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CarCai, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Gil’s Place

14 West 55th

Concrete, white slab. Glass. It wasn’t always so.
They tore it down to build something new.

Sounds of jackhammers smash and construction workers shout.
Building up and up.

A new edifice to the god in your pocket.

Before now, there were sounds.
Different sounds.

If you listen carefully, you can still hear them, floating up
through the cracks in the rain-soaked sidewalk.
Just audible. Tentative. Probing.
Laughs and clinking beer bottles too.

Wrapped in a coat, Gil humming a ba ba doo da doo to Miles, playing the melody on the piano as Bird snores in the corner by his open suitcase.

The gurgling pipes lining the low ceiling seemed to accompany the music being made.

Hey, Gerry’s here. And he’s brought us some beer.
He replaced Miles next to Gil.

Miles tapped out silent phrases to the floor, as he paced in small circles with his horn.

So many passed through. George, Johnny, Lee and others.

Concrete, white slab. Glass. It wasn’t always so.
They tore it down to build something new.

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Seb Duncan holds a PGCert in Teaching Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge and a Masters in Creative Writing and Education from Goldsmiths, University of London. He is also an English teacher and musician. He is the author of the novella Headcase and his new full length work The Book of Thunder and Lightning is out in all good bookshops.

Click here to visit his website and click here for his Goodreads page or join him on Instagram here @sebduncanauthor

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Listen to the 1949 recording of “Boplicity,” the Miles Davis/Gil Evans tune that appeared on the Miles Davis album Birth of the Cool.  In addition to Miles on trumpet, the band includes J.J. Johnson (trombone); Sandy Siegelstein (french horn); Lee Konitz (alto saxophone); Gerry Mulligan (baritone saxophone); John Lewis (piano); Nelson Boyd (bass); Kenny Clarke (drums); Bill Barber (tuba).  [Universal Music Group]

 

 

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