bubbling up with all kinds of wonderful conversations, people meeting eachother, many sitting alone with their computers and the craziest melange of chairs, hard and soft, old and new.  seriously, there are at 40-50 people encroaching all over their personal bubbles of space because this music is going and snow is fresh outside, winter is upon us and we want to snuggle indoors.

i ask you starbucks, barnes & noble, corporations far and wide...do you truly want to cut off the spontaneous human element that much?  take away the soft chairs so people can't linger and connect? thoroughly regulate just how much time equals your one cup of coffee's worth sitting in our indoors space?  or how about this...provide a product, space to gather, creative offering that draws people in because it is inviting, encouraging and engaging?  those people come, not because there is a reverse psychology appeal between supply and demand...we might not have enough space for you to stay long, but you can at least try to hang out for a minute; but because the space to be open, connecting and organically taking root and growing  always has room for you. it is from this space that true abundance and success begins!

perhaps this is why jazz is the perfect american music...it allows the space for collaboration, room to grow, connect, jump in or fall out according to harmony and dischordance?  so enough with those corporporations that limit me in this way, that's just plain anti american!!!  and totally un Jazzy!!!!

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