Maybe I Want to Be a Cat

Exploring jazz and art...

There’s just something about a cool, calm, collected extremely obnoxious cat. Spin some solid jazz tunes, add a sunny window, and my cat’s face settles into a vibe of coolness only a cat can achieve. Miss Reese digs it. She’s a calico. She’s “extra.”

While some of us crave the old days of Count Basie, Brubeck, Miles, Weather Report, and Roy Hargrove’s improv style I could have strangled myself last spring while watching Christian McBride’s “New Jawn” tour. We adore McBride’s music, but this was a lot. Go with me here. Not one 70 year old and over in the room blinked or moved their face for two hours. It was a frozen dawn. If Miss Reese had been there, her ears would have twisted off mid-flight. In our entire lives of exploring jazz, with an emphasis on bass players, like Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten, Edgar Meyer (and far more than I can name), the new dawn jazz experiment that’s being pushed on the few well-endowed supporters of jazz and their cheap-seat compadres, like us, is pushing the mark of abstract, as with most of the arts. It’s like saying, “I’ve done it all” and now I want to lock you down, fire up the instruments and throw them all over the stage, in a kind of jazz hell, with us, “the aficionados,” chasing some semblance of sound, as if that wasn’t already hard for the non-jazz theater donor. You could see the old money getting grayer by the second as they clapped like trained sea lions at Sea World. Sorry, not sorry. On occasion I have a wicked sense of humour. God’s gotta deal…

As extreme jazz fans, thankfully, McBride and others are still playing the abstracky cool stuff. I made that word up.

When it comes to art, it’s entirely similar. Throw a banana on a white board, use black tape to hold it down, frame it, and watch how those who do not understand, nor feel art, will react. Sold! for 6.24 million!! No joke. But it was a joke. Every once in a while we need to crack that stoic jazz face and yell, “I’m outta here!” No longer can we say, “that’s not art”… or it offends someone. If you asked the devil about the banana he’d say, “art is always subjective,” followed by an evil laugh. Great argument. One that we must now break away from and think for ourselves again.

I am a photographer. Never have I dabbled in art, drawing, nothing. I’ve told myself “I can’t” for years. For lack of a better, more classy term, “I suck at it.” So don’t judge. But you’re totally welcome to judge. I now LOVE the idea of trying to sketch. It’s incredibly weird. Like outer body weird. So weird. For years I was afraid to post my photography. Now I’m literally putting myself out there, on a whim, with art. I have entered a total of six attempts into my little sketch book purchased on Amazon. If you’d asked me a few months ago to show a random stranger something I sketched I would have said NO! In December, I also signed up for a sketch class at my local city, bought all the supplies, only to receive a call that there is an apparent winter class apathy. Class cancelled. California has been on fire. It’s been a hard start to the new year :( It’s broken my heart for so many, hence the lighthearted break here. Which leads to my determination, hopeful for the spring session. In the meantime, I am presently in love with Paul Klee. An accomplished violinist himself, the “Abstract Trio” comes to mind with the jazz.

I am also blessed to know

Jenn

from Between the Pines and

Kelly B. Pittman

from Becoming, and the incredible

Michael Newberry

- where there is truly no comparison. I have never been so inspired in my life. My youngest inspiration is our 7.5 year old grandson, Asher. While he sits like a mad/glad scientist, drawing/coloring, creating his own intricate legos, he says things like “mom I just love art so much. Art is everything.” We were supposed to have an art day this past Tuesday but he was under the weather. I brought over my “Come Look With Me,” book series, Animals in Art, that Jenn recommended, and decided while the little guy was sleeping off a fever, I would do my own version of the Cat and Bird, based slightly on Miss Reese (scroll to the bottom for her model pic). Sidenote: I believe she will live ‘til 30 and own the deed to our house. Help us. She’s 13.

With some sketch pens and one small pack of the grandchildren’s 12 colored and broken pencils I set out on my mission and looked everywhere for a pencil sharpener. By the time I got home I was still rubbing colored pencil, like oil, into sketch paper. A child attempting something new for the first time. Good enough for police fingerprints, my colorful digits digress. I have been called a child in recent years. At first it felt like a put-down (that tone thing) and now? I fully embrace it. The more I explored Paul Klee’s work, the more I was in love with it. Surrounded by the whimsical art of John’s Swiss/French born artist (Grandpa) Max Vaucher (pronounced Vo-chay), it met all my senses.

“Klee is known for his simple stick figures, suspended fish, moon faces, eyes, arrows, and quilts of color, which he orchestrated into fantastic and childlike yet deeply meditative works.” Sabine Rewald, The Met Museum, Essay

I have spent a lifetime immersed in photography and listening to music. I stare at art. I don’t make it. Marc Chagall mesmerizes me. Our wedding invitation was from a treasured Chagall postcard. Our home is full of art.

I’ve discovered it's never too late to take a deep dive, “be a child” and try something new! My only intention is joy! It’s in the process. I feel a new sense of liberation. Maybe that’s what the “New Jawn” was all about. A messy liberation of sorts that no one else could understand. Maybe I should apologize for my thoughts? But never for that banana.

Maybe I want to be a cat :)

Paul Klee, Cat & Bird, 1928 + my cat (judging me as usual) Miss Reese, version 2025. I put some jazz on & got this image of her for reference. I don’t think she’s thrilled with her portrait. She says she dreams of eating birds that are cuter than that and told me in no uncertain terms, “Paul Klee did it best.” She’s a mean girl.

P.S. This is all for fun! My hat is off to the master artists and jazz masters :) Thank you for expanding my universe…

“Everybody wants to be a cat

because a cat’s the only cat

who knows where it’s at

Everybody’s pickin up on that feelin beat

Cause everything else is obsolete”