Soul

Joe loved jazz music.

He’d fallen for jazz when he was twelve years old. Since that day, he’d devoted his life to the music—listening to it, studying it, playing it. Jazz was the first thing he thought of in the morning. At night, he went to sleep with riffs and codas swirling through his brain.

For Joe, the incredible thing about jazz music, the thing that kept it from getting old, was that there were so many ways to play it. And all those ways made you feel something different.

Jazz could be bold and confident. Or playful. Or melancholic. Some jazz made you feel on top of the world. And when you were down in the dumps, jazz could be a balm for your soul.

And then there was the kind of jazz that made you feel like you were being run over by a garbage truck. In other words, jazz played by a middle-school band.