Jazz is not a waste of time

The city is the greatest achievement of civilisation. Within the walls and boundaries of the city all the great and magnificent art, science, culture, beauty, and wondrous sexual experimentation dissolve into the atmosphere. The city is a living, breathing, organism. It feeds, it supports life, it is a heaving, massive, orgasmic experiment. I love the city. The city at night is without a doubt the greatest of works of art.

"I've always loved the city at night, even before I knew what it was like. I come from a rural suburb of a small town on the west coast of Canada and I spent my adolescence dreaming of cities in the dark." - Kate Pullinger

Granted I did not grow up in remote Canada, but remote South Wales is certainly a similar experience. The idea of the bustling metropolitan lifestyle appealed to me a great deal. Oddly enough, however, upon moving to the city to the first time I did not fully appreciate it - I felt greatly hoaxed, it was a ruse, they had lied to me, like they so often did. It was horrible. I found the city harsh, mean, arch, and crass. Certainly damp and cold and definitely unwelcoming. It was a whole host of negative emotion and not all that inviting.

This all changed the moment I pressed play on the CD player having recently inserted 'Basie in London'. It all, in one explosion of music, became utterly and entirely clear to me what the city meant. The trumpets and snares and saxophones and pianos and drums all seemed to ebb and flow with the people following their daily lives, people pulsed along with the beat, and the street lights glowed their fluid, nearly tactile glow - sparkles in my sunglasses at six pm as the sun had barely laid its head to rest behind the towering buildings.

The city became alive for me for the very first time - and I realised that all the sleaze and debauchery was not unwholesome or contemptible, but vivacious, eccentric, flamboyant, and above all else, absolutely necessary. Everywhere no longer seemed empty. The cars, the small dramas between two quarreling lovers, the drunks singing, the small bistros steaming their hot steam - it was all overwhelmingly exciting - I finally felt like the bus route was a vein, an artery, the side streets capillaries and the districts were the organs of the city - all served very different purposes, but they worked together as a whole to keep the fantastic organism alive.