P: For years, I thought that Chet Baker sings ‘you’re my favourite waste of time’.
My funny Valentine, sweet comic Valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable
Unphotographable
Yet you’re my favorite work of art
Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak
Are you smiling?
But don’t change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little Valentine, stay
Each day is Valentine’s Day
It is, rather, ‘you’re my favourite work of art’; that switch is rather symbolic. This recording of My Funny Valentine is gorgeous; Baker sits, his face and hands ravaged by time, each word seems to be loaded with meaning - and effortless at the same time.
Although it is this version is my favourite - and, according to someone, it is his last great concert. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImULyS3wpP0)
(I accidentally downloaded this version in the early days of the Internet, possibly 10 years ago, and then spent ages tracking it down because all other versions sounded wrong. His voice here is perfect.)
I thought tonight that being someone’s favourite waste of time is actually great.
Wasting time is unproductive time; time not spent in a trajectory that leads to the reproduction or accumulation of capital. ‘You’re wasting your time with them’, indicating that a relationship will not lead to the reproduction of life.
Wasting time = spending time in its purest form (Paul Thek + the impurity of time, all of us are complicit).
The insult of insults - being a waste of space (I feel like my body is being wasted and unproductive these days and I’m donating blood for the first time on Monday; someone might as well have some use of it).
“Mick raked her hair from her forehead. Her mouth was open so that her cheeks seemed hollow. There were these two things she could never believe. That Mister Singer had killed himself and was dead. And that she was grown and had to work at Woolworth’s… That was the way things were. It was like she was mad all the time. Not how a kid gets mad quick so that soon it is all over - but in another way. Only there was nothing to be mad at. Unless the store. But the store hadn’t asked her to take the job. So there was nothing to be mad at. It was like she was cheated. Only nobody had cheated her. So there was nobody to take it out on. However, just the same she had that feeling. Cheated.”
Carson McCullers The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
A conversation at the bar the other night, everyone expressing doubts over life choices (big word), career choices (even bigger), considering whether they’re lagging behind (”I hate art”). Again, the fear of waste. Wasting time. It is only this year that I suddenly started thinking that it might be too late for some things already (this is a very new feeling for me).
Chet Baker is a great person to talk about in this context.
The promise: “Jazz historian Dave Gelly described the promise of Baker’s early career as “James Dean, Sinatra, and Bix, rolled into one.”
The ‘decline’: “In 1966, Baker was savagely beaten (allegedly while attempting to buy drugs) after a gig in The Trident restaurant in Sausalito, California, sustaining severe cuts on the lips and supposedly broken front teeth, which ruined his embouchure. He stated in the film Let’s Get Lost that an acquaintance attempted to rob him one night but backed off, only to return the next night with a group of several men who chased him. He entered a car and became surrounded. Instead of rescuing him, the people inside the car pushed him back out onto the street, where the chase by his attackers continued, and subsequently he was beaten to the point that his teeth, never in good condition to begin with, were knocked out, leaving him without the ability to play his trumpet. He took odd jobs, among them pumping gas. In a 1980 interview he stated that he worked for a long time at a gas station, working 7 am to 11 pm until he came to the conclusion that he needed to find a way to return to his music.”
Then the comeback; then the fall. The waste?
Wasteful trajectories.
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