Miles Davis

Greta Garbo is credited with saying "I want to be alone." Except I'm sure

"alone" she meant away from you lames. I want to be where I can be me

and this place is not it. Then she would blow some smoke, or pick her

fingernails, or do something else nonchalantly to indicate her total boredom

with the scene. Miles on the other hand never had to say it. He made a

career of being alone and sending back notes from the other world, notes as

piercing as his eyeballs dismissing  a fan who was trying to tall him how

pretty he played

Here this man was: Miles Dewey Davis, a self made motherfucker, a total

terror whose only evident tenderness is the limp in his smashed-up hip

walk, like he can't stand touching the ground, the cement, the wooden floor,

plush carpet, whatever he is walking on. The man who, considering all the

abuse he has dished out to others as well as all the self abuse he has

creatively consumed, this man who should have died a long, long time ago

but who outlived a bunch of other people who tried to clean up their act.

This pact with the devil incarnate. This choir boy from hell. This disaster

whose only value is music, a value which is invaluable. If he hadn't given us

his music there would have been no earthly reason to put up with Miles, but

he gave on the stage and at the studio, he gave. if there is any redemption he

deserves it.

As for me, I admit I don't have the music, but so what? perhaps in time you

will understand that I really don't want to be here. I don't want to be loved

or to love, I . . .

Perhaps you will understand that once you don't care, nothing else matters

I don't need a reason why to hit you. Why I'm letting you pack and split

without a word from me, without any "I'm sorry," or anything else that

might indicate remorse or even just second thoughts about what I've done.

Instead, I'm cool.

Just like Miles could climb on a stage after beating some broad in the mouth,

I cross from the bedroom where I knocked you to the floor and go into the

living room and put "Round Midnight" on. The unignorable sound of Miles

chills the room. I stand cool. Listening with a drink of scotch in my hand,

and a deadness in the center of me. Anesthetized emotions.

As you leave you look at me. Your eyes are crying, "why, why, why, do you

treat me so badly?" I do not drop my gaze. I just look at you. Miles is

playing his hip tortured shit. You will probably hate Miles all the rest of your

life

You linger at the door and ask me do I have anything I want to say. I take a 

sip nonchalantly, and with the studied unhurried motion of a journeyman

hipster, I half smile and drop my words out of the corner of my mouth

"Yeah, I want to be alone. Thanks for leaving."

And i turn my back on you, trying my best to be like Miles: a motherfucker.

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