A time. A place. A journey.
In the last quarter of my last year of college, a year wrought with academic achievement, I got cocky. I decided to enroll in an Honors History of Jazz class, you know, to pass the time. I love history, it was my major, and I fucking love jazz, and I mean that in the most sincere and serious of ways. So it was a natural choice really. That is to say, when browsing the course catalog, this class sought me out.
The later part of the quarter would reveal my ignorance, my arrogance, and my luck.
This was a graduate level music class that only happened to have the word "history" in its title. This was not a history class. It was a music class. And with my jock on the floor after the first week, I soon realized I didn't belong. I should quit. I don't belong here.
But I didn't. Something kept my dumb ass around. In what would turn out to be the greatest act of my college education, I stayed in to burn. And boy did I burn. I didn't give up, not because I'm a bad ass or have some unreal work ethic or super powers, no. I stayed in the class because I couldn't wait to sit in those red row bucket auditorium seats and listen to the professor.
He was a jazz musician by profession that landed a gig as a professer. He taught on a music stage with house lights, a gorgeous black piano off to his left. And man was he compelling. Every word he spilled, every musical theme he taught, was filled with such conviction, direction, and absolute seriousness. This was his craft, his art, passed down through a history so rich and so deep, and I never saw someone take something so serious in all my life. Ever. This shit was not dying on his watch, no mother fucking way.
I'll never forget that class.
That someone had something so close to the bone, in the heart, on such an absolute level of seriousness and resolve. That there was something that mattered, something that mattered more than life. That killed me. And still does.
He was in many ways the greatest professor I ever had. He taught the greatest class I ever took. A great jazz pianist. A great teacher. I owe you. Thanks Marc.
*Marc Seales has several albums on iTunes, I personally recommend the track Deep River off of his album A Time, A Place, a Journey