Mist = missed

I woke to a misty morning, and over coffee, decided my wife and I should unfurl ourselves amongst the approaching hour to the music of Susanne Abbuehl, a Swiss/Dutch "Jazz" Singer, Composer, and Teacher.  She has two records out on ECM -- "April" (2001) and "Compass" (2006), both with a curious instrumental lineup of voice, piano, clarinet, and drums. I say curious not because a band of those four elements is by definition "weird" -- I mean, you have the rhythm aspect (drums), the harmonic aspect (piano), and the melodic aspect (voice) and the support aspect (clarinet) -- all the basic bases appear covered -- but because the "band" never really all plays on each record (if they do, I didn't hear it, which is probably intentional on their part - there are private things recorded here they don't want me to hear). Susanne sings a good deal, even when there are no words to sing, but that's probably the most prominent and consistent "sound" on these records -- the half-melted mist of her voice (there's an out of print record by a similarly silent singer, guitarist Bill Connors, from the later 70's called "Of Mist and Melting" that fits in narratively here, a similar evoking of a misty land slowly surfacing -- where?). Sometimes you forget there's a drummer. Sometimes the piano seems to have been lulled to sleep by Susanne's liquid equanimity, the solid yet fluid hum of her words and non-words in the misty space. Sometimes the only thing besides the vocal is the voice of the clarinet, like some ancient animal awoken in the midst of grey clouds, an animal instantly singing behind Susanne so as to hope to join her, wherever she comes to us from, to sing something for us to weep against.

-----

I could call these records quiet, and I would be describing them pretty objectively if I were to do so. But that would then be my assumption that it is the sound of the records, that the sound of the music on these records, is a quiet sound. If you think about it, that's nearly impossible. A sound just is, almost without quality; even adjectives like soft or hard are implied, applied, determined, weighted and given applicable context. And yet, sound is all quality, evoking characteristics of every world we bear within us or might soon know in the coming moment. Susanne Abbuehl's music is the sound of quiet at the center of something severe, as though all there is to do is mourn slowly, evenly, like the mist that passes and that, once passed, you cannot imagine. Susanne Abbuehl's music even mourns the moment that is to come soon, almost too fast, which is what makes that moment an inexplicable object of loss.

-----

Like anyone else who had a mother, I dream of being comforted by a voice that might surround me and warm me forever, that might always renew me when I feel the misty chill of dawn upon me. But I also want that voice to tell me that sometimes it is cold outside, that sometimes the sun is underneath the clouds, and that these things are part of the mourning of the day, and the day is the strongest thing we have to lean our lives upon. I hear this voice in the music of Susanne Abbuehl -- (here, this voice). But I also hear what she brings of music that is behind us. This is "jazz" only because it can't be any other music, since jazz affords a freedom of harmonic and improvisational form that is simultaneous with its categorizing totality. It is ancient music, but it does not hearken back to a time that is lost to us. It hearkens back to a timeless pause of things. A timeless pause of the space that defines where each thing ends, where each thing won't have ever been. The music that is behind us was played by musicians who were their own music, who carried it across each chasm, who knelt in the sand with it at their breasts. They soothed it, and it in turn, like an infant stretching its arms towards the sun, grew into a giant, and it walked the earth with silent steps.

-----

I was drinking my coffee and looking out the window at the mist, and it occurred to me that the mist would just be gone at some point, and that I wouldn't be able to watch it leave. I would have only known that it had left, that the mist signified the patience of the day that I lacked in watching it. I felt gloriously, almost proudly sad at everything that I could know of my losses. Suddenly Susanne reminded me that "Black / is the color / of my true love's hair". Which, weirdly, it is, for me. How could she know, I asked the room where my wife sat, listening, too, with me, amongst the music. I have a feeling I would ask the same question in the same way if my true love's hair were white, too.