The trombone player has a straight part. He umpah umps with the
conventional trombone fatalism. Whatever the tune, whatever the harmonies,
trombone umpah umps regardless. Umpah ump is the soul of all things.
Cadenzas, glissandos, arpeggios, chromatics, syncopations, blue
melodies--these are the embroidery of sound. From year to year these
change, these pass. Only the umpah ump remains. And tonight the trombone
player plays what he will play a thousand nights from tonight--umpah ump.
The bassoon and the bull fiddle--they umpah ump along. Underneath the
quaver and whine of the jazz they beat the time, they make the tuneless
rhythm. The feet dancing on the crowded cabaret floor listen cautiously
for the trombone, the bassoon and the bull fiddle. They have a liaison
with the umpah umps--the feet. Long ago they danced only to the umpah
umps. There were no cadenzas, glissandos, arpeggios then. There was only
the thumping of cedar wood on cedar wood, on ebony or taut deerskin.
Civilizations have risen, fallen and risen again. Armies, gods, races have
been chewed into mist by the years. But the thumping remains. The feet of
the dancers on the cabaret floor keep a rendezvous with the ebony on the
taut deerskin, with the cedar wood beating on cedar wood.
* * * * *
The clarinet screeches, wails, moans and whistles. The clarinet flings an
obbligato high over the heads of the dancers on the cabaret floor. It
makes shrill sounds. It raves like a fireless Ophelia. It plays the clown,
the tragedian, the acrobat.
A whimsical insanity lurks in the music of the clarinet. It stutters
ecstasies. It postures like Tristan and whimpers like a livery-stable nag.
It grimaces like Peer Gynt and winks like a lounge lizard, a cake eater.
It is not for the feet of the dancers on the crowded cabaret floor. The
feet follow the umpah umps. The thoughts of the dancers follow the
clarinet. The thoughts of the boobilariat dance easily to the tangled
lyric of the clarinet. The thoughts tie themselves into crazy knots. The
music of the clarinet becomes like crazily uncoiling whips. The thoughts
of the dancers shake themselves loose from words under the spur of the
whips. They begin to dance, not as the feet dance. There is another rhythm
here. The rhythm of little ecstasies whimpering. Thus the thoughts of the
dancers dance--dead hopes, wearied ambitions, vanishing youth do an
inarticulate can-can in the heads of the dancers on the cabaret floor.
* * * * *
The cornet wears a wooden gag in its mouth and a battered black derby
hangs over its end. Umpah ump from the trombone, the bull fiddle and the
bassoon. Tangled lyrics from the clarinet. And the cornet cakewalks like a
hoyden vampire, the cornet whinnies like an odalisque expiring in the arms
of the Wizard of Oz.
Lust giggles at a sly jest out of the cornet. Passion thumbs its nose at
the stars out of the cornet. The melody of jazz, the tin pan ghosts of
Chopin, Tchaikowsky, Old Black Joe, Liszt and Mumbo Magumbo, jungle
troubadour of the Congo, come whinnying out from under the pendant derby.
The dancers on the cabaret floor close their eyes and grin to themselves.
The cornet kids them along. When they grow sad it burlesques their sorrow.
The cornet laughs at them. It leers like a satyr master of ceremonies at
them. It is Pan in a clown suit, Silenus on a trick mule, Eros in a
Pullman smoker.
* * * * *
Laugh, dance, jerk, wiggle and kid all you want--but the Lady of the Sea
Foam whispers a secret. Aphrodite, become a female barytone, still takes
herself very seriously. Aphrodite, alas, is always serious. She gurgles a
sonorous plaint out of the saxophone. The cornet sneers at her. The
clarinet sneaks up on her and tweaks her nose. The trombone, the bull
fiddle and the bassoon ignore her altogether. And the dancers on the
cabaret floor are too busy to dance to her simple wails.
Yet there is no mistake. Aphrodite, the queen, abandoned by her courtiers
and surrounded by this galaxy of mountebanks, is still Aphrodite.
Big-bosomed, sleepy-eyed and sad lipped she walks invisible among the
dancers on the cabaret floor and they listen to her voice out of the
saxophone.
The drums, the piano and the violin give her a fluttering drape. But there
are things to be seen. This is not the Aphrodite of the Blue Danube
waltz--but a duskier, more mystical lady. There are no roses on her
cheeks, no lilies in her skin. She is colored like a panther flower and
her limbs are heavy with taboo magic. But she is still imperial. In vain
the mountebanks and burlesqueries of her court. Her lips place themselves
against the hearts of the dancers on the cabaret floor. And she croons her
ancient hymns.
The hearts of the dancers give themselves to the saxophone. Their feet
keep a rendezvous with the umpah umps. Their thoughts dance on the slack
wire of the clarinet. Their veins beat time to the whinny of the derby
wreathed cornet. The fiddles and the drums are partners for their arms and
their muscles. But their hearts embrace shyly the Mother Aphrodite. Their
hearts listen sadly and proudly and they almost forget to dance.
* * * * *
Midnight approaches. Enameled faces, stenciled smiles, painted eyes and
slants of colored hats--these are the women. Careless, polite, suave,
grinning--these are the men. The jazz band plays. The cabaret floor,
jammed, seems to be moving around like a groaning turnstile.
Bodies are hidden. The spotlight from the balcony begins to throw a series
of colors. Melody is lost. The jazz band is hammering like a mad
blacksmith. Whang! Bam! Whang! Bam! Nobody hears the music of the band.
Bodies together move on the turnstile floor. This is the part of the feast
of Belshazzar that the authorities censored in a Griffith movie. This is
the description of Tiberius's court that the authorities suppressed. Here
are the poems that hide on the forbidden shelves of the public library.
The pulp of figures dissolves. The hammering band has finished. Men and
women, grown suddenly polite and social, return to their tables. Citizens
of a neighborhood, toilers, clerks, fourflushers, wives, husbands,
gropers, nobodies, less-than-nobodies--watch and see where they go. Into
the brick holes, into the apartment buildings. They pack themselves away
like ants in an anthill.
The nobodies--the gropers, husbands, wage-earners, fourflushers--but they
made a violent picture a moment ago. Under the revolving colors of the
floodlight and the hammering, whinnying music of the jazz band they became
again the mask of Dionysus--the ancient satanical mask which nature slips
over her head when in quest of diversion.