Cafe coda sits a few blocks down from a Vietnamese restaurant that has it’s tables positioned in direct sunlight. We wear our sunglasses, sweat dripping out from under my denim dress and his striped shirt, and eat in thirty minutes. We stumble in at 7:15, 15 minutes late, a few doors down. The walls are lined with pictures of people I don’t recognize until he says their names out loud.
Cafe coda has a bar, and a bartender that didn’t show up. I drink sparkling water, shake an old man’s hand, and take my seat at a little round table. The boy in the striped shirt is tapping his foot, looking straight ahead towards the stage. Thick black paint coats it and the back wall. He tell’s me it’s about to start, and I sit in anticipation, crossing my legs. He’s been talking about taking me here ever since I met him.
Cafe coda hosts live jazz a few nights a week, and we bought $10 tickets at the door. Tonight it’s a trio: a bassist, a drummer, and a pianist. My date stares dead ahead, eyes pointed towards the darkened stage. I gaze around the room, the sparse crowd slowly falls into the same form, until all eyes are directed dead ahead. I turn and follow.
Cafe coda has a patio to smoke on and usually a half-decent crowd on Sunday nights. I don’t have to see their pupils to know how they will dilate. I don’t have to inhale, I just need to concentrate. On the stage, in my focus, I finally start to see something outside of the hazy silence: an upright bass turned on it’s side, a drum set disassembled, cymbal on top of snare, and a grand piano with the dust cover sliding off. Still, we stare. Maybe we missed the show, I turn to him, he doesn’t notice, he keeps tapping his foot. I don’t move, still, we stare. I start to focus, still we stare.
Cafe coda is silent, but only until I start to hear it. He takes a sip of his beer, which has left a water mark on the table, and sets it back down. The woman with glasses and skirt to her knees sitting next to me closes the book she’d been reading. The guy on the edge of the wall begins to hum and sway side to side in his plastic chair.
Cafe coda smells like stale tobacco and mothballs and old wooden floors, and it takes me away as soon as I let it.
“there are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.” – hannah arendt
Cafe coda tastes like the last piece of chewing gum I had and the wooly inside of my mouth. I can feel the jazz flood in as the peppermint fades. It takes me away and pushes me down into my seat. It grabs me by the ears and shakes me around. It holds me close and let’s me weep. It takes me by the hand, and leads me onto the blue train of thought I normally can’t see. Through the mist, it’s the fog lights, and I can smell the open road.
Cafe coda is the first spark, and the fuel, and the fire, to the engine that sits firmly in the center of my brow bone. It’s the thick black smoke billowing from the first car all the way to the back of the tracks. It’s everywhere and dissipating and sliding through all the cracks. It’s a sharp inhale and a tall tale, a contemplation of sensation, it’s a mode of thought in a 100-year drought. Each song is a new word I’ve never heard, a definition decided only once it’s been said, and now temporarily tattooed on the tip of my tongue and the back of my head.
Cafe coda buzzes electric-jazz-blue for those who know what to listen and look for. Cafe coda is closed until 9 on Sunday nights. Cafe coda has just now filled with patrons, and as he stands, he grabs my hand. Cafe coda sees us out, as we pass the threshold onto the street, just as the stage lights finally come up.
“in order to go on living, one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism” – hannah arendt
Jazz is a mode of thought and Cafe Coda, and Coltrane, and your favorite album are the rails or the tracks or the engine or your favorite metaphor. Today I am thinking about thinking about thinking, and I am listening to jazz.
full playlist here (june 26th 91.7 fm wsum @4pm)
Feral in the barrel 