1: Street jazz
Street jazz and break-up tea
in autumn light
This was the first haiku I wrote when I decided to summarise each day in a short written moment. As this is the first post, I'll share a little more background.
I was 24, had little responsibility beyond new job that allowed me to travel and an ignorant confidence to embrace all I could from life.
But to be clear, 'all I could' was not a lot. I had no money. I lived in a small and friendly English city and I had no ambitions to prove anything to anyone. I seek to be the centre of attention but I also never felt shy or embarrassed to put myself forward. Still, this foundation and two key components are what unknowingly led to be some of the highest and lowest of times of my life.
The first component is that I loved interacting with others. I'd become fascinated with body language, ways of asking questions to build conversation, mannerisms, mirroring, stories, lives. People at that time to me were a beautiful riddle that I wanted to understand and learn from, like the richest characters cast by master authors. I wanted to connect with people and identified as someone who could connect with anyone.
The second component was the unexpected catalyst: I made personal promise to say yes to any suggestion or offer made to me.1 There were three rules to this:
- Never tell anyone of the 'yes promise'. Doing so would only lead to people changing how they acted or the system being gamed.
- Don't push for the suggestion. It has to be made by the other individual(s).
- Always say yes. Even if I didn't want to. Yes.
Importantly, I didn't see this as a game, like some duplicitous way to mislead others or have them believe something that wasn't true. It was a mindset I completely bought into, a little like Kerouac's in The Dharma Bums, with all the naïve trappings that brings. Importantly, I was honest with others too in being clear about what I wanted or thought was the best suggestion, as well as when I didn't want to do something or thought it was a bad idea. But whatever they went with, yes.
This 'yes promise' was the mantra to that year in particular, and informs the choices and situations captured across the haiku I will share on this blog.
The most profound thing I found that year is how much the world opens up to you if you say yes. This was a surprise as I didn't feel that I was turning down that many suggestions before, but I must have been. Then the next discovery: saying 'yes' consistently drives positive feedback - the more you say yes to things, the more options come up and the more people know you as the kind of person who will be up for more. This spirals.
To manage expectations, that year was not some blockbuster movie of out of this world madness. It was weird, and fun and sad and emotional about all the everyday stuff. I think the haiku capture this mix. Especially the bittersweetness.
And so this first haiku is just a small step out on that journey.
In this haiku, I was with a friend from work, Lucy, who had just broken up with a long-term partner. Lucy and I knew each other from work, but we had never see each other outside of the office. We were about the same age and there was an unspoken hint of awkwardness of us meeting given that her recent breakup meant we both were single.
The relationship had been a long one, and someone who Lucy had expected to stay with. We were sitting outside in a small bar run by arts students. The wooden picnic table seating was panted in bright colours and we were framed by the bright orange and yellow leaves of the surrounding willow trees in autumn. The crisp air left small spinning steam trails rising from our wide-rimmed mugs.
As we spoke, a street musician appeared, pulled out a saxophone and lay the case for change. He began to play jazz that echoed off the pavement and buildings where we sat beside the river.
It was beautiful and we joked about Lucy's new future now she was free to do anything. And she was. Her world was unexpectedly more open and there was a vibrancy that came with that. But something had also finished, fallen, died.
Surrounded by the dead leaves of autumn, Lucy had shed many of the plans she expected. And now, despite the beauty and laughter of these dreams fading, deep down she was sad and the saxophone jazz of a stranger reminded her of that in the pause between our jokes.
This is a blog reflecting on haiku I wrote years ago. You can find all of them here as I post them. Here's more about why I chose haiku.
I had seen Yes Man years earlier with Jim Carrey, which was likely also some inception to the idea.↩