Geoff Dyer Quote

Like the time he’d dashed into Minton’s out of the pouring rain and seen this kid playing tenor, making it wail and wriggle around like the horn was a bird whose neck he was trying to wring. Breathing heavy, dripping rain on the floor, he listened to the loops and knots of sound tying and untying themselves. Hearing the horn squealing and wailing that way was like seeing a child he loved getting hit. He’d never seen the guy before, so he just rolled up to the stage, waited for the guy to end his solo, and said, as if it was his horn the guy’d been messing with: —Tenor ain’t supposed to sound that fast. Grabbed it out of the guy’s hands and laid it gentle on a table. —What’s your name? —Charlie Parker. —Well, Charlie, you gonna make cats crazy blowing the horn that way. Then laughed that big snorting laugh, like someone blowing their nose hilariously, and walked out into the rain again, a sheriff who had just taken a dangerous weapon off a drunk cowboy. He