Jazzing With Peter Gunn

 

Jazzing With Peter Gunn

My Peter Gunn by Tosh Berman

 

"My Peter Gunn" by Tosh Berman.  

Read it here: My Peter Gunn

July 26, 2014

July 26, 2016

Ever since I was a child, I was drawn into the nighttime world, which the Blake Edwards’ show “Peter Gunn” expressed my need for shadows and cool jazz.    As a teenager, I imagine my life as Gunn, where I had a beautiful mid-century apartment, with a gorgeous fuckable girlfriend who seems to visit him in the middle of the night.  Gunn seems to be only active in the night, where he frequents a jazz nightclub called “Mothers” in a city that is not defined, but it appears to be a dock town.  The surroundings strike me as being unnatural, even fake-like, which made me love the TV series even more.  Throughout my life I tried to find a jazz club like “Mothers, ” but realized that’s impossible, because here, the imagination rules, and I follow the rules of dream logic than the waking man’s reality.

I love the idea of a contained environment, for instance the Korova Milk Bar, where one goes to get loaded on milk laced with drugs, where one can drink the milk with knives in it.  It will sharpen you up.  I went there to take mescaline, and as I sat on a couch that resembled a woman’s ass-cheeks and back, I let my mind wander into a shapeless world, and just waiting for my ego to break down. That, will never happen. Nevertheless I left Korova and went to the Owl Drug store on Beverly and La Cienega to look at the displays of shampoo, hair creams, combs, and all sorts of beauty products.  I couldn’t believe my eyes, and I felt I was really seeing these objects in a new ‘enlightened’ light.  “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.  For man has closed himself up.  Till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.” The essence of moving among the buildings in the night, clearly I was looking for happiness, but one knows that “happiness would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

Around 3:30 in the morning I arrived at my home, which over time, I tried to design it as Peter Gunn’s apartment, but I neither have the money or the shopping skill to make this work.  Yet, my attempt to reproduce what I saw on television, it became a new interior.  Not even influenced by, but more of a tribute that only I can see.  I put on the song “Sonny” on the turntable which was written and performed by Bobby Hebb, but I much prefer the Manfred Mann instrumental version.  Hebb wrote it as a reaction to the John F. Kennedy assassination but also to his brother who was killed a few days after the Kennedy death.  He was inspired to write something that was ‘light’ and uplifting when his world (and others) went to hell.  I admire the beauty of someone changing their perception of the world, because if there is going to be a real change, one needs to start with themselves.   Or, we flow with the crowd, but that I don’t recommend whatsoever.

July 8, 2014

July 8, 2014

For the last week, there have been odd things happening in my living room.  At first, it was a book I’m reading at the moment “The Principle of Hope” by Ernst Bloch, which I was sure I placed on the living room table, but found it in the next morning in the kitchen.  I just thought to myself that I more likely went to the kitchen and dropped it off there before going to sleep.   Then the next day I noticed that my chair, which usually faces the TV screen, was at a different angle, facing the front door.  Again, I thought that maybe I accidentally knocked against the chair, or perhaps I moved it to get around it.  But that was bizarre to me, because I rarely ever move my furniture around. I’m one of those people who like things to be placed in a certain position, and never ever change that position.  Then for sure I notice something very odd, in that I left my laptop on my dining room table, and when I woke up the computer was on the opposite side of that table.  I have a specific seat I like to sit on, facing the direction of my window, where I pretty much see the same things every day.  So how did my laptop move from one side of the table to the other?

Not only that I’m afraid, but not long ago I found a vinyl copy of “Ballet Méchanique” by George Antheil, and placed it on top of my turntable cover, to play it later.  Hours later I went to my turntable to play the record, and I found the cover on the top, but no vinyl inside.  It wasn’t till I open the record player lid and noticed that the record was on the turntable already - in fact it was side 2 of the record.   For sure, I didn’t open the album cover, and double-sure I didn’t place the record on the turntable itself.  Readers must keep in mind that I have been obsessing over my work lately, so I haven’t really paid that a great deal of attention to these mysterious ongoing situations around the house.

A couple of nights ago, I was awoken by a sound in the sound of the TV set in the living room.  When I got there I saw the image of “Peter Gunn” TV show, which I own the complete series on DVD, and was of course spooked.  I didn’t turn the set or DVD machine off, but checked the doors and windows around the house.  All normal, and I went back to the living room, and found the DVD packaging on the table, like where I would put it if I was watching it.  But the thing is I haven’t watched that specific DVD for a year now, and on top of that, my DVDs are on a wall shelf directly across the set and machine.  So how did that get there?

So yes, I notice how everything is changing in the front room.  A window would be open when I know for sure I didn’t open it myself, and again, objects on the table would be re-arranged or the furniture would be slightly changed.  I have two chairs and a couch surrounding the table, and both chairs were switched around.   I also have a blanket folded over a chair, mostly for visual sake than anything else, and what happened was that I fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up, the blanket was on top of me.

So lately my life has been sort of like the book “Voyage Around My Room” by Xavier de Maistre, except in my room, the furniture and objects seem to have their own life.  Oddly enough I don’t think a spirit has entered my home, but more to the fact that the objects themselves have a soul or an identity.  It is not hostile to me personally, but like yours truly that has a definite taste, so does my living room furniture and the objects that live in that room.  When you touch a book or a used record, you can feel the presence of someone else or a life of that object as it radiates in one’s hand.  So, if one lives with objects, you must accept their temperament as well.

June 11, 2014

June 11, 2014

In the late 1970s, I was living in Manhattan, and pretty avoiding the music scene that was taking place in the East Village and the Bowery.  I craved music that would gently caress my broken soul, and that was seeing and hearing Hazel Scott at the Milford Hotel Plaza on 8th Avenue, not far from Times Square.  At the time, I only had one vinyl album, and one portable turntable, and basically that was that, if you wanted to include several stripped t-shirts and one winter coat, with a pair of blue jeans and boots.  One can say my finances were non-existent. Yet I knew the doorman at the hotel, and he always got me in to see the Scott trio.

The one album I owned was Hazel Scott’s “Relaxed Piano Moods” with the backing of Charles Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums.  I often lay on the floor by the turntable and its small speakers, and let her music soak into my ear drums, and throughout my body.  I was likewise staying at the Milford, due to a small inheritance that I was living on.  I was fascinated with the idea of not working, and finding out what will happen once the money dried up.  At the time, I was curious to know if eventually what my behavior would be like if I die from the elements, or the lack of food.  The idea of that being the case with me in the middle of Manhattan had a great appeal for me.

I spent most of my daylight hours at the New York Central library reading New York poets.  Frank O’Hara had a huge appeal for me, because it’s a life I know I won’t ever have.   I guess I could if I agreed to get a job, and basically spent my hard earned dole on food, books, and music  - but I was struck by the idea of doing nothing, and walking to the library to read books and then come back to the hotel to listen to the album, and then seeing that artist play later that night.   Now come to think of it, life was really perfect.

At the time, I avoided all social contacts, and in fact, besides the doorman to the hotel, and a waiter or waitress here or there, I didn’t really talk to people.  The inner-dialogue I had with myself, gave me food and I really didn’t have anything to say to others.  In my hotel room, I decorated the walls with images by Julia Margaret Cameron, because I love the idea that she only focused on the world around her, and nothing else.   I stole a lot of the images from photo magazines that were placed in the collection at the library.  I did the famous loud cough as I tore a page one at a time.  The only images I had in my room were the album cover and various portraits by Cameron.

When I was living in Los Angeles, I was a fan of Shelley Manne, and I sort of had this fantasy that I could be Peter Gunn, going to “Mothers” night club to see my non-existent, but fantasy girlfriend sing a number or two.  It was at Manne’s jazz club where I first saw Hazel Scott. I don’t want to say I followed her to New York, because that sounds sort of creepy.  But truth to be told, it was her and my love for Manhattan culture, which clearly was another fantasy on my part.  Till then, the only thing I knew about Manhattan was through books and old episodes of “Naked City” TV series.   Once I came to the big apple, I was surprised that my dream location was exactly the same as reality.  Or maybe I just make fantasy into reality.