Journal 37

When I hear jazz, I see a restaurant in New Orleans. Because Jazz is best known there, that’s what i think about. I see a huge restaurant, teeming with crowds of people. They keep filing in, and as they do, they marvel at the many happy faces surrounding them. Families and friends lounge in chairs at neat, simple tables, joking and laughing, their mouths wide with smiles. Their clothes are an array of color: Blues, greens, browns, mahogany, bright reds and gold. Women have swooping dresses that gracefully lay on their shoulders, and men have dashing, black slicked suits. The children dress playfully. Little girls wear summer dresses, their feet clicking with little black flats, and young boys wear suspenders, their anxious thumbs pulling on the gleaming straps.  Waiters dance through isles, their hands filled with trays of warm, delicious, steaming food, their hair pulled back in tight buns. The sweet spicy smell of cajun wafts through the air, and people greedily dig into their meals and moan at the wonderful taste. Everyone is moving and lively, and the room is loud with excited talking. The musicians dance and sway to their tunes, their bodies swinging with the jazz in smooth intervals. One of the trumpet players jokes with the crowd. He jumps off the stage, tapping through isles, tip toeing between seats, his feet moving like butter through the swarms of audience members. He stops at one family, a mother and father with their two children, both of them bouncing on the parent’s knees. The children laugh and giggle as he makes funny eyes at them, and his toes click on the tile to the beat of his music. The lead player calls him back, and he turns, smiles through his mouth piece, and makes his way back to the stage. The crowd laughs as the lead player pretends to scold the renegade, and roar as the lead man begins to copy his movements. As the night continues, people leave and more come. They meet up in the street, chortling happily at bumping into each other, and talk above the music and laugher that plays behind them.  Even the moon listens.