2015

Aquí en la memoria y allá lejos,

pero cerca de ti y de tu presente, 

está la plaza donde hablamos 

siempre de espaldas a la tarde 

que se fue como una invitada

a quien nadie dirige la palabra. 

En el centro de la plaza y de mi vida

sigue aquel árbol, sosteniendo todavía

la noche que nos soprendió en ella 

y que aún no termina para mí

porque mi tiempo permanece 

sentado a tu lado, respirándote 

bajo ese oscuro pulmón del mundo,

negándose a salir de tus brazos

y a repetir lo que ciertamente te dije 

antes de llevarte a tu casa 

y de quedar mirando, dichoso y triste, 

la puerta cerrada, las ventanas, 

el balcón y las paredes unidas

a la penumbra del barrio. 

Aquí en la memoria seguimos 

conversando mientras acaba este día sin fin.

Mi sangre te habla y mi corazón responde

imitando tu voz como se imita 

el silbo interminable de un ave ya no vista.

Esa noche se expande en mi universo 

y tu fugacidad alumbra su mortal vacío. 

Teeth

I read somewhere that loose teeth and painful gums tormented Lester Young in the final years of his life. Even though he suffered from more serious conditions, and his body found the ultimate peace in 1959, I can’t help to feel bad when I think about his dental problems, specially when I hear his renditions of “These Foolish Things.” Musicians will say I’m just being corny, but I do believe that in order to achieve a sound so profoundly sad and sweet in equal proportions, an artist must have had to endure tragedy, melancholia, madness, incomprehension, poverty or solitude by holding onto artistic sublimation with all his might. Not even the most scientific of jazz scholars can deny that Pres was a man too sensitive for the world he had to live in. He almost lost his mind during military service —he wasn’t enlisted as an entertainer, but as a regular soldier— and was dishonorably discharged from the Army for seeking relieve in marijuana.

If destiny or chance were fair, they would have placed a soul as delicate as his in an invulnerable body, or at least in one that couldn’t be ailed by bad teeth, among many other things. But his teeth are what hurt me the most, because being a man of my time I imagine Pres thinking that blind dates aren’t for him unless he hands a small fortune to the best dental surgeon in town. Until then, he would be terrified to smile. Kissing, if he ever come close to it, would not be pleasant at all. Yet, this is the same magician that plays my favorite versions of “These Foolish Things,” for whenever I listen to his interpretation of that song I can see my heartbreaks and yearnings with tenderness and gratitude instead of regret and bitterness.

Chet Baker is another one of my musical heroes that I associate with this feeling. Coincidentally, his teeth were made of the stuff dental nightmares are made. When he was a boy, he was walking across the street when a stone thrown by some other kid ricocheted off a light pole and broke one of his front teeth. He learned to play the trumpet that way. Many years later, pushermen gave him a beating and his teeth, weakened by awful hygiene —he didn’t like to take showers and very probably seldom touched a toothbrush— had to be pulled off one by one. He had to relearn his craft with dentures. By the end of his life, he had to warn his listeners in European nightclubs that his playing might not be good that night because his dentures were loose. One of his girlfriends would help him glue them to his gums. He told her that dental glue had probably caused a tumor in his stomach because he had bouts of heartburn very frequently. Months before jumping, falling or being pushed from a hotel window in Amsterdam, Chet was thinking of quitting the trumpet due to pain in his lower gum. Music was what held him together while heroin and cocaine ravaged his body for three decades.

Nowadays, as a young man whose teeth aged tragically faster, Baker would have been more isolated than he was in his days. There are perfect teeth everywhere today. They glow twenty-four seven on your cell phone, on TV, on magazines of all sorts, on huge banners on top of buildings and on posters in clinic walls. You will see them first thing in the morning and before closing your eyes at night. Your most attractive or successful colleagues have them, as well as actors and, of course, models, politicians, first ladies, webcam strippers, porn stars and sport figures of all sorts, even boxers and mixed martial artists. The world has become a shark tank in which the bigger ones have such teeth and show them pearly white. Chet would have died younger nowadays. The overdose he somehow escaped from between the fifties and the eighties would get him in this world of flawless smiles.

There is another story related with teeth and jazz, although not as legendary as the aforementioned. A fellow journalist and jazz lover who lives in Bogotá has a friend there whose teeth were few and crooked. They met for drinks with some frequency. When the cold city’s night was too chilly, and they had had one bottle too many, this man used to break in tears and moan about his solitude and unrequited loves, accompanied by John Coltrane or Dexter Gordon in the background. Years, perhaps a decade later, he got brand-new, shimmering teeth, and his wailing ceased forever. My friend says that nowadays the man smiles ironically whenever someone mentions the word “love.” After displaying his implants with the utmost confidence, he advises people not to expect anything else than a few nights of pleasure from any date, then jumping into another as fast as possible.

I think it was Chekhov who wrote that the universe might exist in the cavity of a god’s tooth. That is one of the most pessimistic visions of life, if not the most grim of all time. Nothing makes me feel more fragile, more mortal, than the pain which comes and goes from a molar that I fractured without ever knowing when or how. Dentists have a hard time trying to cover its crack, which makes it more prone to decay. “I will do my best, but it will only work for a few months, if much. Don’t chew bubble gum and be very careful when eating nuts,” they all have said. Indeed, the pain comes back a week. In one of my recurrent nightmares I find myself in front of a mirror that reflects my teeth completely worn down, tiny and pointy like a rodent’s, or dangling from rotten gums. Many mornings I have awakened from those dreams only to be dazzled by an immaculate grin as soon as I open Instagram.