I watch that sweet little creature, Quincy Jones' granddaughter, hug Grandpa and flutter away through the crowd. Thank God, a full house of Joneses, he deserved his grandfather after seventy years of hard work, for that wonderful being to hug him and tell him I love you.
This is a New Year text about merit and cosmic justice. This justice saved old Quincy from all aneurysms, heart attacks and allowed him to complete his work. Here we are talking about justice that follows special sufferers, because Quincy was born in the thirties, his mother was dragged away in a straitjacket when he was seven, his father was a hired hand, his friends carried ice picks and knives, pickpocketed on the streets of the Chicago ghetto.
How and why does the boy manage to get out of it and become one of the great musicians of the twentieth century? James Baldwin, a child from Harlem, and still gay, thus completely destined to perish, to be swallowed up by the racial lagum of the thirties, escaped from a similar hell. One can only guess how these boys, who are rare, overcome their fate and overcome their fate. So many were swallowed up by alcohol, drugs, crime, police torture, the devil took them away, so that only two or three winners were born out of immense suffering and unconsciousness. And what kind of black justice is this?
I'm watching a documentary in which Quincy's granddaughter Tesla appears in class and I can't help but think of justice. Let all the awards go to that Edison, all the money to Marconi, but today the beautiful girls are named after the pop's son from Lika. They call light bulbs and kurtzschluss after Edison, the vehicles of the future after Tesla. Justice has been served again, because when Jarmusch and Nolan tour you in the film, when Bowie and Petar Božović play you, you stop being the scientist Nikola Tesla, an American of Serbian origin, and become a symbol of human victory. How many boys from Lika perished from hunger and fratricide, perished in the first and second wars, and why did that boy manage to escape?
The fact that I bother talking about the greats should not be taken as a bad thing. Of course, these are exceptions on which one does not build a rule. But it will be that the good, the pure and the best always found ways to somehow move and move.
Geniuses are just a phenomenon and the focus of that force that pushes people not to give up and survive the surrounding misery. So a little optimism, please. I follow the social trends of the birth canal, but it seems to me that it has a chance. I don't expect quincys and Teslas to be thrown around, but even if those who want to do so will get out of that primitive maelstrom of hatred and evil intent, I can hope for that this New Year. They went to Pečalba or Namastir, fled to Germany or to themselves, all the same, just to get as many people as possible out of the collective coma and surreality they call the socio-political reality of the region. There must be a way, just without surrender. I don't have any proof that things come without merit, so every man has to work hard for himself, sacrifice something, just as I, in honor of mild days, sacrifice the newspaper queen saffra in exchange for a nice picture at the end.
The morning before the publication of this text, an African-American man in his late twenties, one of the fellows from the poor part of Highland Avenue, knocked on my door. Happy Christmas and New Year, carrying a rake and shovel over his shoulder, and looking for work around the neighborhood. How much is your daily allowance, I ask him, and he says how much you give, and he laughs so sincerely, that it seems to me that he found all the answers in the world with that rake.
How some people managed to escape from torment while standing in the middle of it is the question of all questions. As he seeks to break through, to melt, and to remain in his own skin, let it be a question for the next year, which will be worse than the previous one, even a superficial interpreter of the movements of the heavenly bodies can see that.
What's your name, neighbor, I ask him. Quincy, he says - like Quincy Jones.
Bonus video:
