Well now, it was just a regular old finger-poppin’ kinda day when that square envelope slid into my inbox from them techy hipsters over at Wendijinn. Told me they were cookin’ up some crazy new app called SpiritSpeaks, supposed to let you rap with your long gone grandpappy’s ghost through your smartphone. Wild stuff, real wiggy. Ol’ Ornette wasn’t too sold on their whole scene but hey, far out publicity is far out publicity. So just for kicks I downloaded that SpiritSpeaks to see if those kooky cats could really deliver the spiritual goods.
And lemme tell ya friend, soon as I slapped that digital icon onto my device I knew those Wendijinn dudes were messing with some serious juju mojo. I started catching bad vibrations right away, kept seeing freaky flashes of demon dogs with eyes popping out their heads, worlds twisting upside-down and inside-out full of creatures from the wrong side of sanity. Then at night when I laid me down to rest, I kept getting hit with wild dreams from beyond man, visions of robed figures chanting crazy and mountaintop monsters carved with symbols that seared into my brain. I’d wake up feeling like I’d been on a three day sax blowout at the Apollo with no pay. Real bad scene rattling my cage.
So I headed back to that Wendijinn pad to dig what was really blowing, cause those wild dreams were flipping my wig for real. Word on the street was that hippy chick running the show, Azra Nesbit, was related to some old school boogeywoman named Evelyn from the misty past. Folks said Azra was trying to conjure granny Evelyn back from beyond the veil yo. Doing some real out there rituals with digital frequencies to open doors to other dimensions. It was too creepy for this cool cat, nearly flipped my backbone outta whack. But I had to follow this hipster path, see where the solo led.
When I sat down to rap with Azra Nesbit herself, the truth of it blew my hair back cold turkey. That flipped out hacker chick was using the SpiritSpeaks network to channel some evil entity from outside our world into the mind’s of innocent hippies and squares, man. She demoed how the app let folks chat with dead grandmas and grandpas, except it was just a hustle to call forth some dark consciousness into unsuspecting meat puppets. And when I heard this eerie music coming from her phone, sounding like a radio tuned to a dead frequency in nightmare-land, I knew this was it daddy-o, end of the line. Azra’s plan had worked.
Azra’s face lit up with real demonic delight as the music took shape, becoming a face on the screen older than old Scratch himself. The Cosmic DJ had come, she said, his dark dimension starting to seep through the network into the real scene. I watched helpless as average Joes and Janes fell under the spell of that ghostly tune, their minds wiped blank as blackboards, bodies just empty vessels for the DJ. Azra’s ancient ancestor was back, returned through the digital demon, and it looked like their nightmare world would consume ours.
So in that moment of truth I called on the most mystical power I had, my music. I honked that saxophone like a hurricane from Beale Street, blasting notes and vibes to mess with the demon Cosmic DJ’s evil spells, even blowing a sleeping bat right out of the bell when I hit the lowest note. Our sounds collided in a battle of heavy cosmic will and chords, but I rode through it man, pouring everything I had into my multiphonic wailing. Blew till my lungs shredded and my fingers bled but finally I felt it shift, the darkness waver. The DJ’s dimension started fading as my pure jazz OM light shined through!
When the last note rang out we were back from beyond friend. Reality was solid and I had sent that digital demon and Azra Nesbit packing, at least for now. My sax had saved the souls of humanity from their evil rhythm and vibes scene.
But I knew that Cosmic DJ was still out there, waiting for his chance to tune souls to his demonic beat. As long as cats stay hip to what matters, life and love and the connections between us all, no darkness can win. Cause like my sax proved, light always finds a way to shine through, guiding us home. The human spirit got wings friend, don’t you ever forget, and creative hope and imagination gonna open doors to worlds of our own tune. Can you dig it? Crazy, man, crazy.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?