Such character you’d expect from Cecil Taylor’s fingers, or my grandfather’s, Frank, who was a master carpenter. My fingers still smack of perfumed talcum, white gloves, and honeyed lotions. My calluses are elusive, if ever present, closer to my heart than my wrists which are deceitfully delicate. Veins, blue-black pulsing, rise eloquently from Jean-René’s hands, small muscles throb over the white and black keyboard, eliciting the reveries of Bartók, Monk, Abrams, and Joplin. My back refused to sound anyone but Satie, Bobby Timmons, and John Hicks. This frustrates Jean-René. When he smacks my cheek with the back of his hand, only Andrew Cyrille comes to mind. The Frenchman is unnerved. The music of my body is deliberate. There’s nothing I can do about how I sound. When I open my mouth, Shirley Cesaire and Jeanne Lee scramble for the skies, my tongue finds his somewhere high above the treble clef. We’re pulled back, flat to the soil. Sun running us pianissimo while our sweat moistens the virginal African grass. Our bodies lay claim to the earth, silhouettes of lovers, smooth unbroken lines, enveloped by tall brush, quivering in the wind, as tongues would wag in whatever language were our license with each other known beyond this side of the road. Meknes.