Improv/Imitation 2, Week 8

"Before the war, they were happy," he said while looking
up the word for happy in the dictionary that he always kept
on the bedside table. "The jazz war, that is." Clarification
was necessary, so that we as the munchkins of his Oz wouldn't
confuse the fake war with the real one. That war we saw on TV,
he would tell us, wasn't real, just a big play being put on
by the government who would try to keep us down. No, the real
war was fought on the streets of New Orleans when he was a boy,
just older than we were as he told us this story.
Trumpets and drums would litter the streets like the fliers
that shouted COME TO JAZZ-FEST 1924! SIDNEY BECHET ONE NIGHT ONLY!
But men in their long white coats, carrying their Bibles called
it music meant to summon Satan from Hell to take the city down
for his demons to play with, and so the war began.
"Wasn't no blood," he reminded us. "Just ink, and lotsa' it,
thrown on sheet music by the master hisself against the faces
a' the unforgiving church."
We sat on our knees and listened, holding our hands up to our ears
in an attempt to imitate his hearing device, and because I so closely
watched his lips as they made the motions for playing a saxophone,
I never did find out how that war ended.