In the city

Yesterday morning I walked to the hospital to have my nose looked at by a surgeon. She was checking to see how much skin she needed to remove and where to find replacement skin. She wore this fancy headlamp that made a soft whirring sound when she turned it on, but when she went to do the measuring she pulled out an old-fashioned tape measure. I guess she knows what she's doing.

Anyway, she said I'd be having the surgery (which will be under local anesthetic and last an hour or so) on March 16 or 23. That's after the Wellington Jazz Festival, but well before I leave for Japan, so I'm pretty happy with that.

It was after midday by the time I was finished at the hospital. I was hungry, but I decided I was in the mood to try the Olatunji Concert experiment. So I rigged up my iPod and headed into town.

It was interesting for a while. A highlight was when I came to an intersection and could hear the sound of traffic on the recording (which was done live in a converted gymnasium in Harlem) as well as that of the traffic passing in front of me. My mind was on lunch, though, and so instead of drifting and letting the music dictate where I'd walk, I followed a familiar route to a favourite eatery.

By the time I got there I was only half way through the first track, so I hit Pause and didn't resume listening until I'd finished eating. Again, I didn't drift, but instead headed straight for the nearest Ticketek outlet to buy a ticket to the Brad Mehldau Trio concert in Wellington on March 8. "Ogundi" ended just before I got there, so I hit Pause again. Once I'd bought my ticket I felt it was time to head home. Something told me The Olatunji Concert wasn't right for walking through suburban Christchurch, so I hit Stop and packed away my earphones.

I didn't actually get to listen to Jimmy Garrison's bass solo at the start of "My Favorite Things". There was no "ascension to the peak". The experiment wasn't a complete failure, though. I think I understood at least a part of what I think Wu Ming 1 was trying to say. Which is that The Olatunji Concert is urban music, recorded, and intended to be listened to, in the heart of the city. And that by 1967 jazz had come a long way from West Africa or New Orleans or wherever it came from.

A couple of days earlier, near the beginning of my first listening of The Olatunji Concert (as "a mere background" as also recommended by Wu Ming 1), I suddenly felt the urge to laugh. I felt the same urge during my third or fourth listening of Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. The urge wasn't to laugh at them, mind you, but to laugh with them.

Distance walked today: 5km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 29.3km
Days left until departure: 86