Improvisation

You are a John Coltrane riff, suddenly exploding in my eyes

Note: Dan Szczesny is an award-winning New Hampshire journalist, author, and speaker. His latest work, The White Mountain, along with all other things Dan can be found at his website here. For the last four years, Dan published daily “live essays,” such as this one, on his Facebook feed each day for the month of November. We are grateful for his permission to reprint some of these essays here at Monadnock Underground over the next few weeks. Dan has recently announced that his next book, a collection of essays about parenthood (like this one!), will be released in early June 2020. You can find the original (classic!) post, from November 27, 2017 here. — CJD

AsI begin my final few days of November’s daily affirmation, baby, I’ve been thinking a lot about music. When you were still in your mom’s belly, we’d listen to Dylan and the Beatles and Miles Davis. Three years later, you still perk up at the sound of a trumpet or saxophone. You even own a little plastic horn, yellow and orange and green.

In a month, you’ll begin attending dance classes (honestly, I have could have sworn you were just a baby last week).

But your exposure to and love of music came into better definition for me over the weekend when a friend with grown kids of his own asked me how fatherhood was and all I could think of was “amazing.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but amazing every day in a different way, right?”

Yes, of course! Like jazz, baby.

You are a solo, you are improvisation.

You are a John Coltrane riff, suddenly exploding in my eyes.

You are the smooth ecstasy of Art Blakey.

You are the famous Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Concert when you blow so loud and I think the ceiling will fly off and the neighbors will run yelling into the street.

You are Wes Montgomery, coming in low and quiet when I least expect it.

And yeah, you are Miles Davis in his early 70s acid funk stage where you are just doing your thing and I have no idea what’s happening, but hey, it’s your thing and you own it and I respect that.

Every day with you, sometimes many times a day, is something exquisite and new; is something terrifying and calamitous.

Sometimes you are accessible and everybody gets you. Sometimes, only your mother or I get it. Other times, baby, you are flying solo and we mere mortals are just along for the ride.

When you are off your game, you’re still unique. And when you’re good — when the moon is as perfectly round as your eyes and you reach for the ceiling and stomp your feet — the world bends its ear to listen to you.

During those times, you are divine revelation.