NAÏMA (Fiction)

There is a glint in Coltrane's saxophone. The spark suddenly lights and blackens the silver image. A man with his camera moves behind the musician while the notes of Naïma materialize in the air. His lips kiss the mouthpiece and his fingers run through the vertebrae of the instrument pouring a flood of fast moans in an ethereal blue concentric well. The camera man moves around the stage taking what he considers the best angles. Moments ago he had left the scene, but now he is back again, bothersome, with his rolling device focusing on the maestro, tainting the film forever: a wrinkle on a smooth impeccable suit. I can’t see his face, hidden behind the apparatus, but I do see for a moment the baggy trousers covering his legs, his common shoes with shoelaces. That camera focuses on me intently. It distracts me and in some way I lose step. I turn to McCoy. His blink confirms the false note, and we immediately fix that: I charge with a scale that incorporates the flat, which changes the mistake into a scroll ascending to Heaven. Warm sweat trickles down my sternum, which is a channel for new ideas. The last beats dissipate like smoke rings reaching all the corners of time. In the end, exhausted, I look at the camera lens: I watch its play of circular mirrors projected to infinity. I fall into the black pupil, I let it swallow me slowly towards the dark bottom, where I can see two dissolving figures. In that image we’re together: Coltrane and me. How do I know that? We both look ahead but only one of us does not have a saxophone, or a camera; I don’t want to play the video backwards.