Shahid loved the squat, gray machine with its black and red ribbon, and the sound of the keys peppering the page like rain on a tin roof, and the bell tinging at the end of each line, signaling him to smack the carriage arm. To increase his speed, he copied passages from his favourite writers: Chandler, Dostoevsky, Hunter S. Thompson. When he grew weary of keeping the place, he altered their words and had their characters do what he required. Hanif Kurieshi, The Black Album Faith's grandfather had told her stories about the way that the library had come about, about the competition that had been won by the architect who collaborated with the be-bop musician. They both saw the shape of stories moving through the air as clearly as if they could put their hands around them and capture them, but who could draw that? In the end they went off to the jazz club and the architect photographed the shape of the notes that the saxophonist played, as they belted out of the end of his saxophone and bent and defied time. The notes built themselves strangely, like something coming together backwards, like an egg unscrambling. . I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday. I take 242 choruses; my ideas vary and sometimes roll from chorus to chorus or from halfway through a chorus to halfway into the next. Jack Kerouac. Mexico City Blues     next