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Haight Street has been called many things, but "tropical" isn't one of them. Nevertheless,
the club Tropical Haight blossomed briefly 15 years ago on that fog-blown San Francisco street, where aging hippies still
wear down jackets in summer. The modest bar offered leafy decor, exotic drinks, jazz and, to me, my first official gig. I
got it because my boyfriend at the time knew the owner.
I was thrilled and terrified. With many poetry readings,
theatrical performances, jam sessions, and recitals to my credit, I was no novice. But I'd never had my own club date. Suddenly
I had to learn to sing all night AND run a gig, with only a couple of weeks to prepare until that September 1989 evening.
Paroxysms of nervousness washed over me daily. The pianist, bass player, drummer, and I held a single rehearsal in
my living room, the couch standing on end against the wall. Knowing I would undergo a prolonged visual scrutiny, which the
guys behind me would be spared, I plotted what to wear as carefully as I did the set list. Finally the downbeat came.
I had to create a swinging, healing, meaningful evening of good jazz singing, the gift and terror which was I had to do
it THROUGH MY BODY. I knew about striving to perfect words on a page. I knew the ancient art of speaking a poem and the lucky
moments when it lifted the listeners into another realm. I knew the demands and payoffs of vocal practicing. But I didn't
quite know how to create EVERYTHING at once in the drinks-clinking, blender-whirring, loud-cymbals moment, with folks talking
and laughing. I didn't know how to simultaneously create a lovely balanced sound, be energized but tension-free, tell the
story, lead the band, stir souls, and swing, right there in time. This wasn't art already made, which only had to be revealed.
I had to make it, four sets. And my instrument was me.
But that's jazz– creating in two kinds of time: momentary
and eternal, corporeal and divine. Both exist in the Now. That's the only place rehearsal brings you. Whether you call it
iamb or syncopation, it's your heartbeat up there– and in the case of singers, little else– marking the moment's
groove.
A few tunes passed before the vivid melting joy– the FREEDOM– of that realization hit me, before
my panicked awareness found its way down from the ceiling into my body again, before my body could stop carrying on like a
loyal dog hoping its master would please come back and take charge.
But then: the shining faces of strangers and
friends; the bartenders leaning motionless, listening; the heartbreak and victory of "Don’t Explain;" and
my, yes, tropical bossa take on "Round Midnight," shifting the ruckus into a lilt. I had never experienced the Now
so fully in public– or understood that preparation was just a prelude to seizing the simple, momentous joy of singing
to the whole room.
The Now stretched beyond time. Meanwhile, bodies and matter kept making their unpredictable
demands. A drunk fell next to me on his way to the bathroom, the door to which was behind the bassist. Then the sound system
failed. So I ended the gig singing a cappella without a mic., on "Earthquake Weather," one of my first compositions.
I sang about the fault line on which San Francisco is built– about how, even through cool cement, we feel the seismic
heat beneath the city, making us more prone to love. A man whooped peacefully when I was done.
Then the real night
returned. We packed up and went from the tropics into the chilly dark.
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