In December of 1945, while on his way from New York to Los Angeles to play a gig, Charlie Parker disembarked from the train in Arizona to wander the desert in search of a fix.
I can’t see the river, but I know it’s out there. It’s no mirage. It’s a silver river full of silver fish gleaming beneath a silver sliver of a moon. So I keep walking as straight as I can, which isn’t very, given the state I’m in. I haven’t felt the river’s current running through my veins in days. If the river can’t find me, then I will find the river. I know it’s out there as sure as I know every curve of my sweet brassy Bird. The river is wandering and lost, like me, and looking for a sea to feed. The sea I feed is a writhing sea of flesh, blood, and bone that is always thirsty for more, more, more. Always thirsty for me. Every night I fill my sea with all the music my blood can pour out, enough already to cover this desert and swallow the river I know is out there. It’s only a matter of time before I drown in a sea of my own making. But not tonight. Tonight, I’m just a man searching for the silver river in the desert. Horns from the sea I left call for me to come back. But I won’t go back until I feel the current of the river in me. I can see it now just ahead, like a mirror reflecting the speckled darkness of an endless night. There is no breeze to crease its silver surface, and I know that all the fish that swim on the other side of the reflection are itching to break free. So I fill up my lungs and give my Bird the breath she needs to sing and coax, one by one, the fish to bebop up and out of the water and into the air. They glitter and hang above me like stars. I let the myriad of mirrored shards that fall from their scales rain over me like a thousand silver needles until every inch of my desiccated body is pierced and I am satiated by the river.
